


Theory Number 7

by literalmetaphor, thewindupbird



Category: Buzzfeed Unsolved (Web Series)
Genre: AU, Emotionally and physically, Horror, Hurt Boys, Hurt/Comfort, I GOTTA GO, I can't believe im uploading this, I don't know how to tag this, M/M, Slow Burn, So many death, The slowest, Zombies, bye, long fic, maybe ghosts aren't real but zombies are, or something like it, roadtrip but with zombies, so many pain, so much pain, the longest fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-22
Updated: 2019-09-28
Packaged: 2019-10-14 12:59:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 22
Words: 516,747
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17509094
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/literalmetaphor/pseuds/literalmetaphor, https://archiveofourown.org/users/thewindupbird/pseuds/thewindupbird
Summary: He doesn’t apologize again. Can’t. Because there’s no way to say, hey, dude, I’m really sorry for intentionally exposing you to a zombie plague, but anyway, water under the bridge, right?





	1. Part 1

**Author's Note:**

> So this is a thing we did. After much deliberation we were like, hey let's post this long ass thing. Because... who doesn't want an overlong zombie apocalypse AU? WHO?
> 
> Anyway, here's this.
> 
> (Side note: apologies for the weird spacing on half of this. Google docs can get fucked.)

Theory Number 7

Part 1

Low branches swipe and slap at Ryan’s cheeks, pops of heat against the steady sting of near-freezing rain. His feet, a pair of water-proof boots he stole— _not stole, Ryan, the guy was dead_ —from the last town they passed through, stick in puddles, sink into the ground, so every step rips through his thigh. It’s all he can feel. His toes have gone numb with cold. But he keeps going, can’t stop.

He pulls Jake by the arm. He’s slowing down, Ryan thinks, god, he looks almost green.  
No, no, no, no, no, he won’t let himself do this.

He doesn’t know where they’re going. Fuck if he can read a map, and their phones have been completely useless for weeks. West. They just need to go west. They’ll run into another town eventually, find some shelter.

Ryan pulls Jake to him as he pushes back more of the branches. He should be careful. Cuts are going to draw them, and from the sting in his cheeks, he’s got a few, but then there’s this guttural, raw groan that echoes and bounces off the raindrops, and he can’t worry about it. He grits his teeth to hold back the choke and tears forward, heedless of the branches.

“Fuck, Jake, c’mon!”

Jake hisses a little, but he’s trying to move. He’s trying to move, Ryan tells himself. He’s fine.

They stumble out of the trees, and it’s just field. This yawning, unending space, and Ryan’s breath cuts through his throat like glass as he rests his hands on his knees, just for a second.

They’ve been running for _hours_. He thinks, he isn’t sure, since his phone is at the bottom of the backpack on his shoulder, uncharged like it’s been for days. Nothing has enough power. He gulps down a few breaths, then tilts his head up so rain loosens and slides some of the mud down his face.

It’s slimy, but it’s better than thinking about his lungs.

“We gotta go,” he says.

Jake looks at him, and his eyes go a little glossy. Ryan grabs him by the face, shakes him a little. “Stay with me, buddy. We’re gonna be fine. It’s cool, dude, just…” They have almost no food left in the backpack. The Nature Valley bars are already gone, but Ryan unzips it and yanks a half-empty bag of beef jerky free.

He pulls out what’s left and shoves it Jake. “Eat this,” he says, begs, really.

Jake stares at it, then he meets Ryan’s eyes, and there’s this sadness in them, and Ryan feels like he’s staring into the mouth of a gun. “Please,” he tries again.

Jake takes it, goes to eat some, but then he sways and nearly falls. Ryan jumps first, catches him by the shoulders, then the waist when Jake’s feet slide and give.

“I can’t, Ryan,” Jake coughs, and there’s something weird on his lips, black like coffee grounds, but it’s the rain. It’s just the rain.

“Yes you can. Come on, Jake, there’s…” He peers into the distance, and he thinks, unless he’s hallucinating, that he sees a house, or a cabin, something—definitely something. “There’s something up there. We can rest.”

That groan sounds again, and panic licks up Ryan’s spine. “Jake.”

“Just go,” Jake croaks. “Ryan, I’m…”

“No!” Ryan cuts him off before he can finish. “No, you’re not. You’re _fine_.”

Rustling shifts the trees over the sound of the rain, and the growls get closer, and Ryan’s shaking so hard he doesn’t know if he’s shivering or losing his mind. “Jake!” He tugs at Jake, tries to get him up. But he’s not moving.

Fine. He grabs Jake, pushes him over his shoulder as gently as he can, but it’s so much. The backpack, Jake, the rain, he feels like it’s a thousand pounds. He stumbles forward, legs burning, eyes blurring. If he can’t do this, then they’re both going to die because he isn’t leaving Jake here.

He gets a little bit of a rhythm, puts some distance between him and the trees. And yeah, okay, there’s definitely a cabin. But he can’t quite measure the distance. Maybe a mile? More than that? Jesus, he’s just not going to think about it because he’s going to pass out.

He makes it a little further, but his foot catches a root, and the whole world flips and disappears, like it’s turned upside down and dropped him. Then his shoulder and cheek slam into an absolutely freezing puddle, but he splashes up and away from it, searching wildly, until he finds Jake on the ground nearby. And the backpack.

He scrambles to Jake, checks to make sure his eyes are still open, they are but, god they’re… no. Nope. He goes to grab Jake again, but Jake stops him. Shoves him back. “Ryan, stop!” Jake says. “Just go, they’re… they’re gonna… just go, dude.”

“No,” Ryan says. “No, I’m… I’m not gonna leave you.” His voice splatters like the rain, and he takes a shaking breath to bring it back into his chest. “We can do this.”

We, because Ryan knows he can’t do this alone. He thinks about the half-detached jaw of his mother, his father slamming against the bathroom door so many times his arm falls off. Trying to get to Ryan, to kill Ryan. His stomach churns, lurches, and he shakes his head.

That can’t happen to Jake. It can’t. Ryan promised he’d protect him. He cannot lose his little brother. He can’t.

“Jake…” he whimpers.

But the trees are shifting. He can see the silhouettes between them, lumbering, and the groans are so loud they’re seeping around them like smog. Ryan glances back to the house, then to the backpack in the puddle, to Jake.

“I’m gonna…” He gasps a little. “I’m gonna see if I can find someone.”

They haven’t seen anyone for miles. They haven’t seen anyone in days, but he’s so sure someone’s in that cabin. Someone that can help them, help Jake. If he runs, if he sprints, he can make it back before they reach Jake.

If no one’s there, then maybe there’s supplies, weapons. He’ll fight them off. He won’t leave his brother. “Here, I’ll be back,” he says, taking air into his lungs like water in a desert. “I’m leaving the stuff with you.”

“Ryan, you can’t…”

“I can, because I’m coming back.” He grabs the backpack, drags and drops it in front of Jake. “There’s food in there. Eat it.”

“Ryan,” Jake croaks.

But Ryan doesn’t have time to argue, because every second he wastes with Jake is another he doesn’t have to save him. “I’ll be back.”

He throws himself forward, towards that cabin, so the rain and the coming darkness fade to nothing. So that the world fades to whispers of gray, gone, except a single point. One thing. He has to do one thing.

Save his brother.

And that’s what he’s going to do, no matter how angry his legs and his lungs are. Someone’s got to be there, he thinks. Because if they aren’t, then he’s just damned Jake. And himself. Fuck, no. No, he won’t think about it.

He won’t think about his mom, not really his mom, just this graceless, sightless thing. He won’t. He won’t, he won’t, he won’t.

He runs, so long and so fast, that his lungs have turned to ash in his chest, but he doesn’t care. He all but slams into the door—no, he does slam into it. It hurts, but he draws back. Taking in nothing, but this door, this thing. He checks the handle once, it’s locked, so he bangs as hard as he can.

“Hello? _Please_ , I need help!”

~

His fingers are gently sliding and tugging over this red string. It’s a rope really — that soft, most-definitely-synthetic fibre rope. He’s been untangling it for a while now, because it got all tangled up in his bag, but it was great to find it really. He’s sort of proud of himself. It doesn’t seem like it’s frayed anywhere, and it’s such a vibrant red colour that he’s shocked that no one spotted it before him, and snagged it for their own. Of course, he’s not exactly sure _what_ he’s gonna use it for, but he’s learned pretty quickly that almost nothing is useless. Not anymore.

His fingers still suddenly, and he’s sitting there on the weird little makeshift bed with the rope suspended between his hands in front of him like some ridiculous solitary version of cats cradle, because he thinks he hears something outside. He’s listening hard, staring ahead at nothing really, because he’s boarded all the lower windows up. The only natural light comes in from the window upstairs.

Maybe it’s just the rain, he thinks. He thinks he even gets the full thought out before something slams into the door with _force_ and Shane’s whole body tightens, but he’s already rolling off the bed to his feet, shaking the rope from his fingers to lie on the bedsheets, and he’s reaching for the long metal pipe he keeps within an arms length at all times. These days.

He grips it tightly, and he’s already scared enough that his palms makes the metal slick. Someone— some _one_ is at the door, because they’re talking, okay, sort of screaming, begging — but they’re making fucking words, and Shane’s miles from nowhere and what the _fuck_?

“What the fuck?” he whispers, adjusting his grip on the pipe from the metal to the place he’s wrapped electrical tape around and around the end where it’s a little easier to keep his grip. For a moment he waits, not sure— because this could be a trick, right? What if he opens the door to help and they just blow his head off and take all his shit? Shane feels angry just thinking about that. He wonders if he could kill a person with this pipe, and if it would be different from killing what he’s been killing. Airquotes: ’Killing.’

Fuck— God damn him, he can’t just… _leave_ someone that sounds like that his very own door, and they’re going to attract unwanted attention if they don’t _shut up._ Shane wets his lips and slowly, too slowly, he goes to the door without a sound and pulls it open, stepping back quickly from the outside, from the rain, the chill air, and the person behind it, metal pipe in hand.

~

Ryan is banging, banging banging banging, maybe yelling too. He isn’t completely sure. He throws his head over his shoulder a couple times, squinting, like he can see Jake through the golf ball sized rain drops still falling. That’s what he’s doing when the door swings open, so his next attempt hits air and he whirls.

Fear explodes across his temple and coils him all in knots. He looks, and it’s honestly terrifying, because he has to look, up, up, up, to try and even find this person. They’re so tall, and Ryan’s just forgotten what height is apparently, so he actually stumbles, _scrambles_ , back into the rain and mud.

He’s glad too because this guy has a weird pipe in his hand, and he looks, well, not pissed, but certainly not pleased. Except Ryan nearly falls, and then he’s clambering for words because Jake is _waiting_ on him. Jake is depending on him.

He thinks he should start with an introduction, make this guy more likely to help, but when he opens his mouth it’s just, “Please—please, my brother…” And all his need for breath rockets through his throat so his words come out like little breath explosions. “My—my… my brother’s hurt, and there’s…” He gestures back to this ridiculous field he just ran, using it as a chance to rake air into his lungs.

He’s already forgotten how tall this guy is when he looks back, because he’s staring at his torso, so he looks up again. “You have to help me get my brother. There’s… those… they—they chased us and…” He’s losing confidence. Maybe he’s forgotten how to communicate with people who aren’t Jake. “Please help him. I have to help him. He’s my little brother, _please_.”

~

Shane’s eyes are flickering over him so fast, checking for blood — bleeding — checking for weapons but he doesn’t see anything serious, and he’s scanning the growing dark behind him and it takes a second to start registering the words: _He’s my little brother._

And maybe he lets it get to him. He shouldn’t, but maybe he does. “Where?” he asks in this toneless voice that isn’t his own, because he can’t see anything. The day’s dark anyway, it’s been pouring rain since early this morning. After night falls, there’s almost no fucking hope out there, and if he’s going anywhere, they’re running out of time and… he still doesn’t trust this. Not completely. And he hates it. He hates that he has re-wire his brain this way because none of it’s like he thought it would be. He never thought it _would_ be at all.

~

“Where?”

The guy says it like he’s taking Ryan’s order at McDonalds, and damn it, now Ryan’s starving again. But, whatever, weird or not, he seems like he’s going to help. “He’s out…” Ryan throws his arm, still breathy, but starting to get himself together, in the direction of Jake. He can make out the gray dot he _thinks_ is Jake. “He’s… can you come with me?” He’s already a ways from the door because never closed the gap again after he stumbled.

“He’s this way… it’s, like, a mile, or two.” He has no idea how far he ran. He wishes he did, because this guy looks about twelve seconds from just sighing straight out of existence. He takes a few steps, watching to make sure pipe-guy follows. Maybe he should ask for a weapon, but he’s not sure how to read this dude, and asking for his stuff seems like a bad place to start.

~

Shane flexes his fingers on the pipe. He doesn’t want to do this. He has so many questions, but asking them will only take more time. This guy’s already backing up, already ready to start running again, and Shane half-wonders how he can, since he seems so out of breath already. But maybe if it was his brother—

“Jesus… Christ,” Shane whispers to himself, and then disappears from the doorway. If it is a trick, he’s not leaving his bag here. He grabs it from underneath the bed and slings it over his shoulder. It’s going to slow him down, but not by much. He’s been careful of that. And then he’s stepping out into that frigid fucking rain, pulling the cabin door shut tight behind him. “I think we’d better make this fast,” he says, casting an eye towards the horizon, then back at this man, and Shane thinks he looks sort of out of place here, and he can’t put a finger on why.

~

Ryan tenses, takes a few steps back, already half forming another explanation—wondering why the guy’s gone, but then he shows back up with a bag on his shoulder. Ryan has no idea why he would possibly need that. His stuff is going to get _soaked_ , and it’s not important.

What’s important is Jake.

“Okay, yeah, yeah. Yeah.” He watches the guy for a moment. He’s really curious how he’s going to run with so much limb. He’s so gangly. It’s strange, but Ryan can’t think about it. He bounces on his toes. The rain, the cold of it, bears down on him a little. “Follow me, and… if you… if it’s too fast just… throw something at me or something. I don’t know. C’mon!”

He whirls and takes off. The rain slices across his face like needles, just like before, but his heart’s beating loud enough to drown it out. The way mud grabs at his boots like hands. The way his lungs burn even deeper than his legs. The way panic is rising in him like high tide.

He’s got to get back to Jake. Because he thinks he hears the low growl of those things again, and all he can feel, see, taste, is the distance between him and his little brother.

~

It’s a lot. It’s a lot all at once, the way this guy talks, the weird shit he says. Shane probably makes a face, some expression of confusion, but he just follows him, as fast as he can. And _fuck_ he’s fast, but Shane keeps up — mostly, somehow — both of them stumbling and sliding through the muck. The metal pipe doesn’t help. It’s heavy and awkward, but he needs it. Maybe it’s a crutch, but he needs it. It’s kept him safe so far.

He _definitely_ hears them now, but they’re not— they’re not loud enough yet. He hears them, so he’s fucking terrified, but he also knows what they sound like when they’re too close. They’re not too close yet.

He can see shape of a person now: prone, small, God he looks so small there, so vulnerable and it twists something in Shane.

Shane wants to reach out and grab the shoulder of this stranger he’s stupidly followed out here in this apparent wave of misguided sentimentality, so that he can tell him to be as quiet as he can, to try and regulate his breathing, make it softer— and suddenly the little cuts and scratches on his face that Shane thought nothing of in the relative safety of his own cabin are A Big Deal out here and Shane’s cursing at himself in his head. And he can’t reach him either, he’s too fast. Shane does his best to regulate his own breath and wonders what the fuck he’s doing.

If he… if anything happens, he can’t play the hero. He can’t. He won’t. He’ll have to leave them both.

~

Ryan isn’t really paying attention. He’s focused on getting to Jake, but it’s weird, a little, that he can’t hear the guy behind him at all. He can’t risk turning and making sure he’s still there. That would mean slowing down, and he can’t do that right now. But he is starting to wonder.

Then Jake comes into view, and okay, okay, he’s definitely alive. The backpack is still there. None of those things. Just Jake, and Ryan can’t look farther than that. He can’t think about the things probably dotting the gross, gray horizon. He’s just running, pumping his arms and trying his best to keep himself from calling out to Jake. He knows that’s not smart, but he just wants to see him move. Meet his eyes.

So Jake will know he didn’t leave him. So Ryan will know Jake is… still okay. Then, he’s there, and instead of stopping like a normal person he brakes too fast so his legs slip and he falls, slides through the mud and grabs Jake’s shoulder as he rises to his knees.

“Hey, hey buddy. Hey.”

Jake makes a sort of half noise, but it’s not a word. Jake looks at him, but isn’t quite looking, and then he centers and shakes his head. “Ryan?” Like he forgot Ryan left.

Blood roars through Ryan, and he feels like he’s back in this car crash he had when he was seventeen. The shattering, the jerk of his neck, the seatbelt burned across his chest. Again and again and again. Crash, crash, crash. He closes his eyes, trying to push it back.

 _It’s fine_ , Ryan thinks, even as he shakes. _It’s fine, it’s fine, it’s fine._

“Hey, I…” Ryan glances up at this strange, tall person he’s brought with him. “I found someone… I think… I found somewhere we can go, for a second, just… so you can rest.” He says it like he’s asking, because he knows, knows this guy is reluctant. Can feel it like he feels the rain. It’s nearly as abrasive.

But he can’t worry about it. He meets Jake’s eyes, then looks over his shoulder, sees what he thinks might be a shambling figure. Maybe not, maybe it’s just shadows and rain.

“Ryan…” Jake says again. He doesn’t look anywhere but at Ryan.

_It’s fine. It’s fine._

Then Ryan jerks his head back up to Pipe-Guy, which Ryan is going to call him until (or if) he names himself. “Can you help me carry him?” And because he’s afraid, afraid of this guy walking away, afraid of losing Jake, afraid of opening his eyes and _seeing_ , he says, “Please?”

~

Shane thinks of a thousand things to say, and at least nine hundred of them are sarcastic, but he’s breathing too hard and his chest hurts, and this guy, this kid— fuck, he looks like just a kid— he looks rough, but Shane can’t really see that well in the gloaming. “Okay,” he says, instead of all of it, and then he’s crouching on the ground with them both, knuckles tight around the pipe sinking into the wet earth. “Hurry up. And shut up.” He scans the tree line. Something moves jaggedly, too close, and Shane’s stomach moves jaggedly with it. He reaches out to this guy’s kid brother and doesn’t know where to put his hands. He just sort of touches his arm, once, twice, awkward and uncertain. “Want to just— grab his legs?” he asks, softly. He knows already he’s too tall to support this kid between them. In a practised move, he gets both arms through the straps of his bag and slides the pipe through the bottom so it’s sort of wedged there, between the pack and the small of his back. He looks up and meets the other man’s eyes.

~

Ryan is staring at Jake, staring at the dark stain on his side. He really can’t make it out in the rain, but he knows what’s under there. He made Jake change into a hoodie to cover it, out of the shirt they—that he got hit through, but Ryan’s terrified. Terrified what’s under there now. And he’s dragging this new guy into it, when he doesn’t… he hasn’t looked in…

No. It’s okay.

He didn’t even realize Pipe-Guy was talking to him, but now he’s moving and he’s grabbing Jake. Ryan starts. “What’re you—oh.” His brain catches up, like it fell off the train and Ryan had to stop everything so it could catch up. “Okay, ye—yeah.” Then, belatedly, “Thank you.” Because he has manners.

He grabs the backpack, still in the mud, and throws it over his shoulders, and dear _god_ , it’s heavy. He moves to the other side of Jake and grabs his ankles, whispering as his brother meets his eyes with a kind of horror.

“It’s okay. It’s okay, Jake. We’re gonna get you help, okay? We’re gonna get you some help.”

But the fear, it looks off. It lodges itself in Ryan’s throat as he glances up at Pipe-Guy who’s put his pipe away, and suddenly, the rain isn’t cold anymore. There’s just sweat and heat and fear on his skin.

~

Shane moves, with a little more purpose now, and hooks his arms beneath this kid’s armpits and looks up at his brother — was it Ryan? — Ryan, then, and whispers: “Okay? Ready? Three, two—” Hup, his brain goes, as they both struggling to their feet. It’s too loud. The mud sucks at his boots, at Jake’s clothes. Something snarls. Shane wants to throw up, to run. One is significantly more useful than the other, but unfortunately he can’t do either of them, because he’s got to get this fucking kid to safety and suddenly his cabin seems very far away. The kid’s head lolls back alarmingly and he’s fucking out, Shane thinks, and that makes it worse somehow. Makes everything worse.

~

They get Jake up, but they’re both stumbling. It’s so bad. It’s so awkward. This guy is so much taller than him. Ryan is so clumsy, he keeps slipping, sinking. He’s trying to keep his eyes on Jake, to keep him talking, but Jake isn’t responding to anything, and then he’s just _out_. Jake just drops, and Ryan freaks out. Loses it. Jake jerks, which just makes all the awkward walking worse.

“Jake!” he says.

Nothing happens, and they go a little further. They’re about halfway there, Ryan thinks, but then Jake makes this _sound_. This awful, terrible sound. Ryan’s eyes go wide, and his brain just shuts off. He doesn’t let go of Jake, but he hears it. It echoes in his brain. He knows that sound.

Jake twitches, just a little, and Ryan can’t even bring himself to look at anything but Jake’s face. His mind won’t accept it. It keeps refusing, on a loop, like a CD with a scratch.

_Please, no._

He can’t do this again. He’d rather just turn himself. He’d rather anything, anything than this. He can’t… he can’t do it. He feels his edges unravelling.

Then there’s another sound, and Ryan’s mouth is dry as bone.

~

“Did he—” Shane begins, but he’s so— he doesn’t actually know if he even said it out loud. Even if he did, he may as well not have because this guy— Ryan — he’s not responding. He’s just looking at his brother with eyes as wide as fucking saucers and then— then there’s another sound, and _Okay, that’s it— that’s enough._ Shane thinks, and he’s already let go.

He drops Jake, drops his arms, moves back as his upper body just falls to the earth, the mud.

Fuck, _fuck_ , Shane wishes that sound came from somewhere else, but it didn’t. Something lurches in his stomach until he wants to retch. He backs up, up, reaching back for the reassuring cold wet metal of the pipe.

~

The guy drops Jake. And Ryan’s pissed, furious even. Because this dude dropped his brother. His baby brother. But he can’t bring himself to say anything. He just holds Jake’s ankles, shakes, trembles beneath everything that’s happening.

Ryan almost steps forward, but then Jake is up. He’s up, fast, like he hasn’t moved in days. And he lunges at Ryan, just like… just like… Ryan stumbles back, but he doesn’t have the energy to move much because all that’s in his head is _just like Mom_.

Jake’s arms lock around Ryan’s forearms, and Ryan stumbles, and this weird, keening noise comes out of his throat. And Ryan thinks, stupidly, it sounds like a zombie—he could be a zombie. It’d be easier. But he’s choking. “Jake,” he says. “Jake, please.”

Jake isn’t listening. His eyes are gone, clouded. He grabs either side of Ryan’s arms—it burns, because it’s tight, angry, and Ryan isn’t fast enough. Jake slams him to the ground and his back almost snaps on the backpack. He cries out a little, louder than he should, maybe. Then, he looks at Jake. Jake, it has to still be Jake.

“Please, _please_ don’t do this.” He holds Jake at arms’ length, shoving, but his arms are quivering. Quivering in this weak, terrible way. “Please, Jake! Look at me. Jake!”

~

It’s too loud, they’re all being too loud, and Shane’s frozen. He can’t do anything but watch. It feels like it takes an age before he can move again, but then his mind catches up and he realizes he’s already moving.

It’s like a flash of fast-forward motion. He’s already pulled that pipe out from the straps of his bag, he’s already dragged the reddish bandana from around his neck up over his mouth and nose because he still doesn’t know for sure how this stuff spreads, but he thinks he has a pretty good idea. He taps right back into his brain as he kicks. He’s never been good at sports. Like ever. But there’s some speed and strength behind that movement, mostly adrenaline, and he catches Jake in the chest hard enough to get him off of Ryan. Shane stumbles, slides in the mud, and almost goes down but manages to catch himself.

~

The weight’s just gone. Jake is gone, everything is gone, and his brain crumples inwards like a tarp filled with too much rain. He gasps, pulls up, and he sees this guy with that pipe. Aimed at Jake. At _Jake_. His brother. His friend. His…

“No!” He slips in the mud. It takes too long, because he knows this guy is going to swing again. And he has to protect Jake. He has to. He leaps, lunges up and at the pipe, and he catches his arm. Throws himself into it so he can’t swing again. “Stop! Stop, don’t hurt him! Stop it!”

Jake is getting back up, though, and his eyes are still clouded, and he’s coming towards them. Even as Ryan holds this guy’s arm with literally everything in him, and his muscles strain with desperation. “Jake!” He meets Jake’s eyes, or tries, but he can’t. There’s nothing there. “Jake!” And it claws out of his chest like one of them.

~

 

He’s strong. Like _really_ fucking strong, for such a little guy and Shane can’t quite catch his breath. They both slide in the mud, and Shane’s struggling to get his arm free, and it’s fucking stupid because his brother— no, not his brother anymore — is coming at them and only the mud’s slowing him down and Shane thinks _I am not going to fucking die like this._

He twists, uses his free hand to catch Ryan in the throat in one fast swing. He sort of miscalculates, because it’s his left, and he clips his jaw before he digs his fingers into the soft place beneath. He’s fighting dirty, and he really doesn’t give a fuck. He wishes so much that he stayed in his shelter. He wishes it _so fucking much._

~

Ryan jerks, realizes this guy’s got a hold on his throat. “Stop,” he chokes. “Stop… he’s my… he’s…” Ryan kicks, kicks at the four thousand feet of legs he’s got to work with. Jake is advancing, and he lunges, and Ryan draws both of them back so he misses, just this time. Just…

Tears burn at his eyes, and his vision blurs. There’s got to be something he can do. He can’t lose Jake. He can’t breathe around the idea of a world without Jake, without his little brother. The hand is still on his throat, and he can’t breathe, so his grip is slipping. His fingers, everything. There’s so much mud, so much water.

“Just go. Just fucking go!” He changes course, shoves Pipe-Guy backwards so he’s between him and Jake. That pipe and Jake. “Don’t kill him, just leave!” His vision is definitely blurring, but Ryan decides it’s the rain as he whirls back around, stares at Jake, who’s coming towards him. Who’s going to kill him.

He’s going to…

Shit.

~

Shane takes a step back, thinks _Okay_ , because here’s an out. Here’s an out… so why can’t he take it?

If he goes, he’ll live. He’ll survive the night at least. Probably.

If he goes, this guy — Ryan — most definitely won’t.

And something in Shane is _so goddamn sick_ of death in a way that he never understood before. Death used to make him sad, maybe it disturbed him a little. Maybe he had a nice healthy relationship to death in an average, All-American, normal guy kind of way a year ago, but it’s different now, everything is, and he’s never really felt it this viscerally before. It’s very fucking real and it’s outside of his own head — outside of his own past horrifically terrifying near-death experiences of late. And it’s about to play out right in front of him…

And he can’t— he can’t watch, or listen to, or even imagine it happening again, right now. He can’t do it. And that’s his decision. And it’s a better one.

It takes two steps. He doesn’t quite break into a run, but he’s at Ryan’s side, all of a sudden, and there’s some serious momentum behind it as he swings his pipe, two-handed, throwing all of his weight into that sweeping arc. It connects with the side of Jake’s— no— this _thing’s_ head, and he— it, goes down. Shane thinks it’s done, but he can’t tell. He raises the pipe to swing it down again because he’s seen horror movies — he’s watched a lot of them — and so he always double-checks.

~

Ryan can’t react. He doesn’t have time. This guy is just there, and he’s got his damn pipe, and he’s swinging. He swings faster than Ryan can stop him. He screams, or he tries to, as the pipe connects with Jake’s head. And Ryan’s vision is blurring further, again, because he sees the blood, sees the spray, and he knows there’s no way to come back from it.

Jake’s gone.

“No!” And Ryan thinks he’s answering himself. He tries to move, and he jerks between them, on his knees again, hands out, trying to stop this guy from swinging the pipe again. Trying to stop him, this pipe, from hitting Jake again. To stop him from hitting this child he has watched grow up, this kid he’s talked through puberty, and girls, and everything.

He can’t. This last little bit of his life, this last little bit of him, he can’t let it go. His little _brother_. He can’t. He knows, in every part of him, that he should get out of the way, let this guy finish it with his fucking pipe. So he doesn’t have to, like he had to with his mom, or his dad, or… but this is Jake. This is the kid he watched grow up, the one who’d delighted him when he finally, _finally_ said his name. Ryan. The one who sat across from him while they whispered about how unfair their parents were, who he argued with over dishes and chores and the yard. The kid he’s gone to Disneyland with, the one that didn’t want to get on the rides unless Ryan sat beside him. The one he fought over the remote with.

He turns, stares at Jake, not Jake, this thing that’s gone… his brother, like he’s looking into a fucking casket. Jake’s not moving, and Ryan’s thinking he may already be gone. He’s already gone.

But Ryan promised, promised he’d protect him. Save him from this.

He just wants Jake to get up and call him a name, or tell him he’s dumb, or talk about social media. He just wants anything, anything from what it was before. Before they ran. Or before just now. Jake standing behind him at a store, laughing, in spite of everything, because Ryan’s so mad he can’t just find a candy bar that isn’t fucked up.

Jake saying he’s over-stressing about taking from a store when no one’s around. Jake trying to catch peanuts in his mouth because it’s all they have. Jake trying so hard to make the world not suck. And now, now the world just…

Ryan gasps, shakes, as he tries to get to his feet. But he can’t do it.

He can’t do anything.

He turns, looks at Jake, looks at the cracks under his skin. This shit that he let happen to Jake, because he couldn’t get himself between that thing and him. Because he was too busy sleeping. He didn’t even see it, the fucking… he never even saw it until Jake screamed.

“I don’t…”

 ~

Shane doesn’t swing again. He doesn’t need to, and he fights down the sick feeling because this time— this time the thing he hit felt a lot more human than it should, but he knows it’s just projected. It’s not a person, it’s not a person, it isn’t. It isn’t it isn’t it isn’t a person, and Shane’s not a killer. And then Shane’s down on his knees in the soft, wet earth and it feels like it just wants to swallow him up, swallow them all up, swallow them both — there’s just the two of them now. _I’m sorry_ , he thinks, but he doesn’t even know who he’s sorry to or what he’s sorry for. He’s sorry for the whole fucking world, maybe. He reaches out like he’s going to actually touch Ryan, but then he doesn’t. “Get up. Come up, get up.” He’s shaking. He only realizes because his voice shakes with it.

~

Ryan can’t find anything left in him. There’s just nothing, just this screaming, wailing sound, like the wind is blowing through him and it’s just fucking hollow. Because Jake is gone. He’s completely gone, and Ryan can’t stop staring at him. And then this guy, this fucking person that killed his baby brother—even if some part of him, some tiny part, says he didn’t, says Ryan did that—is talking to him. Next to him. Ryan doesn’t know what he’s saying.

He can’t hear anything but this roaring, consuming sound. A keening winds its way up his throat, but he can’t even get it out because his teeth have locked into each other. His jaw is stiff enough to ache. He looks at the guy with his fucking murder pipe, and he’s blurry, and Ryan’s crying, and he knows it, on some level. He knows that he needs to do something, that those things will be here—soon, they’ll be here. They’ll kill him. Turn him into one of those things, like Jake, with the clouded eyes and the limbs that just _fall off_.

He knows this guy, this stranger, did so much for him, came out of that stupid cabin, to try and help Jake, but it didn’t matter because Jake’s dead. And his stupid pipe is what killed him. He tries so hard not to scream, but he feels so alone—so utterly by himself. Jake is gone. He’s _gone_. Everything Ryan had is gone. And he’s alone.

“You _killed_ him,” Ryan says, and it’s not right. It’s not, but he glares at this guy anyway because he’s here. It’s the only companionship he’s got anymore, but it feels so wrong, to let himself even begin to be with this guy without Jake. Because Ryan’s got nothing. He _is_ nothing. “You killed my brother! You—” He throws himself at this guy, this guy with this pipe, this guy that could crack his skull open with a well-places swing, but he slams a fist into his chest.

All he can manage is that, because his legs buckle, break under everything. Because he was only moving for Jake, and now Jake’s gone, so there’s nothing left. Ryan has nothing anymore. He’s just… rain and mud and ash. He hits his knees, presses the heel of his palms into his eyes. And he says nothing, because he doesn’t even think he has the energy for words anymore. He’s just cold and tired and, more than anything, alone.

~

It hurts damn, but he thinks, somewhere, _I deserved that_ , and it’s a destructive thought. He curls his fingers into the earth, dragging it under his fingernails. He’s not looking at the body because he can’t— he can’t deal with that. He’s just staring at Ryan.

He scans the tree-line again. He feels so fucking exposed in the middle of the field like this and he doesn’t know if he can outrun one of these things right now, he’s so tired… he’s shaking so hard. It’s like he’s needed another human to remind him what it is to feel things, and now it’s here and it’s the fucking worst, it’s so awful, and this guy— Ryan— he’s crying, and Shane…

Shane reaches up and pulls the bandana down, takes a breath of cold, wet air. “Listen, we have got to get out of here—” And then he wonders why he cares so much. Maybe it’s just because it’s another person. The first real live person he’s seen in _weeks_. And now he’s just— bashed his little brother’s head in— no, it’s not— it’s… anyway, he’s done that, and now he doesn’t know what to do. “Look— Ryan?” Something happens with that name as he says it. It feels— it feels forbidden in his mouth, or something. “We can’t stay here. They’re coming.”

~

Ryan’s gasping, drowning, like it’s not air but rain he’s inhaling. And this guy is still there, and Ryan just wants him gone. Because he doesn’t want to think about this. He doesn’t want to think that this guy killed his little brother. He doesn’t want to think that he brought this guy here, and that’s why Jake’s dead. He doesn’t want to think that he put this guy in danger, on some level, that he doesn’t… he didn’t…

He doesn’t think he can exist here, in this world, with its gray, freezing rain, and it’s groaning, and it’s broken windows and empty store aisles. He doesn’t think he can. But he doesn’t want—he doesn’t want to be like… he gasps again, because he can’t even think that. He does not have the right to not want something he let happen to his brother.

He would fucking deserve it.

All this anger, this anger that’s about him, about Jake, about anything other than this stupid asshole with the pipe—this guy who pulled himself out of his cabin for no reason, for Jake—comes boiling to the surface as he turns, streaked in tears, to the only other person here. Probably the last person he’ll ever see.

“Go,” he shouts it. “Just fucking leave me alone! Go back to your fucking cabin, with your fucking pipe, and your fucking…” He takes another breath, and it skips through him, this watery, bubbling thing. “Your…”

And there’s this moment, this agonizing, horrible moment, where Ryan thinks he wants to go with this guy. Because there’s something about him, in all his tall, awkward silence, that Ryan wants to burrow into. That makes Ryan not feel—alone.

That’s what pushes him over the edge. Because how _dare_ he, how dare he even think about being close to, being near the guy who bashed open Jake’s head. As if it wasn’t enough that he’s trying to move on, keep going, after he let Jake _die_ —but to want it with the person who… no, he can’t.

It’s empty, and so weak, as he says, “Fuck, get away from me.” But he says it, and he snarls. “Fuck _off_!” He sits there, quivering, freezing, as he crawls closer to Jake, strokes a thumb over his face, this pale—broken face, and then he collapses onto his chest with this body-breaking sob.

~

Shane drops his eyes as he draws back just a little. He stares at the ground between them like it’s going to give him some answers as to why this _shit_ has to happen. Why all of it had to happen in the first place. And he half-thinks that he might just reach out and haul this guy, this idiot, this broken man to his feet and pull him away from this fucking mess but then Ryan touches his brother’s face and something cracks in Shane and he can’t look away.

Ryan sort of crumples over his brother’s body and something rips through Shane, scraping at his very bones, and for a second, he wants to scream. This is what he gets for trying to do one good thing. This fucking world is going to tear every last one of them apart, it’s going to make monsters out of everyone before they even turn. And there’s nothing he can do about it.

So he gets up. He gets up because he’s not going to commit suicide which is what staying here means. He pulls himself to his full height and it takes forever. He’s shaking still. He feels lightheaded, but the rain’s so cold it keeps him awake. “You know where the cabin is,” he tells him, and his voice comes out soft and toneless.

It doesn’t matter. It won’t change anything.

Shane doesn’t head back there, anyway. He turns, eyes scanning, scanning, and then turns away. He leaves him there.

~

The guy leaves, at some point. He just leaves, and Ryan’s glad, because the pull—the temptation, of him, of what this guy is. Of that soft voice, and that… calm. Ryan wants it, craves it, so he’s glad when the guy finally fucks off. Because he really doesn’t need it. This weak part of him that thinks this guy can fix anything, that he can stop anything Ryan has failed to do.

No one can stop that.

He cries, clinging to Jake for longer than he should, because those growls are getting closer, and he thinks—if nothing else—he can’t let them have Jake’s body. He won’t let his brother’s corpse be fucking eaten by those things. He won’t.

It’s a while, a long time, before he finally tugs himself away from Jake. His brother still hasn’t moved. He’s gone. He’s freezing, colder than Ryan, and Ryan is… he’s so cold he’s numb with it. Cracks run through his hands like he’s a chipping block of ice, but Jake… Jake’s cold in a way that only dead things are. Ryan wipes his eyes, looks around, along the tree line.

They took forever, he thinks, a little nastily. If he’d just kept going, if they hadn’t stopped, maybe they could’ve… but no, Jake still would’ve. Jake was still… but, that guy. Ryan brought him into it, and now he keeps thinking about him. About the soft way he said things, and about how he just… brought the world down a few notches. In this way Ryan’s been needing, wanting, since his parents…

But it’s over. The guy’s gone, and Ryan is fucking over it. He gets to his feet and looks around again. He needs… he needs to… god, he can’t even think it. It makes him wobbly, bites through him like he’s in a shark’s mouth. He has to…

…bury him.

Bury Jake.

He doesn’t have a shovel, and going back to that stupid cabin, Pipe-Guy will probably be there, and he just doesn’t want to deal with it. He can’t deal with it. The growling is getting worse, a lot worse, and he’s gotta… okay, he’s got to do something. He can’t just sit here like a pathetic idiot. Even though that’s exactly how he feels.

He can’t.

He’s failed Jake enough. He’s not going to fail him in this. He’s got nothing in the backpack to help him, and it’s raining. How’s he going to do this? He doesn’t know why, or what he’s thinking about, but he starts clawing at the ground. There’s this little indentation nearby, and maybe he can use it. He drags his fingernails through the mud. They’re numb, he realizes, because feeling is slowly coming back to him, now that his brain isn’t consumed with Jake.

Or, well, it is, but there’s not much he’s working towards. Jake’s just… gone, and he’s trying to make this stupid earth do what he needs it to, but every time he makes progress, shit just falls and pools in the little bit of hole that he’s dug. He glances back at Jake, who hasn’t moved, who’s just… still.

Okay, not here, not now. That’s fine. He can wait. He’ll just… wait.

He brings a gasp of air into his lungs and eases over to Jake. He hooks his arms under Jake’s and pulls him, further away from the trees, from the things moving beyond them. Not to the cabin, but, somewhere. He just needs… to get further away. So Jake’s safe. That’s what he needs.

He drags him, doesn’t say anything for a while, but he doesn’t know if he’s got anything else in him. “I’m sorry, dude,” Ryan says. “I just…” He’s absolutely shivering at this point, because it is fucking freezing, and he almost thinks the cabin would be worth dealing with Pipe-Guy, but no. “Fuck that…” He takes a breath. “Fuck that guy, right?” He nods. “Yeah, fuck that guy… he’s… a jerk.”

He doesn’t know how far he goes. He just drags Jake, through the mud, through the rain, and he takes breaks. Only a couple, but he definitely takes them. The growling dies down, and finally, he finds another outcropping of trees to set Jake down in. The stupid cabin is definitely still in view, and it’s awful. Ryan almost keeps going because of that, but he can’t.

He sits down next to Jake, drops his head into his hands. He’s going to pass out. God, it’s been… it’s been a lot of hours since he slept. A lot. They’d tried sleeping in one of the abandoned apartments in the last town, but then this zombie, this little… girl… zombie had come out of the closet, and yeah… that hadn’t worked.

They’ve seen so many of these things. Everywhere. So, in the woods, with nothing to protect them, neither of them slept well. Ryan’s eyes settle on Jake. He’s sleeping now, Ryan hopes, hopes he didn’t screw up so fundamentally that letting Jake… turn, letting this happen to him, has robbed him of some… some peace in the afterlife.

The rain lets up, and maybe he can do it here, now. He can bury Jake before he… draws anything. Ryan can keep him safe. He kicks at a patch of ground, still sloshed with mud, but the rain’s slowed. He can do this.

“Don’t worry, I’m not gonna…” He takes a breath, and his voice comes out all wrong. “I’m not gonna leave you, I just need… I’ve just…” And he hates himself, because there was a shovel back at the hardware store they passed. He saw one, but he just thought, there was no way he’d need a shovel, and he didn’t have the space in his backpack. What a fucking idiot.

He starts pulling at the mud. It sticks beneath his fingernails and stings. It bites and nips, but his hands are going completely numb, so he stops feeling it. The rain starts again, and lets up, but he’s got something going… kinda. Maybe. Jake isn’t going to fit in this, though, and he’s not going to half-ass it.

He throws another handful of mud away from him, and he slams himself over the edge of the tiny hole he’s managed to dig. He presses his hands into the ground, takes gasping breaths, and wow, somehow he tired himself out again. He’s a little sick, maybe dizzy. And it’s definitely night, but it’s raining so there’s not much difference anyway.

Okay, he thinks. Just a few seconds. That’s all.

Not long, but he can’t keep moving. He draws his legs to him, crosses them, and sets his head back in his hands. He’s not seeing straight, but the rain should keep him from falling asleep—so if he can just close his eyes for a second…

There’s this visceral growl, and it’s close—it’s so fucking close. He jolts, then freezes, trembles a little, and looks up, and it’s there—it’s right there, creeping and swaying towards Jake. Because he’s an easy, because he’s…

Oh, fuck no. No.

He fell asleep. He fucking fell asleep, because the light’s changed, and the temperature’s even colder, and fuck. What an idiot. What an absolute fucking idiot.

He jumps up, darts towards it—because this isn’t happening to Jake again, and grabs the backpack. He slings it with every bit of strength he’s got in his body and it catches this thing’s head so it goes crashing to the ground. “Stay the fuck away… from my brother,” he says, and he doesn’t recognize his voice.

His teeth are chattering, but then he sees—and there’s, oh shit, there’s more of them. There’s too many of them. Four, five, seven—too many. They’ve come out of the trees, and they’re creeping in like a semi circle. He clings to the straps of his backpack, keeps himself in front of Jake. Some selfish, awful part of him says, run, but he won’t.

He can’t leave Jake, so he takes a step back, measures them with shaking breaths as they advance, sorta slow, sorta disoriented, but plenty enough to kill him. One of them lunges, and Ryan slams the backpack forward—into its face, but another comes towards him at the same time, so he stumbles back and cries out as he falls, still clinging to the backpack, but he’s on the ground. Scrambling, trying to get up, tripping over his fucking brother, and… fuck, fuck.

Shane’s under the trees again. Different trees — not the ones where Ryan and Jake broke onto the field, but the same woods. It’s almost too dark to see. He’s been trying to make his way as quietly as he can through the undergrowth because if he keeps heading straight he’ll come to the highway and just a mile or two up the road there’s another shelter. He hopes. He hopes no one else has taken it.

The ground starts to incline, and then the trees thin out, and end, and Shane’s scrambling up onto the highway, using his hands to pull himself up the steep embankment. He climbs over the guard rail and then he’s on the road. And it is empty, empty, empty.

The thought returns to him, unbidden, and Shane remembers Ryan and the way he’d sounded when the sob had finally broken from him and Shane grits his teeth and presses his hands against his eyes as something builds and builds in him until his own breath sounds like an echo of that noise. He gasps a little, then grinds out. “God— fuck,” and turns back, faces the woods in their infinite danger and darkness and thinks _I’ve gotta go back_.

Logic crowds in. That’s a death sentence, and he knows it. And anyway, maybe — maybe Ryan went into the cabin, right? It’s fucking cold out here, even though Shane’s been moving at a pretty good clip so he’s wet, but almost warm from exertion. The cold would have to get to Ryan. So… yeah. He probably went inside or something, eventually. He’s probably fucking… eating Shane’s food, and Shane wishes he could hate him for it. Shane tries to think of Ryan doing anything other than crying over his brother’s corpse.

 _Don’t, don’t do this_ , Shane thinks and he turns away from the woods and and just keeps walking. He walks at the very edge of the road so he can hop over the guard rail if he needs to. He avoids the gravel at the edge because it makes him too loud. He puts one foot in front of the other and keeps his head down and tries to think about how he’s going to have to spend the night in wet clothes, but it’s nothing, _nothing_ compared to the ache in his chest. It’s nothing compared to what that guy — Ryan — must be feeling.

And Shane wonders for the thousandth time…

_No._

The wind is stronger up here and it moans through the trees on either side of him and Shane thinks he hears something beneath it, but he can’t be sure. He stops, freezes, staring wide-eyed into the darkness across the road, head tilted forward, shoulders tight. The wind keeps blowing, and he wishes it wouldn’t because it’s roaring in his ears.

He thinks about how awful it would be to die with that horrible groaning, droning sound they make the last thing you hear.

He thinks about Ryan again, and the way his eyes filled with tears and the way he’d looked at Shane like — God, he was easy to read — he’d looked at him like maybe he didn’t want to hate him, but he had to. He’d looked so fucking lost. He’d looked like his whole world was just fucking shattered like his brother’s skull and, Shane thinks, it was. Shane thinks, _I did that, and then I_ left _him there._

He fucking can’t. The shelter is less than a mile from him now, but he fucking can’t. He straightens, slowly, takes a step back and his boot slides in the gravel on the shoulder of the road. There’s no sound, no movement from the opposite bank. So Shane turns, and he puts one muddied boot on the guard rail and steps over it. He slides down the embankment into the trees again and he’s walking fast… he’s making too much noise, but he can’t seem to slow down, suddenly.

He _left_ him. He left him broken like that. And suddenly Shane’s running and he doesn’t know why.

He clears the trees without incident, panting hard. His breath is misting in front of his face in the rain and his hair is soaked, streaming into his eyes. Will this rain ever let up?

And Ryan’s not where he left him. (He left him.) But neither is Jake. Fuck, _fuck_. Shane scans the field but it’s too dark now, it’s too cloudy — there’s not even starlight to guide him. So he makes a break for the cabin. They must have gone there. Right? Any sane person would.

Suddenly the ground falls out beneath him and he tumbles to the ground. There’s a lot of him and he goes down hard and angular, and the breath explodes from his lungs and he can’t get it back. Desperately, half-terrified, he rolls onto his back. There’s a fucking— there’s a hole in the ground, what the fuck? He’s just pushed himself to sitting, up to his wrists in muck and suddenly there’s a horrible gargling scream to his left. He still can’t breathe. He looks over and there’s something coming — running for him, all jagged and wrong. He can hear it breathing, rough and rhythmic — like a fucking hyena, like a rabid dog. Shane scrambles back and back and then somehow he’s on his feet and he swings the pipe as he draws in one rough breath and it connects with the thing’s shoulder. Shane stumbles, staggers. The air he finally pulls into his lungs clears his head and when he swings again he cries out, but he connects.

It’s a sickening sound, but it also means he’s gonna survive.

It’s a short-lived victory. There’s another sound, and he looks up and there’s another one coming, breaking away from a little pack in the trees, and there— “Shit—” Shane grits out, low and rough — there’s Ryan in the middle of it. He’s the only thing moving in a way that isn’t wrong. He’s the only right thing in the world and Shane— Shane needs to keep that.

He rushes forward swinging. He cracks the next one over the head and doesn’t even look back to see if it’s finished, he just needs to close the distance between himself and Ryan.

~

Ryan’s bringing in air too hard, or too fast, he’d never quite figured out what caused the burning. But it’s definitely burning, more than it was before. Panic batters across him harder than the rain, which is picking up again, because fuck him.

God, the sound. The sound is so bad, it’s bad when they’re far away, chasing, but it’s worse when they’re here. He jerks behind the bag as the closest one swings at him. He hears the fabric rip, and thinks, well, at least he doesn’t have to apologize to Jake for this. He’ll never have to apologize to Jake again.

He crawls back, squelching through the mud with his palms and fingers. He’s so tired of being soggy and gross, except now he’s just going to be a soggy and gross one of these _things_. He snarls and throws a kick. The thing’s bones are brittle, they’re always brittle—like Dad’s arm—so it cracks too easy and the thing topples. It slams hard enough that mud kicks up into Ryan’s eyes, and it mixes with the rain so it stings. He jerks, turns to try and wipe it, but god, it’s all mud on his hands. So he’s seeing nothing but blurred colors and smudges.

One of them is to his right, so he throws his arms wildly. He’s losing track of Jake—has already lost track of him. That’s what makes him panic, not the thing that presses a cold, gnarled hand onto his shoulder. He elbows back and up. If he could just get back to his feet, maybe things would suck less. Maybe he could figure this out.

He’s halfway there when one of them, the one he knocked down with the kick, latches onto his elbow. He kicks at its head, again and again. “Fuck off. Get the fuck off me.” It’s so weak, so loud, so much like a whine that Ryan hates himself for it. There’s another one behind him, so he writhes out of the grip on his leg, spins.

But he spins too fast. His ankle catches, rolls, and colors pop in his vision. His face slams into the mud again, and there’s a flash—not much, but a flash—where he thinks, _I should give up. This world doesn’t want me here._

But that pisses him off, because fuck that. Fuck every single bit of it. He slams his fist into the ground and grabs the backpack in time to stop a teeth-first lunge from the one on the ground. He stays behind it, because he knows there’s more—so many more.

And he’s shivering, and soaked, and holy shit this is too much. It’s way, way too much.

~

Shane’s not even aiming anymore. He’s never run right into a fucking hoard because that’s ridiculous. Only a complete fucking moron would do that.

And yet.

He catches one right in the teeth. A few go flying and it’s horrible. It’s horrible that it clamps right down on the pipe so hard, with it’s goddamn _mouth_ , that Shane _cannot_ pull it away. And it’s oozing black blood and spit all over it and Shane feels something grasp and miss twice at his side, at his shirt, and it’s that sheer terror that gives him the strength to wrench it free. He hasn’t pulled his bandana up and so when he swings again at the one clawing at him, he turns his face away instinctively. Something moves in his peripheral. He steps right over Jake’s body and that feels awful and wrong somehow, but then he’s got Ryan, pulling at his clothes, at his arms “Get up, get _up_!” They need to run, they need to— “Christ!” Shane lets Ryan go to swing at another one. It’s head sort of unhinges from its throat to dangle by the spinal column. Shane retches, can’t help it, and tastes bile, but at least it’s his own.

That’s one of the worst thoughts he’s ever had. Tears in his eyes, rain, he reaches for Ryan again, half-blind.

~

What the fuck?

Ryan isn’t sure if he says it out loud, but he thinks it. Several times. Just as his vision starts to clear, there’s this guy, just this… guy, yanking on his shirt, and for a second, just one, it reminds him of Jake. As a kid, tugging Ryan, begging him for toys or time or both. But it’s not, it’s fucking Pipe-Guy.

Ryan’s ankle is still gnawing at him, and he’s just about got his hand around a rock, or at least, a clump of mud hard enough to grip, but he’s trying to move with this guy, because Pipe-guy is freaking out. Well, of course he is, there’s—so then what is he doing here?

“Okay, dude, _okay_.” He’s stumbling, falling over himself like a newborn foal, and then dude’s letting go and clobbering—absolutely wrecking this thing with his pipe. It’s whole head just sorta _lolls_ in the most gruesome way, and it’s his fucking mother all over again.

Pipe-guy is retching, and it twists right up Ryan’s throat, bile and ash settling on his tongue. But the thing is still coming at them, and Ryan just wants to stop looking at it. Pipe-guy is struggling, maybe to see, and it’s not hard to tell, because he’s not moving much, but all of his limbs are hard to miss. For whatever reason, he grabs at Ryan.

Ryan swats his hand so their fingers tangle a little and Ryan uses it to propel himself forward, finally on his feet, and says, “It’s fine, it’s fine.” He doesn’t know why, because this guy seems to be one hundred percent better off than him, but it’s what he says to Jake, and… he doesn’t know.

When the thing goes to bite, and it’s all wrong because its head’s swinging like a pendulum, Ryan groans and slams the rock into the side of its head. Blackish blood spits and spews, splatters across Ryan’s arm. He turns his head away as the thing staggers, but he swings again. This time its head just buckles, and Ryan scampers back from the blood, covering his face, until his foot meets something hard and he trips, wind-mills his arms as he slips over it.

He’s bent at the waist, one hand in the mud when he looks, and it’s Jake. He’s lying so Ryan can see this red-black gore seeping from the back of his head, matting in his already-tangled hair.

“Jesus Christ. Jesus… _fuck_.”

He doesn’t know if it’s bile or tears in his throat, but he can’t get either of them out.

~

Shane is _not_ a fighter. He never has been. He isn’t one now — he isn’t one now even though he carries a weapon with him at all times. He isn’t one, even though the only way to fight back the bile, the urge to heave again until his insides burn, is to swing at another one of those things until the adrenaline forces the nausea out, and he blinks the tears in his eyes back. Where’s Ryan? He was talking a minute ago. Shane doesn’t have time to look. He scared— he’s scared now, because why isn’t Ryan fucking _helping_ him, and what if he got bit? Jesus Christ, what if he did, and Shane’s going to have to—

 _Stop stop stop_ he’s thinking. He thinks it in time to the three swings he beats into the head of another one, crawling on the ground. It’s easier than thinking it to the impossible, rapidfire beat of his heart. The skull gushes open like a melon, but the blood isn’t right — it’s slow and thick like molasses and Shane feels so sick. He looks away. Ryan’s there — Ryan’s there looking at his brother.

“Hey!” Shane cries out, narrowly dodging another one — maybe the last? He can’t tell, it’s so dark, it’s so rainy. “A little _help_ , man, c’mon!” He’s just hoping to snap him out of it at this point. His voice sounds quiet to him, even though he’s shouting, even beneath the relentless beating down of the rain.

~

“A little help, man, c’mon!”

Ryan’s head snaps up, across to this asshole. But at least he’s not looking at Jake anymore, and instead he’s watching this oaf of a person try and fight these things. It’s almost comical. He just… he doesn’t fit here, really. None of them do, but this guy… he’s soft around the edges in a way that even Jake wasn’t. A different kind of softness, maybe.

Or maybe that’s just aloofness.

Ryan slides and rummages through his soaked and scattered backpack until he finds the shoe he kept. It’s dumb, it cost so much money before money stopped mattering, and he has no idea why he’s held onto it. He doesn’t need it, so he grabs it and shouts, “hey!”

It responds, doesn’t really look, but turns towards the noise, and Ryan throws the shoe hard enough that the thing topples, a little bit comically, to the ground in front of Pipe-Guy, and he just hopes, prays, Pipe-Guy has enough sense to swing his damn pipe.

He’s still kinda limping, trying to get back over to this douche bag. God, what was it like when it wasn’t raining? Ryan doesn’t remember. He takes a step, and something hard, nasty, catches his bad ankle. He looks back, finds the same motherfucker—the one whose head is mostly just black goo and bits of bone. He feels a little faint.

It makes this god awful noise, all sloshy wet shriek, as it goes to bite him. He kicks at its head, trying to smash it, but his ankle is screaming at him—won’t let him kick hard enough, so he tries his other foot. It’s awkward, because he’s got to curl around the leg this thing’s holding. He hits harder, but he goes through the impact. His whole body twists, twists, until snap. White explodes through him, rattles him like his spine split in two.

He knows he screamed, screamed in this horrible, tearing way, but he doesn’t hear it. He just hits the ground, grabbing at his knee, cradling it to his chest, only he can’t because it’s killing him. And there’s still a noise coming out of him, and he might be crying, or just screaming, but it hurts. It hurts like nothing he’s ever felt.

 

~

Somehow that noise is so much worse than the wet, thudding noise of another brittle skull being broken open. It’s so much worse than the horrible noises that _they_ make when they scream. Shane doesn’t really understand how— how he possibly managed to lay waste to so many of these fucking things in the dark, in the cold-wet of the rain. He whacks at the last one, the one crawling for Ryan, like he’s playing golf, and he gets a whole lot of mud and wet grass in the swing. He doesn’t even hit it. He’d probably fucking suck at golf.

So he has to swing at it again, again, until it finally fucking stops, and then he hits it again for good measure, until they’re left… They’re just left, surrounded by dead. By _the_ dead. And Jake’s body. And Ryan is on the ground and Shane’s shaking and shaking and shaking. His fingers are curled so tightly around the pipe that as he does not think he will ever be able to let go. He can’t speak. He can’t ask the question that’s twisting like barbed wire into his lungs. God, it even hurts to breathe.

For a long moment, there’s silence, save the rain, and Ryan’s little sounds, and Shane’s ragged breathing until, finally, he musters up the courage to ask: “Did it bite you?” He’s scared to go nearer to him. He wonders if it would be kinder to just kill him now, if he was bitten, or if he should… maybe… get him warm first. Wrap him up in something, give him a fucking drink of water, tea, anything… And he doesn’t even know why he’s thinking that. If he’s bitten, he’s going to be gone anyway. Whatever Shane does won’t matter…

But Shane— damn him, he takes a step closer, crouching like he wants to make himself small, smaller, almost at his side. “Hey?”

~

Ryan doesn’t hear it, doesn’t hear anything, see anything, feel anything but his leg, and it feels like he’s got an axe through it. It’s just _blinding_. Taking up so much of his headspace that he has to creep around it, to seep himself through the cracks of it, just so he can interact.

Because, distantly, he knows—knows this guy is standing over him. Because, for whatever reason, he’s decided he’s going to help Ryan. And Ryan’s in too much pain to think about it right now, to think that this is the guy who technically, officially, ended his brother’s life. He just gasps, over and over, tries to look up at this guy, but the rain is falling in his eyes and, god, he can’t…

Ryan doesn’t know what the guy said, but he knows what he’s probably thinking, so he somehow gets out, “It didn’t—” He chokes a little, wheezes. “I don’t think it bit…” He’s just gasping, on words, on air, on pain. “I don’t think it bit me.” He looks around, finds everything else dead. But maybe it did bite him. Would anything else hurt this much?

Jake had screamed too.

~

Shane takes this shaking breath, and then lets himself fall to both knees in the mud. “Okay,” he says, and it comes out soft and almost reassuring. It would probably be reassuring if he wasn’t shivering so hard. He doesn’t know if it’s adrenaline or cold or exertion. He reaches out as if to touch him, move him. “We need to… we need to get inside, or— more are going to come—” he looks up as he says it, and he knows, he _knows_ he cannot deal with that all over again. He’s too tired, he so fucking tired. He can feel it beneath the jittering, shuddering tension in his limbs that’s telling him to get the fuck out of there.

“Okay, you gotta— sit up.” He doesn’t know what to do or how to do this. He sounds like he’s in so much pain and Shane’s stomach is clenched tight, like a fist. It hurts, but it’s nothing compared to this. He knows that. It sloshes through him white-hot, like the sight of someone else’s blood — that swooping, sick feeling. He tries to let go of the pipe. He was holding onto it so hard that the joints in his fingers scream in protest, and ache. He can’t get them straight right now, so he gives up trying, sort of shakes his hand out, then touches Ryan’s arm through his jacket. “You need help?”

~

Ryan inhales through his teeth, like a hiss. He’s trying to center his vision on Pipe-Guy, trying to refocus. Trying to pull away from this pain. But his teeth are chattering, from hurt, or from cold, well, his leg is definitely making it worse.

There’s a hand on his arm, and Ryan looks at it. Then looks at Pipe-Guy. Who no longer has a pipe. He looks like he’s going to startle and run into the trees. Which is wholeheartedly unfair because Ryan is clearly at the disadvantage here. Ryan squints through the rain, thinks, _you gotta get up, dude._

“No, no, it’s cool… just, my…” He moves like a broken puppet, all stiff motions and jerks. He twists onto his back, tries to sit up, but it bends his knee—and Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ. Pain lights through him like triple sevens at the casino. He hisses again, bites back the scream as his eyes water. It’s broken. It’s definitely broken.

He rocks back, head swimming. “I just… need a sec.” He pants, and then tension winds through him like a vine. This guy is going to leave. He’s already left once, and if he leaves—Ryan is dead. Ryan is dead, and Jake is going to get eaten by those things. Ryan needs this guy’s help. He can admit that. But he doesn’t know what to say to keep this guy here, so he just turns this stare on him.

~

Shane meets those eyes and he’s unprepared for it somehow. This time. He swallows and looks away after a second too long. “Yeah, okay,” he says, like it’s no problem. “You can take a second.” He says it like it’s a given— because maybe Ryan needs to hear someone else tell him he can. Maybe he’s been running for so long, he doesn’t know how to stop, and Shane thinks he understands that horrible, hopeless feeling.

Sometimes he thinks that he himself has broken away from it, that maybe sometimes he’s even getting used to this kind of life. Maybe, sometimes, selfishly, Shane thinks he likes the silence and the solitude it has brought with all its destruction, because when they aren’t groaning around his door, when they aren’t screaming or howling or droning into the night, it feels almost peaceful. And then sometimes he wonders if he isn’t just pushing it down, and it’s all going to come exploding up when he least expects it, yawning and black, to swallow him — _you’ll run forever. You’ll run until you’re dead._

He doesn’t know. He tries not to think about it. He tries not to think about what it means that here he is, telling Ryan _sure, take a second_ like they aren’t potentially moments away from being eaten. He thinks something else, too. Something ridiculous; something he will not say out loud, and wonders where it comes from, then pushes it away until, instead, this silence hangs between them for a very long time.

Shane’s not touching him anymore, but he hasn’t gotten up, either. Now that he’s still, now that the sweat is drying on him, he’s even colder, but he tries not to shiver. He stays crouched there with Ryan in the mud, waiting. Almost patient beneath that constant soft insistence that beats through him now like his own heart — find shelter, hide, one more night, one more day. You just might make it.

~

Ryan lets out a breath. It’s almost more crying, because it’s wet, but it isn’t. He’s just shocked. Tossing this guy’s words around in his head, _you can take a second_. He wants to laugh, because no, that’s wrong. He definitely can’t. Look what taking a second got him. Jake bitten. A horde nearly eating him.

He can absolutely not take a second, but hearing it unlocks something in him. It wriggles and breaks, so suddenly it’s all right there. How hard he’s shivering, how he can see his breath mist in front of him. How he’s so bone-cold, like there’s a frost inside him, like he’ll never be warm again. How he’s soaked. How every bit of his clothes cling to him, push more cold into him. How his leg is hurting, but so is his face, so are his feet from running. His arms. Every bit of him.

And, he’s fucking hungry. God, he’s hungry, and all of his food was in that stupid backpack, and it wasn’t much, but what little he had is probably _ruined_. And oh god, oh god, no, he cannot take a second. He can’t. Because he’s going to shatter.

He tries to stop shivering, to stop shaking. He drops his face in his hands, lets out this snarl that probably makes him sound like one of the dead things on the ground. He knew it. He knew from the second he saw this guy that he was going to… he was going to pull and prod at things Ryan is trying so hard to kill. Trying so hard to end.

And he has. And it’s been _minutes_.

“I have to bury him,” he says, but it’s hoarse from the screaming, from the cold. “I can’t leave him out here.”

~

“I have to bury him.”

And God that _hurts_. That guts Shane, somehow, because he’d never… he’d never once thought that. He’d just been running, back when he still had people to bury. This guy— fuck… Shane looks up at the sky, praying for the rain to stop. He feels the water sliding cold down the back of his shirt. He feels so, so weighted down by his jacket, by his pack, everything. He looks back at Ryan and he finds that he can’t say no.

So he doesn’t.

“I’ll… okay.” And he doesn’t know how to leave him, injured like this. In the rain, at the edge of the woods. He doesn’t know how to leave him to go and get the fucking shovel that’s in his shelter, but he has to. “I’ll get the shovel… just— try to be quiet, okay? Try not to move.” He pushes himself to his feet, and his joints protest against it. God, he is so, so cold. He just wants to sleep. What time is it? This night feels like one continuous fucking endless nightmare, and he wishes he’d never left his cabin in the first place.

And then Ryan would probably just be one more horrible undead thing… one of the thousands. One of the hundreds of thousands…

“Here,” he says, pushing the pipe at Ryan almost gently — his one safety, his crutch. But he can move. He can run, and Ryan can’t and just in case…

He knows the digging will make noise. He knows it even as he’s running back to the cabin, shouldering the door open. He knows that it’s stupid — it’s one more stupid thing on top of the countless stupid things he’s done tonight, and he wonders why he’s trying so hard. What he’s trying to prove, and to whom. He can’t feel anything but cold. He tracks mud through the cabin and grabs the shovel, then wheels around and heads right back out. Before he can really register what it feels like to be out of the weather.

It feels safe in his hands, or rather, he feels safe with it, because at least he has a weapon again, if a bit more unwieldy than the pipe, a lot more unfamiliar. That’s what he’s thinking about as he hurries back. His chest is so tight. He doesn’t know if it’s because he’s about to dig a grave, or continue to announce to everything out there in the woods that they are here, and they are alive, and they are still so, so very human.

~

Ryan is so stunned, so overwhelmed by this guy willing to do all this, that he can’t say anything. Pipe-Guy gives him his pipe, and Ryan just takes it, silent. He should say thank you, and he knows it, but he can’t even work it out of his jaw.

And then the guy’s gone, running back to the cabin, and Ryan has to bite back the plea—the one that tells this guy to come back, to please not leave him. But no. He’s not going to do that, because he’s getting a shovel. This is for Jake, and Ryan can deal with being alone for his brother.

It hurts, god, it burns, but he holds the pipe and pulls himself over to Jake one pull at a time, like rowing a paddle boat. Every stroke is another shot of pain, so by the end he barely feels it. He’s still shivering, but he touches Jake’s shoulder. “I’m not gonna leave you here, buddy. I’m not. I’m not gonna let them…” He takes a shuddering breath. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry I wasn’t… that I didn’t…” He tilts his face up, lets the rain mask some of his tears. “You’re gonna be fine now. You’re gonna be with Mom and Dad, and it’s gonna be better… it’s gonna be so much better now.” He touched his hand, curled his fingers in it. “Those things won’t touch you again, I just have to… it won’t be forever. I’ll… I’ll see you again, okay? I’ll see you soon.”

~

Shane clenches his jaw as he returns because he told him not to move — because he’s hurt, because he’ll draw more out — but he can’t be angry. He was just— he was just trying to get back to his brother. It cracks clean through to his heart, somehow, and half of Shane just wants to get that kid in the ground so he’ll be able to deal with everything else. So they both will.

But he knows it’s not that easy. He just wants it to be, because he’s freezing and exhausted and selfish. And he comes to stand beside Ryan again, hovering awkwardly. If he heard what Ryan said, he pretends he didn’t, it’s not his business. And God... he’s looking around now at all these dead things and they can’t bury him here. Or he’ll have to move the bodies and a few of them are in pieces. He hates to think that bits of that rotting flesh and teeth will find their way into Ryan’s kid brother’s grave. He hates that he cares. “I don’t— he begins, and it’s too soft “Okay,” he tries again, and his voice is stronger. Calmer, almost authoritative, somehow. He doesn’t know what to do but they have to do something. “What’re we doing here, Ryan?”

He says his name to get his attention. He says his name because it’s been ringing in his head all night like a song he can’t shake. “What do you want?”

~

Ryan swallows, sort of startled again, by this guy. That’s all he seems to be able to do around him, be startled. He struggles a little, hand still clenched around Jake’s. He has to let go. He has to do this, and he can’t drag it out because there’s another person here now. Someone else he could lose. Ha, could he really _lose_ this guy? He doesn’t even know his name.

He’s sure he’ll will leave. He already did once, and then—what? Found Ryan again by sure coincidence. Thank god. But he doesn’t seem like the type to stick around, even if Ryan wants him to, even if Ryan is starting to get attached. But it’s fine. Ryan was attached to his mom, his dad… Ryan was attached to Jake. He has no reason to be attached to this guy. He’s tall and awkward and a little too quiet.

So he pretends his lips aren’t shaking when he says. “Just… I don’t know…” God, he’s tired. He’s so damn tired. “Should we… I just don’t want him to be near this, these things. I just want him to be safe.”

 _Safe_ , Ryan thinks, _he’s dead you fucking idiot._

~

Shane nods; and he’s looking around, looking at Jake’s body, at the land. Does he really want a corpse in his backyard? Does he? It’s just a dead person. But dead people used to be so much less horrible, before.

Still, it’s not Jake’s fault. He supposes it’s not anyone’s fault really. Shane doubts anyone chose this. He hopes not, but— God, he needs to stop thinking about this...

He doesn’t really want a corpse in his backyard, a reminder of this terrible night, but he knows where the morning light hits, where the trees and the cabin don’t cast shadows and if it were him, he’d want sunlight and grass and decomposition in a place that wasn’t dark, and if they bury him there...

It’s the least he can do.

“Okay,” he says again. “I’m going to pick him up, okay?” Because Ryan can’t. “We’ll move him away from— from all this. And you can keep lookout. Watch the trees.”

~

Ryan nods, surprised and a little glad the guy didn’t feel the need to explain to him how death works. This guy looks so earnest, so nice, and Ryan’s feeling himself curling around him like a ribbon. Even as he begs himself to back off, because he knows this probably won’t last. This tentative whatever between them.

“Yeah,” Ryan says. “Yeah, sure, just… less sprinting this time…” He’s not sure the angle he’s working, but he’s doing it anyway. “I’m pretty sure I’m more poorly put together than…” Ugh, he doesn’t know what to call them. “…than one of those things right now.”

~

Shane looks at Ryan because it's easier than looking at Jake. He sort of squints at him through the darkness, and something flickers in his eyes, across his mouth. "Okay," he says, and his voice is different, a little more sure. "Less sprinting. Great."

But then he has to somehow get his hands under Jake. The mud makes it harder and easier at once, and God it's hard to straighten up. He struggles, staggers a little, but thank God, he doesn't drop him. He sort of steadies himself in the mud and then hoists his body higher in his arms, like a child -- Ryan's little brother -- and it strikes him all at once, all over again, how sad this is, and he feels this hot, tight sting in his nose that he tries to ignore. He's listening all the while, watching the treeline, but he gets Jake to where they need to get to, drops his pack, and then he goes back to help Ryan, because he's not great. At all. Shane thinks his leg might be broken, and he tries not to think about how _fucked_ they're going to be if that's the case.

They.

Ryan.

Shane will be fine. He usually is. And Ryan... he wonders, suddenly, if Ryan knew his brother was bitten. He wonders if he knowingly put Shane in harm's way, and wonders if he would have done the same. He thinks, as he somehow gets Ryan's arm over his shoulders, hunching, that he probably would have. They make slow progress. Ryan can't put any weight on the leg at all, and Shane half-wants to carry him too, but he can feel, already, that he's stronger than his brother had been, and Shane isn't even sure if he _could_ lift him. He's almost certain he couldn't, after tonight.

He thinks of that riddle -- the one where the farmer has to get the grain, the fox, and the chicken over the river... it's ridiculous. It seems so absurd now. But it's comforting. He tries to remember the answer.

He's thinking about that as he starts digging the grave. It's not easy. He's not built for this, and his shoulders start hurting first, then his arms -- the pain screaming down his back every time he gets another shovelful of dirt. Mud. The rain makes it heavy, but they can't stop. He knows this hole's not going to be six feet deep. He doesn't even know if graves actually are that deep in real life or not. There's already too much water at the bottom of it. They're going to be dropping his body into a tiny little bog, but Shane doesn't know what else to do. He doesn't know how to fix it. He barely has the strength to pull himself out when it's done -- or as done as he can make it. His arms are quivering and he wonders if he'll even be able to put Jake down inside without dropping him. Again. Like he had when he changed.

Shane is literally covered in mud. Ryan is too. And it's too dark to see, but he's sure there's worse things seeping into their clothes, sliding down their skin -- bits of -- people... used-to-be-people. He searches for Ryan's eyes. What can he even say now? How do they even make this transition?

He knows they're just lucky that nothing’s come for them yet.

~

He doesn’t know why he’s surprised when the guy comes and helps him over to where Jake is. He doesn’t know why he expected to have to crawl himself, but he did, and it’s weird. So he ends up saying nothing at all, and eventually, just watching this guy dig a grave that he shouldn’t have to dig. And he’s so overwhelmed, like he’s taking on water, because he should be the one digging this grave. He should be alone in this, but now he’s brought this other person into it. And he’s not sure what’s next.

He opens his mouth to say something, to offer some kind of help, but he can’t. There’s nothing he can do, because his leg is definitely broken, so he just sits there, uselessly, pointlessly, and he thinks if it had been him, if he’d managed to get in the way of that bite—Jake wouldn’t be. He wouldn’t be useless. He would never have broken his leg.

This guy with the pipe would be better off with Jake, whether he stays or goes, he would be better off. He sits beside Jake, eyes flickering to him, impossibly drawn to a brother that’s not there anymore, as the guy digs and digs and digs.

“I don’t wanna leave you,” he whispers. “I don’t…” He touches Jake’s hair and tries not to think about the gore that makes up the back of his head. He can’t really see it at this angle. “You were too good for this Jake. Fuck this. Seriously.”

He tries a little too late to help this guy out of the hole he’s dug. He struggles of it, and Ryan just ignored him. Like this stranger should totally, normally be doing this for him. But he gets out on his own, and Ryan stares at him, looks at Jake. And it’s too much. He’s let this guy do too much.

It’s not very far.

He hoists himself halfway up, and his leg groans with it, even without weight, just knowing he’s teetering, he half-drags, half-carries, Jake to the edge of the grave, then sink back into the mud, because he’s tired enough that his blood feels like lead. His veins feel like fried wires.

And there’s this edge there, this edge that’s going to throw Jake into something other, something gone, something apart from Ryan. And if Ryan goes in that grave, he knows he won’t be able to get back out. And he’s not going to make this mud-covered Samaritan do anything else. So he lowers his lips to Jake’s forehead, takes this trembling, impossible breath and kisses him.

“I love you, Jake,” he says, tries to be quiet, because it’s not the sort of thing he wants even this one person hearing. “I love you.” He gasps it, shakes his head. He thinks of just pushing Jake into the grave, but what if the walls collapse or something, and it makes this strange guy’s work pointless.

So he glances back at this guy, unsure, completely lost. The rain’s kind of letting up, but it’s still freezing. “Okay, it’s… okay.”

~

Shane had looked away, so out of place, so uncomfortable. He shouldn’t be here in this. He shouldn’t be here.

He looks back though, when he thinks Ryan’s words are for him, and meets his eyes. He hears the words, but it’s not okay. None of it is, and he knows that’s not what Ryan meant, anyway. Not really.

It’s never going to be ‘okay’.

What a useless thing language is sometimes, he thinks. How convoluted and strange. He thinks about how it can be twisted. He thinks about what they called this thing: a pandemic, and about what it really is, what it might be.

The walls in the city are spray-painted with ‘The End Of The World’. He saw it on the news when his cell phone still got the internet, he saw it months ago with his very own eyes, but he doesn’t know if that’s right either.

So this isn’t okay, but they have to do it anyway.

So Shane gets Jake into his arms again, but that won’t work because he’s too tall and the hole is too deep, and this fucking mud… And it’s so awful— it’s so awful that there’s no guidebook he knows of for how to do this because the dead should be treated with respect, but how can he? Because everything is mud and sliding, everything is too awkward and done wrong and eventually Shane has to set Jakes body down again, and slide back into the grave pulling mud and grass and grit in with him. His boots sink into a foot of water. And somehow he, or maybe they both, get Jake into his arms again (Jake’s body doesn’t feel quite human anymore, he’s going stiff and rigid) and Shane has to sort of drop to his knees and pretend he isn’t setting this guy, this kid, into a veritable swamp. He detangles himself as gently as he can, and he might have brushed the hair from Jake’s eyes, some dirt from Jake’s forehead, but Shane’s hands are so covered in it it doesn’t make much difference.

 

It’s with sheer willpower that Shane all but drags all of himself out of that grave for the second time, like hauling himself out of a pool. He collapses over the edge and onto his stomach, his chest. He rolls onto his back, breathless, facing the sky for a moment before he pushes himself up to sitting, and his arms shake so hard — as he draws his legs out of the grave and onto solid ground — that his teeth rattle. He looks at the hole and can’t see Jake at the bottom of it from this angle. It looks so black, so dark down there. They still have to cover him. Have to bury him. He’s so exhausted, that he doesn’t know if he can.

~

Ryan creeps towards the guy a little, because he’s on his back, looking like something that could be confused with the Loch Ness monster. But Ryan probably does too. Good thing that’s not real, because he can’t imagine the kind of—well, he can’t imagine what something like that would turn into. But they can’t swim.

They never can.

He takes in another breath, this jagged, biting thing. The air’s just so cold, it hurts to breathe in at all—it hurts his nose, his mouth. All of him. Well… Ryan realizes he still doesn’t have this guy’s name. And at this point, he’s too afraid to ask. But, anyway, the guy looks about as bad as Ryan feels, so Ryan scoots closer to him—he’s sitting now—and sets the pipe gingerly beside him.

“Thank you,” he says it softer than he’s used to saying things, something about this guy just… warrants it. Like if Ryan speaks too loud this tall, winding guy will just split right down the middle.

There’s an unspoken, _that’s enough_ , in his words, but he can’t bring himself to say it, because it sounds a little too much like goodbye. And Ryan, as much as he knows it’s probably coming, can’t do it. He can’t be the one who starts it.

Then he gets his hands around the shovel and slams it into the ground. He uses it to hoist himself up. The movement is enough to slash through his leg. But he’s kinda getting used to it, and he thinks he’ll just slide into it, like all this mud and wet and cold. What is warmth? Ryan doesn’t know, he’s past that now. He’s too good for warmth. He’s _outgrown_ warmth.

Okay, he hasn’t. He’s absolutely freezing, and he’s mostly just distracting himself as he makes his way over to the sludge from the hole, with this (very undignified) hopping, teetering motion. It’s not far. He needs the shovel to hold himself up, so he looks between the sludge and the pit—the pit with… with Jake in it.

And, okay… he can do this. Maybe. He eyes the sludge, because that’s what it is. It isn’t dirt, it’s hardly even mud at this point. He’s about to throw this shit on his baby brother, and that’s almost enough to knock him off the shovel. It doesn’t, though. He pulls himself between the pile and the pit, and sits, wobbling a little before he lands in the right position, hands around the edge of the shovel. He’s got his back to the pit, and he’s glaring at the mud like a bad news broadcast. He slams the shovel into it, and it comes pretty easily—bleeds into the shovel like tar, and then he just… flips it… all the way over his shoulder, because why the fuck not?

He doesn’t want to see the mud hit Jake. He doesn’t want to see him disappear, so it’s a win-win, really. He almost laughs at himself, at how absolutely ridiculous it is, but he does it again, because someone else already dug the hole. He can do this part.

~

Shane sits there, catching his breath, feels it, cold, in his lungs, and he watches this guy— he watches him move using probably only sheer determination, sheer will at this point, and he sort of marvels at it, at the strength in him. Within him.

He doesn’t know how long he sits there. He sort of almost feels like he blacks out, for a minute or two, but he can’t be sure. He has no idea how long they’ve been there and he shakes himself because he can’t let his guard down, he can’t. There’s nothing around them yet. Nothing that he can see or hear, anyway.

Ryan’s still shovelling earth, sludge into the grave and Shane... he can’t just sit back. And maybe it’s keep himself awake, too, but he pulls himself forward, starts pushing anything loose into the grave with his hands, his forearms. His clothes are dripping with it. He wonders how much of the grave is water and how much is earth and he half-thinks to put his hand in to check, but he can’t do it.

He thinks it’s starting to get light. Or maybe his eyes have just adjusted again or maybe the cloud cover is finally thinning.

It’s just these rhythmic, mechanical movements until finally, finally Shane pulls back, sits straighter. He thinks maybe they’re done... maybe that’s the best they can do tonight. The grave is full, uneven, rough, but it’s... Jake’s buried. He’s gone now.

“Ryan,” Shane says, and his voice sounds rough to his own ears, and too quiet, and hoarse.

~

Ryan’s so lost, staring at the grave, thinking Jake is in it, thinking it was so pointless because it’s so watery it’ll never stick—and what if he just—

“Ryan,”

He jumps, as much as he can from his sitting position. He glances over. Blinks. He can’t feel his fingers, he realizes. He looks down to flex them, and wow, they’re quivering—all of him is quivering so much. All of him is so cold, so wet. And Jake’s buried, and it’s crushing him. All of it. The sleeplessness, the grief, the pain, the cold. The guilt. God, the guilt. His whole body is frayed, like every second, every breath, is raking over him. Tearing at him. So he’s just flaking away, one moment at a time.

But he crosses his arms over his chest and looks at this guy. He’s been saying Ryan’s name, this guy has, and it hasn’t felt _off_ to Ryan. Even though Ryan never gave it to him.

It takes him a second to get words out over the chatter of his teeth, the chatter of his fucking bones. “What’s yours?” And, oops, he didn’t quite frame that right. But his voice is so raw and cracked he can barely correct it. “Your name,” he says, and it comes out stuttery, like it took too much effort. “Or I can just keep calling you Pipe-Guy, if that’s better.”

~

“Pipe-g—“ he begins, and it’s this soft, exasperated, almost humorous thing. Like he thinks this guy is insane, but he’s sort of charmed anyway.

“Okay, no, that’s— Shane. It’s Shane.”

He figures he can probably be excused for forgetting, because of literally everything else. He can’t quite believe they’re having this conversation now, here, but okay, he’ll roll with it.

Just like he rolls with his next thought, too, finally acknowledges it, because he’s been thinking it half the night, in little bursts, like foresight. That he’s not letting this guy just... Shane’s not leaving him again. Not until he can. And with the way Ryan’s voice sounds, the way he’s covered in mud, the way he’s injured... Shane can’t just yet.

And it’s stupid. It’s so stupid, so careless to care this much, but somehow Shane trusts him and he doesn’t know why. He’d feel better if he didn’t, but there it is. But he doesn’t know how to keep him, either. He can’t just say _Come back with me._

But then again, he thinks, it’s not like Ryan’s going anywhere fast.

~

Shane.

Yeah, okay. Shane. Ryan likes that name. It fits this guy. It’s easy, kinda soft, but with this sharpness he can sense but can’t quite see. And, Ryan’s not sure why he’s so fascinated by the name. He _feels_ weird. He nods, doesn’t mention the nonsense going through his head. But he thinks maybe this guy—Shane—appreciated the Pipe-Guy thing. And Ryan feels a flutter of triumph.

It doesn’t go with the rest of him. The wrong color, wrong shade. It’s brighter, and too close to what he felt before Jake, before, well…

 

“Well,” Ryan says, because Shane isn’t continuing. He has a feeling Shane doesn’t much, continue things. He lets them sit. Unfortunate, because Ryan would rather touch them, throw them, crush them, before he just lets them sit. But, the silence doesn’t strangle him like it usually does. Even when he can’t quite find words to keep going.

But eventually, they do, like Shane’s punctured this plastic Ryan’s trying to keep around himself. They come out shivery and chattering like the rest of him, but they come out. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean… I didn’t think, I mean, I wasn’t… I just wanted to help him. I just—ugh, fuck _me_ , thanks. For helping. Seriously. I’m sorry you got dragged into it.” He’s already said that, but he doesn’t know what it is he’s trying _to_ say. He can’t ask this guy for more— _can’t_. So he wanders another direction. “Do you live there by yourself? The cabin? It’s pretty… isolated. That’s… the cities were pretty bad, so… that’s smart, I guess.”

~

Shane really can’t— can’t quite believe that these are things that are coming out of this— coming out of Ryan’s mouth right now, but he’s clinging to every world, he’s just watching him talk, until he realizes that he’s sort of just talking himself into a spiral and he finally shakes a response free, one of the several, from his ribs. “It’s. Quieter.” It comes out weird, like he second-guessed himself halfway through.

He needs to ask, before he can— he needs to know, but he’s already peeling himself out of the mud, already standing, towering over Ryan. He thinks his legs are shaking, but it might just be the cold. “Did you know? Did you know that he’d been bitten before you asked for my help?”

~

Well. He’s fucked. He certainly wasn’t clinging to any notion of long-lasting friendship with this strange, flighty person, but fuck. Just fuck, fuck, fuck. He could lie. Just say he didn’t. He could say he had no idea, that he just thought Jake had a head cold. But what kind of _stupid_ thing to think?

He doesn’t want this guy to think he’s stupid. Because apparently a bastard is better.

He doesn’t look at Shane. He just stares at his feet, imagines his toes cracking off the end of his feet—just sitting, detached in his shoes. Because that’s somehow more pleasant than what’s about to happen. He swallows, feels his jaw feather. His teeth ache with tension.

And he just says, “Yeah.” He’s not going to dance around it. He can’t. Not after everything this guy has done, and there’s that burn behind his eyes again and he’s so tired—so fucking tired—of crying. So he doesn’t. He just presses his lips together. “Yeah, I… I mean, I hoped not. I was trying to tell myself he wasn’t, but…” His teeth are gritted, his voice is guttural, raw and seared black. “I did, on some level.”

He doesn’t apologize again. Can’t. Because there’s no way to say, _hey, dude, I’m really sorry for putting for intentionally exposing you to a zombie plague, but anyway, water under the bridge, right?_

No. And he wants Shane to know he knows that. He wants him to know—he wants him to know everything, all at once.

Ryan never looks up. Doesn’t look away from the grave. He just wishes Shane wasn’t right there, because as nonthreatening, as unassuming, as this guy is—some part of Ryan thinks he’s going to bash Ryan’s skull open for this, just like he did Jake’s.

~

Shane sighs, turning away to get his bag. Fucking— gross, it’s soaked, but he pulls it on away, looping his arms through. He picks up the pipe and pushes it through the straps. He checks the treeline, adjusting everything against him like he could possibly make it more comfortable, as cold and wet and fucking tired as he is. He’s looking everywhere but at Ryan, but then, suddenly, he’s crouched down again, in front of him, saying softly: “Here, come on,” and sort of reaches like he might wrap an arm around Ryan’s back, get Ryan’s arm around his shoulders so he can get him up, so they can move, but never actually touches him. He just waits.

~

 

Ryan is so ready, so absolutely sure he’s going to throw up, that it takes an act of god to keep it back when Shane drops in front of him. “Oh,” Ryan says, because that’s really the only thought circling in his head. He’s a lot nicer than he seems, Shane is. Ryan’s absolutely floored. And Shane’s reaching like he might touch Ryan, and it’s crackling across his skin like he already has. “Okay.”

It’s silly, because they already did this once. So Ryan takes the cue, he slides his arm around Shane’s neck. “Are you—it’s—I mean, cool, okay.” It feels stupid to ask _are you not pissed?_ Maybe Shane is and he’s just big enough to let it go, or at least, table it.

~

“It’s not ‘cool’,” Shane says, practically, as they struggle up. God he’s shaking so hard. He might be embarrassed if Ryan wasn’t shaking, too.

They start back, and he’s so tense because he’s sure one of them is going to come screaming and clawing out of the trees. _Just keep going, just get back._ “It wasn’t—...” But he can’t say it wasn’t fair, not after every unfair thing that’s happened to Ryan tonight. “It’s just, I would have done the same thing.” But he’s not entirely sure anymore, if that’s true.

~

Ryan jerks a little, so his head brushes a little too close to Shane’s. They’re both covered in mud, and Ryan can’t feel eighty percent of his limbs, so it shouldn’t matter, but somehow it does. Ryan considers— _would have done the same thing_. And he realizes, in this cascade that clatters around him like mirror shards—this guy had a family. People. He had them. And they’re gone. He’s alone now.

Ryan’s fingers curl, reaching, like he can physically pull more of Shane from the air. But he doesn’t say anything, because that would be too much, too soon. Especially given the circumstance. “Oh, you—oh, yeah, that makes sense… you did a lot for me, and I’m not even…” He wishes he wasn’t shaking so much. He wishes he could just control this one thing. This one, tiny thing. While the rest of it spirals into nothing. “I probably looked like something out of _Nightmare on Elm Street_. I would have probably shut the door in my face.”

~

“Hey, _that’s_ a movie,” Shane says. “Good B-movie horror.” At least he thinks so. It’s not his favourite. Somehow he can’t believe they’re talking about horror movies when they’re essentially living one.

More than that, he also can’t believe that Ryan would have shut the door on anyone, not after what Shane’s seen tonight but, he reminds himself, he really doesn’t know him at all. He really doesn’t know that, but he feels it somewhere in his bones. Regardless, he keeps it to himself.

They make it to the cabin, and he’s holding his breath as he gets the door open and awkwardly shoves it shut behind them. He has to kind of reach over and around Ryan to do it, and feels mud and water slide along his jaw where Ryan’s hair brushes it. Only then does he exhale, long and shaky, one hand tight in the door handle, practically holding himself up. The rest of him is supporting Ryan. He wonders if he can make it to the bed so he can sit him down or lay him down or something. He knows it’s filthy, that the bed will be beyond salvation after this mud gets on the sheets, but it’s just easier, somehow.

The cabin is small, and well-furnished enough that Shane initially thought someone might come back to it. He’d spent a few sleepless nights waiting for that... until he found the body in the woods, mostly eaten by animals or the dead or both. Some guy, maybe in his forties... He’d shot himself. Shane had left him where he lay, but he knew somehow, instinctively, that no one was coming back to this place, not anymore. So he guessed that made it his, now.

There’s no lamps lit, no fire burning, so the cabin’s darker than outside. There’s a table— it was here when he got here, and two mismatched chairs, because he’s already burned the other one for firewood. There’s the bed which is just on this side of real uncomfortable, but it’s good enough. He’s got all sorts of weird things he’s collected in here — there’s the red rope, a map on the wall, of the state they’re in, and he’s marked things on it, in a blotty pen, a kind of code. Shelters, places he’d seen hoards collect. It’s too dark to see the markings right now.

There’s even a couch in the single room at the top of the rickety steps, on the level where the single unboarded window is. He hasn’t really touched it because it’s sort of growing something, and he plans on using it for heat once he runs out of other things to burn. Emergency couch firewood.

Shane sort of lowers Ryan to the edge of the bed and pulls back, almost staggers a little. He reaches out and presses one hand against the wall, steadying himself.

~

 

Ryan might have smiled at the commentary on _Nightmare_ if his face wasn’t frozen. As it is, he just nods his agreement. He wants to say something funny, something witty, but all of its drained out of him, seeping back into the field with the mud and rain.

The warmth of the cabin hits Ryan first, the dryness, it slams into him so he almost gasps. He’s been so wet and so cold for such a long time. It’s not like the place is heated, but holy shit, it’s not _outside_. And suddenly Ryan’s so grateful for it, for _Shane_ , he could scream. He doesn’t, because that would definitely startle Shane. He just stands there, taking it all in, taking in this guy. Because that’s what it feels like, some kind of area manifestation of Shane.

There’s a map, that’s what he notices first, because of course this guy has a marked up map. He’s exactly the type, and there’s a red rope. Ryan blinks at it for a second too long, then he takes in the furniture. The bed. He flinches a little. Not a great response to a bed, but well, the last time he slept in one…

“Wow,” Ryan finally says. Shane’s closed the door, and the rain is not touching him. It’s outside, pattering against the walls. Not pattering against _Ryan_. His clothes are still soaked, and his fingers still burn from the mud, but he’s dry. And he sorta wants to hug Shane, properly hug him, not this weird pseudo-thing they’re doing. “This is cool.” And he remembers Shane telling him it wasn’t cool and cringes a little because _good going, Bergara_.

But the warmth is dragging something else into him, up from his chest, all this exhaustion, all this cold. This bone-breaking agony that he’s been pushing down, down, down, and now it’s springing up like a geyser. The burn beneath his fingernails, the cuts on his face, his leg—the cold, and underneath all of it. Exhaustion. Exhaustion that has soaked the blood from his veins and left him light-headed and half dead.

Shane moves towards the bed, makes like he’s going to lower Ryan onto it. Ryan needs to sit, needs to rest. He knows it, but just—no. He can’t. First, he’s soaked, he’s disgusting—he’ll ruin this bed. Shane’s bed. And he doesn’t want to ruin anything of Shane’s. And he will beyond repair ruin it if he touches it. Second, there’s that flash of the last time he woke up in a bed, the last time…

“Wait, whoa, whoa…” Shane’s off-balance, staggering, but Ryan’s already pushing into him, away from the bed. He pushes too hard and twists, nicks his leg a little so he trips forward against Shane’s chest, and the closeness only jars him for a second before he thinks, this guy can’t hold him up, so he’s half-prepared to reach. To catch himself, them, whatever from crashing into the ground.

~

Shane stumbles back until he hits the wall saying “What— _Jesus_ ,” and Ryan’s against him, against his chest, and Shane feels something jolt through Ryan or him or both and it feels like pain. Or maybe not. It spikes through him like a shock, either way. “I’m not gonna—” What? Maybe the rope on the bed doesn’t look great. Wow, that is _not_ the impression he wants to give. And even that aside, Shane feels like he’s spooked him now, and he doesn’t know why, but it’s not a great feeling. “Hey, whoa, okay man,” Shane says, and he’s almost breathless.

~

They’re against the wall, and Ryan’s really close to Shane. All pressed into him, these weird notches in him, soft through the middle, and hard, jagged hip bones. It blazes the cold out of Ryan, the closeness. He’s close enough to feel him breathing, to feel the way it hitches a little as he looks back at the bed, at… the rope. Oh, oh, well, Ryan didn’t even think about that, but from the horror on Shane’s face, he was right not to. He looks back at Shane, and wow, they’re so close. Ryan’s almost delirious with it.

“Oh, no! Jesus, man… no, I wasn’t…”

He is delirious with it, and he’s watching Shane’s mouth, the smears and stains of mud along his cheeks, then his jaw, then his neck—his adam’s apple is so pronounced. Ryan can’t stop looking at it. And he thinks Ryan thought—what? That Shane was going to tie him up and? He feels his mouth twitch into a smile, and he lets it. It feels as cracked as the mud, but he lets it as he shakes his head.

“Oh boy, oh, just…” He chooses the easier option. “I just didn’t wanna mess up your bed. I’m disgusting, dude.”

 

~

Shane’s watching Ryan, watching his eyes move over him, almost feels it like a touch, burning. He twitches a little, half-flinches, and then those eyes meet his.

Ryan smiles, kind of at Shane’s expense, and it’s sort of unsure, crooked. It’s all teeth — shocking white against the mud on his face — disproportionate somehow, to him, and his eyes. It’s like he’s the brightest thing in the dark and Shane forgets he’s cold, forgets he’s aching.

When— how did they get so close?

“U-uh,” he says, not-words almost on top of each other. “That’s not— okay, great.” He suddenly affects this voice that’s his own, but different: it’s a bit, and he’s slipped behind it like it’s a shield. “That’s really thoughtful of you, Ryan, but you— _really should_ learn about prioritizing.”

~

Ryan startles, kinda pushes into the wall, tries to ease away from Shane, but shit—his hips press into Shane’s as he slides backwards. It’s this tense, knotted thrum, and he blinks. And this is not how he expected to end the evening his fucking brother died. He drives himself back, just a little, trying to catch his breath. Because he can’t. For some reason, he can’t.

He swallows, opens his mouth, and there’s still this ghost of a smile there. “Don’t—okay, no. I assume you’re,”—you’re, not we’re, he doesn’t want to, _can’t_ assume—“going to be sleeping there for a long time. Learn about prioritizing, maybe you should _learn about prioritizing_.” His hand against the wall trembles, and he thinks he’s going to collapse into Shane.

Thinks some part of him wants to. But he doesn’t.

“Do you have, like, a _basin_ or something?” He sighs, and he knows it hits Shane’s mouth, and he’s just so, so aware of his breath, of his arm behind Shane, of everything. “A _basin_?” He asks himself more than Shane. “Whatever. Man, I miss showers. I just want a shower.”

~

Shane goes tense tense tense beneath Ryan’s hips, beneath that little rush of breath. And he’s still shaking, but it’s not just from cold and exhaustion anymore and that’s— okay he needs to— he’s got to do something.

And somehow Ryan’s still talking, just nonsense, and Shane exhales. It’s not a laugh, but he feels it release some tension in his chest. “Okay. You gotta— you need to sit _somewhere_. How’s the— okay. Table? One more move?” He asks, and touches him again, not just holds him up like he’s been more or less doing, but touches his elbow for just a split second, because he knows it’s worse on Ryan, moving, than it is on him.

And he’s already working on detangling himself, has to. “I’m— here— I’ll get something. Come on—“ if they can just get the few steps to the table he can draw away, feel just his own limbs for a moment, and he needs to.

~

“Okay, yeah, table,” Ryan says, just to say something, “table’s good.” Shane touches his elbow, and it’s feather-light. It’s so gentle, and it tingles, sorta tickles, so Ryan shudders beneath it. He tries to tamp it down, kinda succeeds, he thinks, but he takes a breath.

Then he pushes back, lets Shane get untwisted, and lets Shane guide him to the table. He sits, and oh shit, oh shit, he doesn’t know why, but sitting makes him almost faint. He was sitting at the grave, sitting a lot, really, but this is different. This is warm sitting. This cabin is warm, and Shane is warm, and… he meets Shane’s eyes again for a beat. He blinks, tries to adjust his vision, and brings a shaking hand up to Shane’s shoulder. But it grazes his neck, shaking, and Ryan feels it like a bolt of lightning.

His eyelids flutter a little harder, and he moves his hand to Shane’s shoulder. Bobbing forward, almost into Shane, but then he jerks his head upright. “Jesus, I’m tired.”

~

He stills again, beneath that touch on his neck, and Christ, Ryan’s fingers are ice cold. “I know, I know,” he says, sympathetic, almost soothing. “Here. Don’t— don’t fall over. Okay?”

He’s got one hand on his shoulder, one at his ribs, sort of bracing him in from where he’s half-crouched half-bending in front of him. “I don’t know if I’ll be able to—” he sort of laughs, awkward, breathy, then jerks back as Ryan tips forwards, and the smile’s gone “Whoa, okay. Okay, buddy?” He doesn’t move away yet. He’s desperate to, because it’s a lot of touch, it’s just a lot all at once, but he stays.

He doesn’t know where the name came from. Is it a name? But it’s there, suddenly, weird and too intimate, like they’ve been friends forever. But it’s out there now. He almost wants to snatch it back.

~

Ryan lets out this noise that’s almost a whimper as he tips forward again. Where did all this _tired_ come from? His bones feel like iron, like chains dragging him to the ground, and he cannot believe this little table is supporting him. He can’t believe Shane is.

“I’m awake, I’m awake,” Ryan says, fast and reassuring. Shane is all touching him, and he likes it, needs it like water. Oh, hey, he realizes, he might be thirsty too, which is absurd because he was just in the rain for like a thousand hours. He forces himself upright, because he thinks, as much as he wants it—as much as he could melt into it, Shane is uncomfortable. With the closeness. And Ryan’s already dragged him through so much discomfort.

He isn’t sure how to feel about _buddy_. It’s potentially condescending, but it also brings a closeness between them Ryan didn’t expect. So he decides to shake it off.

“I’ve got it,” he says, and grabs Shane’s hand from his ribs to prove he can be upright, and he’s mad, because Shane should not be this much warmer than him already. It makes it hard to let go, but he does, and meets Shane’s potentially exasperated gaze. His hand hovers between them like a breath, shaking—he’s always had shaky hands, and the cold is making it worse.

“I got it.”

~

Shane holds his gaze, raises his eyebrows in maybe surprise, maybe doubt. But he lets him go, pulls back.

He turns away, and it’s like air rushes back into his lungs, cold, less close. It shocks him a little. What was he doing? Oh, right. Basin...

There’s water in one of those low, plastic Tupperware containers that Shane used to think were useless before all this. It’s kind of dirty because he used it to wash, to shave that morning and just hadn’t tossed it out yet, but it’s cleaner than they are. He drags it out from under the sink, two-handed, and sets it on the table, finds a rag

Jesus, he’s cold. He’s got to get out of these clothes. “Here it’s— sorry it’s— all I have.”

The barbecue lighter ran out of fluid a long time ago, but he’s gotten pretty good at coaxing fire from the embers. He’s got no fucking patience for that today, though, so he digs out the matches from the drawer beside the bed and lights whatever’s in there. Paper, cardboard, wrappers from food. The wood takes longer to catch, but the wrappers go up like nothing, and there’s light, if not warmth, at least until the wood starts burning.

He drags his shirt over his head, and doesn’t know if it’s worse or better. He’s too gross, too covered in mud to think about dry clothes yet. He sits in the opposite chair to unlace his boots and they are so knotted and encrusted with mud it seems to take forever.

He keeps throwing little glances at Ryan to make sure he’s still with him. But he’s sort of left him to his own devices — he sort of seemed like he needed it.

~

Ryan’s alone again, and he hates it. He puts an elbow on his knee, still perched on the table, and presses his forehead into his hand. He cannot fall asleep. He blinks harder, breathes harder, than he normally would. It takes all of his focus, so he has no idea where Shane’s gone. Maybe Shane was a fucking poltergeist that only half-existed. Ryan wishes whatever it was, poltergeist or pipe-guy, would come back, the delicate brush of his hands would come back. He feels like the color’s draining out of him without it. He’s still shivering, soaking in these clothes, staring at his thigh.

He tries to recall highlights from Lakers’ games, the bright lights, the intensity, what it felt like when that was important. It keeps him up, calling scores back in his head, remembering why they lost, what happened. His teeth chatter. He knows they haven’t stopped, but they keep reminding him. He knows he might be muttering the numbers, the scores, aloud, but he keeps it quiet.

Then it’s too quiet, he’s too quiet, and he starts to sway, and thinks, _if you fall asleep, something might happen to Jake._

~

Fuck— fuck he feels bad for him. He gets his boots off, finally, and sort of casts them aside, followed by soaked socks, it’s awful. He goes to wipe his hands on his jeans but they’re soaked, too. Instead, he looks at Ryan, who hasn’t moved in a while, then takes pity, moves forward. His hands are warmer, but still cold enough that the water in the basin feels almost warm when he dips the cloth into it. “Here,” he says, dragging his chair around in front of Ryan’s.

He sits, then drags it closer so their legs are tangled, one of his between Ryan’s and vice versa. He’s leaning so far forward his head almost brushes Shane’s bare chest. He reaches out. “Ryan...” and then in a very different tone, “Oh— _Jesus_ , what did you do to your hands?” He takes his hand — not the one supporting his head, the one he’d been looking at —but the other. He hadn’t been able to see before, but now, in the firelight, he can see that Ryan’s fingernails look like he’s tried to dig himself out of his own grave and the thought chills Shane. He actually feels the hair on his arms, on the back of his neck rise.

“Fuck—” he thinks maybe he’s bleeding, and he remembers the cuts on his face beneath that mud and feels a sharp flicker of panic. Blood draws them…

~

Ryan starts when Shane grabs his hand. It crashes through him like a downed power line. He flinches, not because it hurts, or maybe it does hurt. He can’t tell, but there’s a rush, like a pulse, a thousand pulses, with Shane touching his hand like that. And, Ryan thinks, Shane is absolutely not a poltergeist. He’s so solid, so… something. Ryan half-pulls his hand back, but it’s weak, because he isn’t sure he wants to do it.

“What?” his voice fogs with sleep. He may have blacked out, he realizes. “What?” He tries to inject more emotion into it, but it just sounds like he imagines plasma feels—charged, but transparent. “I didn’t have a shovel,” he continues by way of explanation. He thinks he says, _I didn’t know you were going to come back_. But he’s not sure he gets it out.

He shudders, shivers under all the cold, and makes himself look up to find Shane’s—chest, it’s definitely his chest, without a shirt on it. “Oh, fu—okay.” It’s wiry, and long, and frail-looking as fuck, and Ryan isn’t sure how he managed to even hold the shovel. Let alone dig a grave. But there are lines to him, lines that Ryan follows a little too closely, that point to fitness. Because, it’s impossible not to be a little fit, out here, like this.

Ryan’s wide awake now, well aware that he’s been looking too long, so he finds Shane’s eyes. Shane’s a thousand miles away, but somehow, close—too close. And somehow, what comes out, is just a half-noise. Maybe it’s supposed to be _where’s your shirt?_ , but it never quite gets there.

~

Shane’s jumped into action, or rather, his mind has, dragged from sleep and safety because of fear — again and again, always this fear, but he moves slowly, and his voice is steady, but there’s an edge to it. It says _do as I say_ , and there’s no room to argue. Still, when Ryan makes a noise, he softens his hold a little, because he thinks he’s hurt him.

“Give me your— give me your hand. The other one.” He’s already dipping the cloth in the water again, reaching past Ryan, oblivious to the stare. He wraps the material around the hand he has and he’s wiping mud and blood away as carefully as he can, but he’s being quick about it. Ryan’s hand is so cold it feels stiff, almost dead, in Shane’s own. It makes him uneasy. But he looks— maybe pissed off, maybe concerned. His brow is furrowed as he tries to get the filth off, see the damage. It’s so much worse than it looked before.

 _I didn’t have a shovel._ And all at once Shane remembers the hole he tripped into, fell over...

_I need to bury him._

He stops, goes still, and looks up. He’s overwhelmed suddenly, feels that hit him like a freight train. “Oh,” he says, breathes it almost, it’s so soft. He swallows and looks down again, thumb sliding over Ryan’s knuckles, almost clean. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have left you there.” Because he’s been hating himself for it all night. It feels worse now, like he’d lost his own humanity for a second. His voice comes out too wound, all coiled and quiet. “Sorry, Christ...”

~

Ryan is doing everything in his power to keep back the hisses and groans as Shane uses the water to rinse his hands. They are definitely stinging, but the water is _warm_ , and there’s a current going through him with Shane doing all this for him. Shane’s got this subtle, commanding aura around him, so Ryan’s just silently _obeying_ and he doesn’t know why. But Shane’s fingers feel like too much, like he’s is touching the inside of Ryan’s thigh, or some other unexposed piece of him. But he’s not—it’s just his hands.

A laugh bubbles up his throat, maybe because it tickles as Shane’s thumb strokes his knuckles, and maybe because it’s hilarious that this guy is managing to tickle his _hands_. But he swallows it, because Shane also looks vaguely like he might stab something. “No, don’t… no, I told you to leave. I was pretty adamant about it.” And it may have opened up a pit in Ryan, one that keeps whispering Shane’s going to toss him out, or leave again, but that’s not Shane’s fault.

None of this is.

“I put you in a shit situation. I was surprised you came back.” The water hits beneath his fingernails, and it’s raw, and he’s not thinking about it, so he does hiss softly. Then keeps talking to cover it. “I would’ve thought you were a hallucination if you weren’t so weirdly tall.” He knows he’s saying too much, glances at Shane tentatively. “And I doubt I could’ve come up with the pipe… I would’ve gone like hockey stick or baseball bat or something. Something cooler.”

~

Shane makes a little noise because he’s half trying to apologize again, explain why he was wrong but then Ryan keeps talking and it’s— it’s just so...

And he finds himself saying “A hockey stick would _break_ , it’s a stick, it’s made for— for tiny pucks, not—” he doesn’t finish the sentence because it’s awful, what the pipe is used for, what it was used for tonight, and something about how Ryan talks makes him feel... normal? In a way that pipe definitely does _not_. Maybe it’s normal. Shane hasn’t talked to a person in months, he hardly remembers what normal means.

And he worries that if he sinks too deeply into this, this strangely easy comfort he will have to remember again and again how awful everything is, how much danger exists around them.

He has this sense that he can’t explain that Ryan will make him forget all that. He’s already doing it. He has a feeling that Ryan will make him... more, or less, than he already is— Ryan will soften his edges, Ryan will tear Shane’s walls down, and he thinks maybe it’s just because he’s someone— someone else, someone living and breathing and... and ridiculous, but warm somehow. And it’s terrifying. Shane needs those walls, he needs his edges, if he’s going to survive. _This is not a test_ , there’s no room for error... what the fuck is he gonna do?

He does his best cleaning the hand he holds, then starts on Ryan’s other hand, already so far away again. He’s been alone too long, he’s never been good at focusing on other people because his mind is too loud. He reaches to soak the cloth again, and meets Ryan’s eyes and it shocks him, like he forgot he was there and his fingers twitch against Ryan’s palm. He makes this little questioning humming noise like he isn’t sure if Ryan was speaking or not, like he doesn’t know what to say, or how to be around him. Or anyone.

~

“That’s—no, it wouldn’t. A hockey stick wouldn’t…” But he’s thinking about it. “Okay, it might break.” Shane is rhythmic. He reminds Ryan of the last time he was in the ocean, like slow, steady waves. So even the burn and sting of Ryan’s fingers starts to subside, because Shane is just this blanket over everything. And Ryan’s back to coaxing himself awake, because he doesn’t want to fall off this table, into Shane, and knock the water everywhere or something.

He’s leaning, leaning, so he almost slams into Shane, and then he bolts upright. Shakes off that he was nearly asleep again. He’s halfway through saying something when Shane looks at him, like he’s just gotten back from an overseas trip or something. Ryan doesn’t know what it was, but he’s still shivering, and the warm water is starting to get less warm. So, he says, “Fuck, it’s cold.”

~

“I know,” Shane says, glances at the fire like he wants it to do its job better, but really, since he hasn’t really helped it along much, he feels it’s fair that it’s only doing all right. But, God— God, there’s just so much wrong with Ryan, so much to fix and he doesn’t know how to fix it. His hands are clean now but there just so much—

“Here— take this, take your— this wet stuff off.” He sort of plucks at Ryan’s sleeve. He thinks of Ryan’s pack out there in the rain and thinks that whatever’s in there is probably ruined. Maybe he’ll go out to check it in the morning, when day breaks.

He’s hit again with a wave of exhaustion that he shakes off. “Uh— do you— there’s crackers. They’re stale, but, they’re also Goldfish.” He says it as though this is somehow a Great Thing. That the crackers are fish-shaped.

~

Shane tugs at Ryan’s sleeve. Mentions taking it off, and shit, he’s right. That’s probably something Ryan should’ve come up with on his own. Especially when Shane… Ryan eyes his chest again. “Right, yeah…” Then, in a surge of embarrassment. “I’ll take _some_ of the wet stuff off.” As if Shane meant for him to just strip fucking naked.

Then, it’s just pathetic how excited Ryan gets about the food. The Goldfish. He lights up. He can’t quite remember when he last ate. He would’ve eaten something today, but he can’t remember when, or what. He’s just so stunned this guy is offering food that he can’t quite make himself answer.

Ryan tugs at the shoulder of his black jacket, just astounded how much everything hurts. How sore everything is. And, oh god, it’s _clinging_ to him, and he wants to cry because it’s gross and cold and heavy, but instead he diverts again, glances back at Shane, and an answer tumbles out of him. “Goldfish? Fancy. I’ll make sure to mention this in my Yelp review.”

~

Shane laughs. Like _really_ laughs, startled into it, and it interrupts his sputtering about Ryan and his wet clothes and then he’s there, he’s standing and carefully reaching over him to help, and it’s so easy because he was so caught up. “Your Yelp review?” he repeats, as he struggles to help push Ryan’s jacket off his shoulders, trying to be careful. “The place was freezing. Neighbours: awful. Host: not great. Oh, but the _food_! Fabulous. A+.”

~

If Ryan lit up about the goldfish, he damn near bursts when Shane laughs. Laughs at something Ryan said. It feels like Ryan may have single-handedly ended the clusterfuck outside. It’s silly. It’s damn near ridiculous, but Ryan grins like he’s won something. Shane helps him with the jacket, and Ryan can’t bring himself to worry about what it means or whether it makes him look weak. He’s still smiling. Because this guy’s smile seems hard-won, but his laugh feels fucking sacred. Then he keeps going, and it’s so unexpectedly funny.

So Ryan laughs as he slides out of the jacket, and it’s a hard laugh. He grins, and he laughs—and it ought to feel out of place, feel wrong—but it doesn’t. For a few seconds, it doesn’t. So he lets himself laugh like the world isn’t ending.

He’s still laughing, giggling, when he says, “Decent service, but needs more hockey sticks.”

~

“Yeah,” Shane says, and he’s just— God, he’s just stunned, just desperate to hear that _laugh_ again, like he cannot believe something like that came from Ryan — like Ryan’s not big enough to contain it. He’s affecting this disdainful voice now that’s like a person too well-off for their own good, the type that goes to a beautiful city in Italy or somewhere and complains about the cable in the hotel room or something, “It also rained the _whole_ time.”

He doesn’t know what to do with Ryan’s jacket but suddenly he has it and so he just sort of unceremoniously drops it on the floor. He doesn’t think, as he reaches for the hem of his shirt because Ryan’s moving like everything hurts and maybe Shane’s trying to take that away, to get pain the fuck away from Ryan. Like he could possibly have the power to do that.

~

Ryan laughs again, and it feels so loud, too loud for this cabin. For Shane. But Shane seems like he doesn’t hate it. So Ryan lets himself have it for another second. Lets it deepen when Shane continues the joke, and holy shit, this guy is _funny_. He shakes his head, still smiling, watching Shane, and only then does he realize that Shane’s trying to help him with his shirt.

It’s kinda embarrassing, honestly, having someone else take off his shirt. And intimate in a way Ryan chooses not to think about. But he needs to get it off, because it’s freezing and stinging and covered in mud. He waves Shane off, because he’s got this, and grabs the back of his collar to pull it over his head, but it sticks and drags over his abdomen. It’s not bad, he knows that, but there’s enough scrapes and bruises that the wet cling is enough to make him wince.

He stops, tries again—same result. Then he meets Shane’s eyes with this sheepish mess of an expression—and yeah, he’s definitely asking for help with it. With his fucking shirt. But he can’t do it aloud, especially after he already dismissed Shane, so he says, “I don’t love that your first impression of me is useless loser who can’t take his shirt off, and mine of you was badass basketball player with a pipe. I hate it, actually. ”

~

Shane makes this little noise that might be surprise or might be disagreement, but he’s trying to remember what his first impression of Ryan was when he showed up at his door, but then he’s quiet too long and he sort of laughs, but this time it doesn’t reach his eyes so he starts talking. “A towering string-bean, probably — at least eighty per cent leg. Most definitely not good at basketball.”

He steps forward again, and he feels the intimacy this time, because he’s not distracted anymore, not laughing, and he tries not to brush Ryan’s skin when he reaches for the hem again, but it’s inevitable, shudders up his arms, and he has to peel the shirt away almost too slow and careful, because it’s clinging, because Ryan’s hurt and Shane doesn’t want to hurt him more. He gets it up over his stomach, past his ribs, has to gather the material up in his fingers because it won’t stop sticking, because he’s trying not to streak this sudden, new, expanse of skin with mud as well. And Shane’s gone quiet again, eyes intent but somehow far away, and never meeting Ryan’s.

~

“Eighty-percent leg? That’s… surprisingly accurate.” He’s looking at Shane’s legs again, and they are long. And no, he probably isn’t good at basketball, but Ryan doesn’t bother saying that. He just stares at Shane, and tries not to scream, out of pain or frustration or he doesn’t know when Shane pulls up his shirt. Ryan tugs it the rest of the way off, and he’s so glad it’s off for a second he can’t even be self-conscious about the scrapes and bruises—the one on his shoulder, from the apartment steps, is all yellow and purple and kinda terrifying—and other shit Shane might think is a bite.

Shane’s not looking at him—he’s just _gone_ , and Ryan can’t begin to understand why. He’s having trouble understanding Shane at all. But he knows he wants to bring him back. Knows he’s lonely without him. “Well, this is… we’re just… two shirtless dudes, hanging out in a cabin…” He looks around, tucks his hands around his waist, shivering at the way the air drags over his skin like untrimmed fingernails. He’s watching Shane, and he’s not sure if he should be, because Shane doesn’t seem to want to meet his eyes. “Which might be less weird if you hadn’t just taken my shirt off. I feel like that part’s particularly weird.” He’s stumbling a little with his words—having trouble with the the t’s, because, fine, he’s nervous.

It’s crazy. His brother just died, and he’s nervous? But part of him thinks it’s because the world is fogged over around the edges. Exhaustion has soaked into his bones, dragged so many spikes of emotion out of him. That all he’s got left is this… thing, dragging him towards Shane and his eighty-percent leg self.

~

Shane lets out this small laugh. “Are you saying it’s… going to look like we’re _Brokeback Mountaining_ it over here? Where’s my sheep?” Shane’s eyes are on Ryan’s torso, and God, fuck, he’s really… fit. He’s fit, but somehow delicate, and Shane’s eyes linger way too long on his collarbones, and the hollow of his throat, but then he forces his eyes away, and it’s the bruises Shane’s noticing, the redness, until the rest of it simmers hotly somewhere else, just at the edges of his mind.

He reaches for the soaked bandana around his neck, all awkward limbs and elbow as he unknots it, and then uses it — the part where it’s been folded and mostly untouched by whatever was flying around outside — flying from those things — to wipe the mud off of his own face before he casts it, too, onto the floor to meet his own soaked clothes, and Ryan’s. “Jesus, man,” he says softly. “What happened?” He’s looking at Ryan’s shoulder.

~

The bandana floats down in front of him, onto Shane’s clothes, and Ryan opens his mouth to ask what it’s for. Why Shane wears that. If it’s a dumb play at being a cowboy, and then he has the thought, this guy would make a good cowboy. And he wishes he hadn’t. But he can’t ask the question, because now Shane is looking at his bruises, and Ryan is looking at his face—getting a better look without all the mud. And, for a second, he forgets what they were talking about.

Then he remembers and wishes he could forget again. He shrugs. “I fell down some stairs. We slept in this apartment.” We. We, we, we. Not anymore. “Turns out, high ground doesn’t really work with…” He doesn’t say it. No one ever says it. “It’s…” He isn’t going to talk about Jake right now. Maybe ever. So he just leaves it at that, in this mysterious, half-truth. “What’s the bandana for, anyway? Other than enhancing the whole mysterious strange who lives in the woods thing?”

~

“Oh, it’s, uh… I think maybe it’s viral? Like a viral disease. I— sometimes out here, one or two will wander up and hang around for long enough that I can’t actually leave safely, so I have to pipe them. It’s so none of it gets in my mouth by accident. You know, so I don’t— I don’t know. Does anyone know, yet? Last I heard, they were still talking about some new strain of rabies.” He furrows his brow and shrugs a little. “It just seems safer.”

He doesn’t want to clean those cuts with the dirty water. If they wait until the morning he can boil some from the things he has to catch the rain outside, and then use that… they don’t look like they’re bleeding too badly. Shane hopes. Some of them are even dried. “I… let’s look at your leg.”

God, he has no idea what to do about that. He feels a little sick like maybe Ryan will have been bitten, or maybe it’s broken, and Shane knows which is worse, but is equally at sea as to what to do about either of them.

~

Wow. This guy is out of touch. Like, weirdly out of touch. How long has this guy been out here? On his own? Then Ryan jolts upright a little. Because, fuck, he hadn’t been thinking about what was in his damn backpack, and that stupid _radio_. And now it’s probably ruined. He doesn’t mention it, because this guy is apparently altruism personified, and he doesn’t want him running back out in the rain. Hopefully one of those things fucking chokes on it.

His eyebrows raise, but he tries not to laugh. He doesn’t want to startle this guy. “Uh, yeah, no. It’s… not.” Ryan rubs the back of his head. He doesn’t keep going, because he doesn’t know what to even say, and anyway, Shane’s moved on and he’s looking at his leg. The pain comes sparking back through him with the mention of it, and Ryan gingerly moves his hand to his leg.

“My leg?” And his voice splits, right down the middle, a crack like he’s at the height of puberty and not a twenty-seven year old fucking person. How old is Shane, he wonders? He swallows. “I… o-okay,” he tries. “I think it’s broken.” _Because it feels like someone’s trying to rip it off_ , he doesn’t add. “Wh-what are we? What would we… okay, let’s just—we can just look at it.” His voice is timid and whisper-soft, but frantic, possibly, a little like mockingbird wings. But he swallows and bends to roll up his jeans. His arms quiver with the effort, and he closes his eyes as he pulls it.

When he opens them, he immediately lurches hard enough to nearly fall off the table. Yep, okay, it’s broken. His knee is swollen, like so swollen it looks less like a knee and more like a third head Ryan’s been keeping under his jeans. And his leg—it’s just this mix of reds and purples and browns so he can’t even see his skin. And, god, _god_ , it’s hanging wrong, the calf is bent so his fucking foot is arced towards his other leg. It looks so wrong, so absolutely wrong that it shoots up Ryan’s windpipe.

His eyes water. _Water_. He tries to say it. Or a bag. He covers his mouth, shakes with the effort. _Do not throw up. Do not throw up._ He takes a wheezing breath, and all this moisture goes hot in his mouth, sizzling down his throat so he feels it—feels the need to vomit like a fist in his throat.

~

Shane moves fast, something of that wrongness, that bruising just makes him ache. It doesn’t hit him as hard as it hits Ryan, it’s not his leg, it’s not his pain, but he fucking sympathizes. It’s so much worse than he thought it would be.

His voice belies the panic in his chest, his throat, and it comes out soft “Hey, okay,” as he kind of steps around him to his side and reaches out with one hand for the back of Ryan’s neck, because he’s definitely— Shane doesn’t blame him, he half wants to be sick, himself.

Shane vaguely casts around but there’s nothing, really, save the basin filled with water. With his free hand he sort of grabs at it, pulls it closer, but it’s too big, too awkward to lift with one arm. They can always get more water he figures, especially with this rain.

He’s run a thumb up the clammy skin of Ryan’s neck — somewhere between frozen and fever hot beneath his palm which is cool from the water — and into Ryan’s rain-soaked hair behind his ear and back down. He’s gentle, but it’s a solid, steady movement he hopes will help, somehow. “You’re okay,” he insists.

He’s not. It’s not okay. He’s fucked, Shane thinks, and it freezes the sick feeling in his chest, and somehow that’s so much worse.

~

Ryan swallows, and swallows, and fucking swallows. He can’t stop swallowing. Because if he does anything else, then he is going to puke. And he thinks the energy from puking, the sheer amount of strength it would take to retch—might honestly kill him. At some point, Shane touches him. Ryan doesn’t feel it when it happens. He’s lost in his own sickness, but then he slowly feels it—and it calms him down. In a weird way.

It’s something else to focus on. The way Shane’s fingers curl, and they’re tentative, and they’re… delicate, a little. More delicate than Ryan would have expected. Monumentally more delicate. Smaller. It’s enough to think about, to turn over in his mind, so the image of that leg, his leg, fades like a ghost.

He trusts himself enough to pull the hand from his mouth, gasps a little. Finds Shane’s eyes. Shane’s worried, he thinks. He’s saying it’s okay, but Ryan doesn’t know if he believes it. Of course he doesn’t. No one says _it’s okay_ and means it anymore. And this guy has just pulled the basin over—the basin. Ryan had been guessing when he said guessing. But that’s what it is. He was right. And now Shane is implying he should throw up _in the basin._

With the water.

And then he laughs, a little, no, absolutely hysterical. He laughs because it’s a fucking basin, and he’s in the middle of nowhere, with a guy who’s forty-feet tall, and his brother is dead, and this guy’s hand on the back of his neck is knotting his stomach like molded bread. And his leg—his leg isn’t a leg, it’s another fucking head. And it’s all so fucking funny. Because it can’t be anything else.

And he hears it, and knows the laugh sounds off and wrong, and possibly a little insane. He tries to talk so Shane doesn’t think he’s turning into a new form of zombie—because that’s what this is. Zombies. And Shane called it rabies, and that’s even fucking funnier. Ryan gasps, wheezes with laughter and breath he can’t catch. His whole body is gripped with a vice of heat, and he can feel the dead, oozing moisture that made him want to throw up. But it’s stuck somewhere in his stomach.

He tries to look at Shane, but he’s laughing, or crying—god, he isn’t even sure at this point. His whole face hurts. “It’s so fucked up. I can’t breathe—my leg’s so fucked up and Jake’s dead and there’s a fucking _zombie plague_.” He laughs a little more, and god, it’s so wrong. He gasps. It might be a sob. “And you’re not wearing a fucking shirt. And you said Brokeback Mountain and Jesus Christ.” He chuckles a little more and then slams the heel of his palms into his eyes. “Fuck me, dude. Just fuck… me.”

Another gasp. And then he stops laughing, and the silence that follows wraps around his throat and squeezes.

~

Okay. Okay, now Shane’s freaking out a little. “Jesus, Jesus,” he whispers to himself, so softly he’s practically just mouthing the words. But he listens, let’s it wash over him in a terrible kind of deluge. And God, yeah, maybe he was sort of waiting for this, sort of expecting it, but not this much. Ryan’s too much. It spills over in him and so, into Shane, and he doesn’t know what to do with it all — all this overwhelm, all this emotion and fear and pain.

 

The silence that follows is worse. So he says, voice edging into something like normal but not quite making it, “Don’t— don’t say _Brokeback Mountain_ and then say ‘fuck me.’” He’s trying to make it a joke, desperately, because there’s something else in Ryan’s words that Shane is not nearly ready to think about yet. There’s so much he’s not ready for.

~

Ryan stops. Stops so hard the silence recedes a little. His brow furrows, like he’s curious. Because he is. Because he can’t believe that this guy has just said this, out loud, to him, right now. So he just kinda squints. For longer than is necessary. Then, slowly, this gradual, slow smile comes across his face—and it feels bright, so much brighter than the laugh.

“You—what? No. Okay. How is this _my_ fault?” He scoffs. Feels reality bleed back into him, not this gross, slushed, gray one. But a different one, a better one. One that doesn’t close in and tear at his chest like a garbage disposal. “You’re the one who _brought it up_. You said…” He adopts this kind of mocking tone. “Are you saying it’s going to look like we’re _Brokeback Mountaining_ over here’?” He drops it. “Which I wasn’t! That’s—that’s not what _fuck me_ even means! I mean, sure, it can, but it’s a phrase! I didn’t realize you’d been a hermit so long you’ve become a devout literalist.”

He’s babbling because he feels hot. Like, cheeks hot, flushed, not fevered out, about to pass out hot. He’s embarrassed in this live, electric way, and it’s cascading through him. Very different from the shirt. And everything else he’s felt since… it’s alive, in the way that this world doesn’t feel like it is anymore. So he just turns his head and scoffs again, tries valiantly to wipe the crooked, mismatched smile off his face.

“You dick.”

~

"I'm not-- I know what 'fuck me' means," Shane says, "I was being-- I was just--"

He feels almost like a person for the first time in forever. Not just human, but like a _person_ , like himself, and he's out of his own head, and it's been a long time since he can remember feeling like that. He didn't even know he missed it until right now.

And then Ryan calls him a dick, and Shane bursts out laughing, and it's intermingled with a little "What?!" and he realizes that maybe they're being too loud -- they definitely are, and maybe it's only because they've killed all those things out there in a three mile radius that they're not groaning around the cabin now -- but Shane can imagine them, creeping in closer and closer and he stops laughing abruptly.

"All right," he says, "No name calling, we can handle this like adults. Not the-- not _Brokeback_ \-- fucking, _forget_ that. We're gonna forget that, now. We need to do something about your-- about your leg, or we're gonna have to at least get your pants off before you can sleep in my bed because they're-- I mean, the mud... and I think you should. Sleep. I really think you should sleep." He sort of stops, trying to sort out everything he's just said. His head's swimming a little. He's tired. He realizes he's forgotten the Goldfish. He doesn't know how to set a broken leg, and they're joking about Brokeback fucking Mountain and he doesn't know which way is up anymore.

~

Ryan absolutely won because Shane is a flustered mess. Then he’s laughing, and Ryan’s laughing too because he likes this guy’s laugh. Okay. He can admit that without it being weird, even though Shane is making it weird with…

“Dude, you… do you _hear_ yourself?”

Ryan laughs until tears bead in his eyes, and it’s not because he’s sobbing—it’s because it’s hilarious. He dabs at them a little. Ryan doesn’t bother mocking, because there is no point. “We’re gonna at least get your pants off before you can sleep in my bed.” Ryan is giggling, god, he can’t quite get a grip on it. Because he cannot believe Shane said that out loud. He can’t even be worried about his leg, and how much it’s going to hurt to… set it, or… god, he’s seen and read enough sports injuries to know that it’s not good.

But he’s not freaking out. Which is weird, because he’s pretty sure he’s been freaking out for months now. “I don’t know if I can sleep since I’m apparently with a _predator_.” But Ryan can absolutely sleep. He may fall asleep right here, on this table. He’s so beyond exhausted. He laughs, and it’s quiet this time. “ _You_ need to sleep.” Okay, yeah, it’s petulant. But whatever.

“And I’m _definitely_ not taking your bed,” Ryan says, and then, a beat too late. “Because you’ve clearly got ulterior motives here. It’s not safe.” He looks around. “Do you have, like, blankets or something?” He glances down at his leg. It’s going to be so hard to sleep. But the idea of setting it, of Shane touching his leg, gives him these creepy, awful goosebumps. Just imagining the first breath of that pain.

So he says the most ridiculous thing he could possibly say, “My leg’s fine.”

~

“Okay, I am _not_ a predator,” he’s arguing, but then he goes quiet, eyes averted. He looks like he’s spaced, but he’s listening. When Ryan stops, he takes a second, then blinks and looks back at him. “Yeah. Yeah, you’re right, Ryan, it’s totally fine.” He sighs. “Look, just— there’s a couch upstairs, I’ll take that. You’re not getting up those steps with that leg and, frankly, I’m too tired to help you, so. Just.” He gestures sharp, tightly, at the bed. They’ll figure this out later. Maybe he’ll get a stroke of genius while they sleep. Maybe he’ll remember something he filed away as useless nine months ago, like how to set a fucking broken limb. He knows the anxiety and worry is seeping in again, the fear, and he can hear that it makes his voice a little short, but he just— he doesn’t know what else to do.

~

Ryan bristles. His hands clench to fists. “Fuck you, dude.” Okay, yes, partly it is because he does not want that bed. For more reasons than he could ever explain. But partly because Shane has transformed into an anthropomorphic _jackass_. Ryan glances at the stairs, and no, he’s not getting up there. That’s a fair statement.

“I’ll sleep on the damn table. I don’t want the fucking bed. I’m not taking the stupid bed in your stupid cabin. I’ve…” He’s going to say taken enough, but he’s pissed off so he just stops talking. He pulls himself off the table, slides, and tries—fails—but tries, to get gracefully to the ground. It hurts like a bitch. Like _black out_ pain for a few seconds.

He does manage to stay in an upright sitting position. Good leg folded in, bad one stretched out. It feels a little better to have it parallel to him, actually.

Still fucking hurts, though.

Then he blinks, on the floor, as undignified as he’s probably ever been with a resounding _fuck you_ written across every line of his body. “I’m sleeping here. You sleep wherever the fuck you want.” He lays back, and yep, his leg is probably going to fall off. He’ll straighten the other one out later. But he’s just lying on his back, one elbow thrown over his eyes so he doesn’t have to think about stupid Shane and his stupid cabin and his stupid unbroken legs.

~

Something hot and prickling rushes up his arms and into his throat, then spreads slowly. He feels his jaw clench, furious suddenly, startled. Like _how dare you_ and he doesn’t even know why he’s so pissed, but he is. And fucking scared and tired and he _hurts_ , and he’s gonna hurt worse tomorrow.

“Jesus...” he hears himself say. It shakes from his throat as he moves, like he’s jarred it loose. He doesn’t look at Ryan again. He wishes, suddenly, desperately that he was alone here, because he’s been _strongly_ reminded of how lonely he’s been and how much he _hates_ people in a handful of minutes by the same fucking person, and he can barely remember how Ryan’s laugh sounded now.

Maybe just to piss him off he moves, steps around him in way that’s like _‘Oh, I almost forgot you were there,’_ and without another word, he goes into the kitchen, grabs the fucking Goldfish box and sort of tosses sort of drops them near Ryan’s shoulder. It hits him. He didn’t mean for it to, and he flinches but says nothing.

He’s going to fucking freeze to death down there. Shane pretends he doesn’t care. He grabs the heavy blanket off the bed, balls it up (as the red rope slithers softly to the ground) and tosses that at him too, a little more careful this time.

~

Ryan doesn’t touch the Goldfish. Completely starts when it hits him, but when he realizes, he’s just angrier. So he doesn’t move. And he doesn’t move to get the blanket. He just lies there, and it’s funny, because he’s in pain—he _really_ is. And he’s cold, still, kinda—a mix of cold and hot really. It’s killing him, but it just sort of starts to detach. Just like Jake and everything else. It screws away from him, and he feels blackness looming. It circles him. He fights it, just for a second, because he thinks of Jake. He thinks of that girl in the closet, and his brother’s scream. But then he just stops…

He sleeps.

But his mind doesn’t.

~

Shane feels sort of like an idiot immediately after. He feels weird, pulled equally between anger and guilt as he rakes the other, thinner sheet off the bed. He thinks Ryan’s just fucking passed _out_ between the time it took to throw the crackers at him (that was really… that was something he wishes he could take back, for several reasons) and to gather this balled-up sheet to his chest.

Shane’s eyes flicker to Ryan before he stoops to collect his bag, then brings it and the thinner blanket upstairs to sort of glumly assess the couch and figures: okay, that kind of mold probably won’t kill him. Right? Still, he shoves the sheet down in between the back of the couch and the lumpy cushions sort of like a barrier so he doesn’t have to actually put his face in it, and sits down heavily on the other end. The couch is low, so his knees are ridiculously high and he feels… just too big for the place. He feels too aware of himself suddenly, and he doesn’t like that, either. It was easier just to kind of ghost around in his own head, in this little cabin. Easier to just move through his days absorbed in his thoughts or his work — whatever tasks he can find to do to make his life here as normal and comfortable as he can keep it. Some days it’s almost good. Days where there’s nothing creeping around out there, just a few feet beyond the walls where Shane has, to the best of his ability, made himself safe.

And now he’s brought a stranger in here, and it’s like he feels the comfort, the solidity of his own solitary existence slipping out through the cracks, escaping the bright, intense, overwhelming presence that Ryan’s proved to be so far, and… and Shane doesn’t know what to do. He’s shaken from this night. He’s shaken from the sight of Ryan’s leg, and the sound of a skull smashing that he hears again and again, echoing in his own head, and the small, compact heat of Ryan against his chest, and the shifts in Ryan’s personality. But he thinks, at least, he can understand that, though. Fear. Grief. Fatigue. Pain. Hunger.

Shane wishes he’d learned, ever, how to take care of people.

And why is he trying to _now_? Is it because he feels guilty for killing Jake? (Jake wasn’t coming back… he was gone already. Shane knows that. He reminds himself of it again.) Is it because he feels bad for leaving Ryan in the first place?

And now Shane’s left him again, downstairs, on the fucking _floor_. Shane sighs. He staggers to his feet. It’s fucking difficult. The couch feels a thousand feet below him, like it’s trying to suck him back. He feels foggy as he stands, but he goes back down the steps, softly, even if he is bracing himself more than usual against the wall. He is surprisingly quiet for his height, and still bare-chested, barefoot.

Ryan hasn’t moved, but his breath’s changed. Shane goes to tend the fire first, crouching there, because it’s burning low. He pokes at it until he gets it to catch onto some more of the wood. Then, as cautiously as he can, as unobtrusively (because he cannot deal with any more interaction) he covers Ryan up with the blanket. He avoids touching the blanket to his leg, to those bruises there _(Jesus Christ_ it looks bad) and he thinks Ryan’s out, but he doesn’t think he’s sleeping. He steps back, shoulders too tight with nerves, hunched.

It doesn’t really make him feel better. He goes back upstairs as quietly as he came down, and only glances back at Ryan once more.

Shane sheds his mud-encrusted jeans and wraps himself in the thin sheet in just his underwear because he’s fucking tired of this heavy, wet cling of denim. He curls himself up as small as he can which, admittedly, isn’t small enough for this fucking couch, but it’s— whatever. He doesn’t want to be down there with Ryan. It’s childish, stubborn, and he won’t sleep well, but he wouldn’t have anyway. So it’s whatever.

The noises of night time, or early morning or whatever time it is on this ungodly long night, sound different up here. The unboarded window makes him nervous, even though it’s on the second floor. Unless they’re jumping that high, and he _doesn’t_ think they are, he should he fine. Still, he wishes he’d thought to bring the other blanket so he could at least cover it up.

It takes him a long time to fall asleep, and once he does, it’s not a good one. Not for as tired as he is. His legs start to cramp. He half-wakes up more than once with an ominous stiffness in his shoulders and arms and a tension headache closing him in behind his eyes. It promises horrific muscle pain to deal with when he’s fully awake to process it.

The pain brings him right back to the awful, aching burn he’d felt in his limbs and back while he was digging that grave — and maybe that’s why he dreams about it. Only when he looks down at the body he’s placed in that dark, swampy hole in the earth it isn’t Jake, it’s himself.

~

Ryan dreams. It’s this haze of half-misery, half-indiscernible nonsense. There’s Jake walking into the house—their old house. Ryan’s standing over the cupboard. There’s the body. This body that he tried to keep from Jake—that he thought he had. But Jake sees it now, and his eyes widen—disproportionately to his face. And he screams, but it’s this horrible, half-groan.

It’s one of their groans. Ryan tries to grab him, to calm him down, to explain—explain it was an accident. But there’s blood leaking out from under the cupboard. And Jake slams Ryan back, won’t stop screaming.

_You killed me._

Ryan can’t make his voice work. Jake’s latched on, grabbed his leg like acid so the skin’s frying off, and he begs him to stop. Tries. He moves his mouth, but there’s nothing. He looks back at the cupboard—it’s gone. And there’s just this body. This body with a caved-in head, and it’s jaw in a black puddle a few feet away. But it’s not his mom this time.

It’s Jake.

Ryan half-wakes, half-dreams, and he’s aware, distantly, that it’s not happening, but he can’t get away from it. And instead there’s just noise. He thinks someone is near him, Shane, his brain reminds him. His name is Shane. Ryan can’t remember who he is, and then he can. He sees a silhouette over him, and it’s got a pipe, and it’s raising it over Ryan, and—

He gasps awake. Wide awake. Soaked in sweat, in heat, and his throat burns with breath. No pipe. No person. No Shane. But he must have been here, because there’s a blanket now. It’s over Ryan. He’s burning up, so he kicks it off. Tries. His leg screams its protest. And god, he’s sore. He’s so sore. He’s slept with his good leg bent, and it’s so stiff. His whole body is stiff.

He knows he’s slept, but tiredness clings to him like static. He thinks there’s light filtering through the boarded slats on the windows, but he can’t tell. The rain’s stopped. The silence is eerie as Ryan tries to wind himself back into a person. It’s all silvered back to him. Shane. The blanket. The…Goldfish. Discomfort bleeds into him. His skin itches with it.

He glances at the door. Thinks of his backpack, still out there, maybe. With his radio, and Jake’s stupid hat, and… he could get up. He could just go get it. He could leave. His leg pulses again. If those things showed up, he’d be dead. And he doesn’t know this area. Just knows they always show up. No, after Shane helps with his leg… oh, god, Shane. His stomach twists, and that prickly, oozing sickness grips his skin tighter, twists. He’s stuck here. Stuck on a stranger’s floor with a broken leg. Dependent on him for fucking survival. And Ryan looks at the door again… knows it would be suicide, knows it’s all pointless, that there’s probably never going to be anything on the damn radio again.

Jake’s the only one who heard anything in the first place.

But there’s this thing, this thing that’s been creeping up on him since he met Shane’s gaze at the door. Since the cabin. Since Shane walked off. Since he came back. Since he stared, silent, into Jake’s grave. And it’s there, then, because Ryan can’t do anything. Ryan is nothing but dead weight. And Shane is… a good person. He couldn’t say no. And now Ryan is here, hurting, with sickness curling in his head like an ichor, and all he can thinks is:

_He doesn’t want you here._

~

Shane lies awake, with the morning light coming in through the window, and thinks about broken things.

Broken limbs, to be exact.

He wonders if, if they stabilize it, splint it, it’ll just fix itself, but, he thinks, more than likely, it will just heal all wrong… it doesn’t seem good. He knows what he _should_ do. _Call a fucking ambulance!_ his mind screams, but that— that doesn’t even exist anymore. _Phones_ don’t exist anymore, or at least they don’t do anything useful. Hospitals were one of the first really helpful places to shut down, actually. But there wasn’t any help, anyway. They were still looking for a cure, looking for a fucking _definition_ of this thing when Shane’s internet finally stopped. And then he just didn’t know anymore. He knows they’re dead. That the disease takes hold in the brain, just like…

Zombies. That’s what Ryan had theorized. Like it’s a horror movie.

Shane thinks: _It’s not zombies_ , and pushes himself to sitting. It’s a painful fucking process, his arms have an ache from the wrist all the way up to his shoulders, where the pain coils tight and barbed around his upper back and fades into something less as it spirals down his spine. Still, he manages it.

His head pounds and he presses his hands against his temples like he can hold his skull together and he tries not to think about Jake. Instead, he wracks his brains for anything that might be useful for a broken leg and all he knows is that you’re not supposed to set it unless you’re a doctor, obviously — it’s not a fucking action movie — but there’s no fucking doctors. There’s no fucking people anywhere near here, and even if there were, Shane doesn’t know how much he likes the idea of wandering into some stranger’s yard to call for aid.

Ryan did, but Ryan…

People were killing each other over tins of cat food in Whole Foods. Grocery stores were ransacked, stripped bare. So Shane prefers to avoid other people even more these days, not least because he might get shot in the head just for showing up, and yet… hadn’t it been instinctive to open the door to Ryan? Or had he just been lonely and desperate? Curious.

He thinks he hears a sound, a shuffle and he’s snapped back to reality with a flip in his gut. He needs water for his head. He needs to act like an adult and get the fuck downstairs and deal with this because he can’t just keep Ryan broken and probably freezing on his floor.

If he fixes that leg, Ryan can leave. After a while. And if he doesn’t fix it… will it heal? Will it always hurt him? Will it always hurt him anyway? Shane doesn’t know. Either way, he thinks, like he thought last night, that Ryan’s fucked.

He thinks it, and he believes it, and it’s more than just the broken leg. There’s something wide open in Ryan’s eyes, it just — it’s all trust and hope, and he’s too much, too big for Shane — but he’s not big enough to support the hopelessness of everything.

But there’s that determination, too, like a fire. It had flared up in him so fast that it had startled Shane and he half-thinks that maybe he’s wrong. Maybe Ryan will fucking outlive all of them. Ryan who believes that those things outside are zombies.

Is he like a fucking conspiracy theorist or something?

God, his head hurts. Okay…

He knows he’s just hiding up here, too. He doesn’t want to go down there and remember how to be a person after the awkwardness of last night. He doesn’t want to do it at all. He wishes he’d thought to bring other clothes, as he struggles back into his jeans which are dried and damp simultaneously, and still filthy. Fucking gross. He feels it in his hair, too. Mud, matting. It’s awful. He leaves his pack where it is, beside the couch, and drags the blanket painfully up around his shoulders like a — like a weird little sheet-jacket or something, because he doesn’t give a shit how it looks, he’s _cold_ — and he goes back downstairs.

~

Okay. Ryan sits for a while. He’s so thirsty. God, he’s thirsty. All his muscles are curling with it, under the ache. They’re _withering_. The light wasn’t quite as… high, as he thought it was, maybe? It’s taking longer to be actual light. So he just sits there with his thoughts, with this thick sense of unwelcome in the center of his chest. He’s dreading Shane coming down the stairs. He’s dreading it because he doesn’t want to leave. It’s stupid, really. But he doesn’t. He doesn’t want to be alone. Doesn’t know how he’ll keep all his stupid thoughts in his stupid head. But he’s going to have to leave eventually. Shane will insist upon it, so more than that, he’s going to have to look at Shane and just, ugh. Last night was so awkward.

Every movement, every breath brings this new soreness. His body responds like eroded rock. It’s awful. So he kind of settles into the pain. It makes him light-headed. No, that is potentially his leg.

He looks at it again. It’s still swollen. He’s probably bleeding internally. Hence, the thirst. Shane would probably freak out if he came downstairs and Ryan was dead. Whether he wants him gone or not, no one wants a dead person in their living room. Okay. No. Ryan grits his teeth. His first concern with his own death should _not_ be his corpse offending Shane.

He straightens his leg, winces at the weird way it bends. Well, at least it isn’t so swollen he can’t see that. It’s different this morning, surreal, and Ryan thinks, it’s potentially because he’s only half-there. He glances at the Goldfish. He’s hungry, but his mouth is so dry he’s worried they’ll turn to sawdust and he’ll choke. He peers over the edge of the basin Shane’s left in the floor, and yeah, it’s gross—but if he doesn’t drink, he’s fairly sure he’s going to pass out.

So he pools some of the water in his hands, and dear lord, it is the grossest thing he has ever tasted, but after a few swallows—it’s helping. He can physically feel his body responding.

Okay. One matter solved. He tries to remember what they did in the ER when Jake broke his leg. He’s got to get it back into place. And, he really doesn’t want to wait on Shane. Because depending on this guy is just… it’s making it worse. This want. This… unearned kindship Ryan’s leaning towards.

“Okay,” he whispers and blows out a little air. “You can do this, Ryan.”

He bends his good knee for traction, and grabs either side of the swollen leg. It shudders beneath his touch. And, oh boy. He tries to push. It pops through him like fireworks, shredding at every piece of him so all he sees is the blood in his own head. Pain leaps up his throat so he has to choke back a scream. It’s instinctual. Stopping it. This cabin threatens noise like foxes threaten chickens.

Okay.

He narrows his eyes and grabs the blanket Shane _threw at him_ , which he will not forget, ever, because it is a stark reminder that Shane is actually a douche _masquerading_ as a good person. And not actually a good person. It doesn’t matter that he covered him with it later. That is irrelevant. All that matters is the throwing, Ryan decides. He slides it into a long, rope-thing and presses it into his mouth, then he grabs his leg again. Oh, god, oh god, it’s like swallowing antifreeze (he imagines, he hasn’t actually swallowed antifreeze.) It’s like being on fire and drowning all at once. God. _God._ He groans through the blanket, but he pushes—pushes until his eyes start to water.

Oh, god, there is no way people do this in the movies without crying. That is fake as fuck. Ryan jerks away, gasps. The pain recedes like fog, slow and clinging. He gives himself a second, then bunches the blanket back in his mouth and tries again. And his head spins. He thinks it might actually _spin_. So he doesn’t notice Shane until there are actual tears on his cheeks from pushing at this stupid bone. He’s pretty sure it’s about to move, maybe, or that’s probably wishful thinking—when he catches sight of Shane.

He stops. Blanket still in his mouth. Agony still roaring through his head like fucking strobe lights. And there’s all this dread, this I-didn’t-want-to-do-this mixed with shame he doesn’t understand. But then it’s just gone because Shane’s got a fucking bedsheet wrapped around his shoulders like he’s about to inherit the Iron Throne.

And Ryan doesn’t really know how to process that, so he freezes. He’s never understood why deer froze in front of an oncoming car, but now he totally gets it.

~

Shane has sort of frozen as well, at the bottom of the stairs, fighting back whatever the horrible sick rush is within him.

And then Ryan looks up. Shane almost wants to hit him, but it’s not— _Stop_ he thinks, _Jesus Christ, stop hurting yourself._

 “What—” he begins, and it’s too hard, too sharp, because he’s fucking freaking out, his heart pounding a mile a minute, so he softens it, as much as he can as he finishes with “—the hell are you doing?”

He moves as if to go to him, then sort of aborts the gesture, like Ryan might just lose it and snap his leg back into place and fuck, Shane can’t— he can’t deal with that. He feels stuck, frozen, helpless.

~

Ryan looks at his leg, looks up, looks down. “What does it _look_ like I’m doing? I’m trying to set my leg.” His eyebrows raise. Shane looks just bowled the fuck over at this. “Were you hoping I was going to wait for an _ambulance_? Or, are you secretly a renowned orthopedic surgeon and didn’t mention it yesterday? Otherwise, I don’t think it matters if it’s you or me.”

He rolls his eyes and looks at his leg. He fails to see how everything, _anything_ , freaks Shane out. It’s like Ryan can’t even blink without this guy retreating into the fucking forest. Or into that damn bedsheet. Which Ryan doesn’t comment on, because Ryan doesn’t feel the need to make exaggerated facial expressions at everything. Or, at least, he doesn’t feel the need to comment on them.

But he’s flustered. He’s so horrified with Shane looking at him like that, like he’s fucked up, again, so he can’t quite push the strength back into his arms. He sighs and looks at Shane again. “Dude, I’m trying to get out of your way. I don’t want to lay on your floor like an invalid while you go… chop wood or whatever. So please stop looking at me like I just ate a baby.”

~

Oh, okay, he sees what this is, now. And sure, okay, fine, whatever. Whatever, if that’s what Ryan wants, he tells himself, and there’s a modicum of relief in it, truthfully. But at the same time it’s just so wildly ridiculous.

“Oh,” he says, and oops, it comes on a laugh, but that’s fine. Maybe this guy is actually just— a fucking... maybe he doesn’t actually need anything from Shane at all, and last night was just a fluke. Maybe everything Shane had experienced or felt under those eyes, and surrounded by the sound of that laugh and all those moments where they— maybe all that was just desperation, loneliness, some weird human instinct that didn’t jive right with his mind.

“Okay, yeah, so you’re going to set your leg, it’s gonna be magically fixed, and you’re going to head back out there into the— into _that_ , and be able to outrun one of those dead things.” There’s so much sarcasm, but it is kind of funny. It’s so utterly absurd that Shane feels it shaking, like laughter (he thinks) in his chest.

~

Ryan smiles. He’s tired. Still. Because he slept like shit, and he’s definitely still frustrated at how to navigate this star chart of a person. But he smiles, anyway. His mouth just does it. It’s a half smile, kinda exasperated, but not… unhappy.

“Oh,” he says, “is that not how bones work?”

He gets quieter, thumb hovering over his very broken leg. “I didn’t mean get out of your way _right_ this second. Just…” He gestures to himself, the cabin. Like that somehow explains it all. He’s mad he’s so tired, still, after sleeping. And his spine is whispering violent complaints about sleeping on the floor. “You’ve done enough. I’m just trying not to upset your…” This time, the vague gesture is at Shane. “This. You’re like one of those old mentors in the woods who teaches a valuable lesson before kindly telling me to fuck off.” His mouth twitches, tries to smile. Almost does.

~

The smile eases something, but puts him on edge in a different way, like he doesn’t know how long it’s going to last and he’s reluctant to get sucked into that again.

"What?" he laughs. "Your opinion of me is really-- I'm really not. I mean, I thought I was a predator. I was a predator just last night, according to you." He's come close, like he's been using the words to distract both Ryan and himself from the movement. And then he's crouching down at his side, still in his blanket. "You really think you can do it, though?" he asks, "Get it back into place?"

It would save him from having to do it. A selfish thought, but something about watching Ryan try — about watching Ryan try to be quiet — that had turned his stomach almost as badly as Shane imagines it will if _he_ has to try. Because he's starting to think they do have to try, because they can't just leave it. He doesn't really think anywhere is completely safe anymore, and the cabin is no exception.

~

Ryan smiles honestly, then. Shane’s walking over in that dumb blanket, and there’s a breath of laughter on Ryan’s lips. It kinda shakes out of him. He looks sideways, at Shane, and he’s there, looking ridiculous, when Ryan says—almost like a whisper, “You stopped being a predator when you put that stupid blanket around your shoulders.” And he doesn’t stop smiling.

He does, though, when he looks at his leg again. Offended at its continued existence. “I don’t know.” He doesn’t. But he doesn’t like the idea of Shane doing it either, one, because Shane is afraid of sounds, of things—an odd thing to think when Shane’s been on his own, bashing zombie brains in with pipes for who knows how long—but he does seem to be. Afraid of things. Afraid of Ryan, maybe. And two, well, he wouldn’t be in control. It would be terrifying. “Probably.”

 _Probably fucking not_ , his brain amends.

Because he doesn’t want to do it alone. He doesn’t want to be alone. But that’s not Shane’s thing. That’s Ryan’s thing. And he’s way too afraid of what it means to think of anything as _their_ thing.

“It hurt like a bitch, but…” Then he meets Shane’s eyes. It’s unexpectedly intense. Soft, because he thinks he needs to be softer for this guy, but intense. “You don’t need to.” And to dial it back. “It’s cool. I feel like we don’t _both_ need to be traumatized.”

~

Shane’s reeling beneath the intensity in his eyes and the casualness in his tone as it shifts, but Shane thinks _Okay, let’s give this a shot_ , because he thinks he sees what Ryan’s doing. He lowers his eyes from Ryan’s because... he doesn’t know if anyone’s ever looked at him like that. He feels simultaneously safe and vulnerable beneath it.

Shane follows Ryan’s lead though, keeping his tone easy and light. “I’m one hundred percent down with no more trauma,” he says even as he drops from a crouch to both knees beside him, like he’s not going anywhere, and, can’t help it, as his eyes slide back up to Ryan’s. He feels that little leap of nerves in his gut. It’s like the feeling he used to get when the school bell rang the end of the last class just before Summer vacation. It’s all promise. Possibilities.

It’s a feeling that says he wants Ryan’s eyes to still be on him — that hopes that’s what he’ll find.

It feels a little traitorous.

~

Ryan runs his hands over the shredded seams of his jeans to dispel some of the energy that’s built in him. At the way Shane reacts. He looks away, and agrees, but he drops to his knees. Moving completely at odds with what he’s saying, and Ryan is fascinated. Okay, he’s been fascinated (and frustrated) with this guy since he saw him in the doorway, but this is a new level.

He laughs, and it’s this hot, nervous thing. Distant, but very present. Like splashes of too-bright colors. He doesn’t know why he’s nervous. He doesn’t think it’s his leg. Even though it should be. But he’s hung up on the way Shane’s shoulders hunch beneath his blanket, at the simultaneously prim and rugged way he holds himself.

He’s looking too hard, so when Shane looks at him again—his body heats with the collision. His laugh evaporates into this charged huff of breath. “Oh—oh—kay. What’s—what’re you—what’s happening then?” His eyes scramble for something to cling to that isn’t Shane’s neck, or his lips, or his bizarrely well-shaped eyebrows. But his jaw is smooth—his chin is. And Ryan’s curious. Because the last time he shaved was with a disposal razor he stole— _no, Ryan, not stole_ —from a Wal Greens, but they were out of shaving cream, so he essentially gouged his entire jaw off.

Jake had somehow faired much better.

But now Ryan’s staring at Shane’s jaw, which could be taken for his mouth, while they’re approximately four inches apart so he glares at his lap. “Do you have a razor? Your face looks good.” His eyes bulge a little. “Good, like, _shaved_. Like clean good. Like you shaved. Why am I talking about this? I should…” He turns back to his leg, takes a breath. “Do this.”

~

Shane’s looking at him like he’s suddenly just started speaking Swahili, but he snaps back into focus as Ryan looks down at his leg again. “Hey, you got this,” he tells him, soft, assuring, but there’s an edge to it, too, like it might be sarcastic if you squint. “Put something— put something in your mouth. Don’t bite your tongue off or anything, please.” He’s moved almost imperceptibly closer. “Then we can deal with the really _critical_ parts of post-Apocalyptic life: shaving.”

~

Ryan laughs, but it’s short-lived because he’s got to get back to his leg. He grabs the blanket he had before and pushes it back into his mouth, bites down on it. He doesn’t look at Shane, doesn’t understand why he’s here, but he isn’t going to tell him to leave. He doesn’t want him to leave. So he stays focused on his leg.

He braces his hands against it, grits his teeth so hard he thinks the blanket will shred. It doesn’t, though, even as the pain erupts back into him, and his body goes rigid. Tears prick his eyes all over again, and he pushes, pushes, begs his leg to move. Begs the roar of pain in his ears to quiet. Begs his skeleton not to shatter like he thinks it will.

Then he slips. He doesn’t know if it was intentional or not, but he slams forward, spits so the blanket falls, takes these gasping, horrible breaths. “God damn it,” he says between them, barely words at all. Black spots pepper his peripheral. He closes his eyes to shut them out. “C’mon,” he says, then harsher, “come _on_.”

He shoves the blanket back into his mouth and grabs his leg again, pretends his arm isn’t quivering so hard he nearly loses his grip. Pretends he doesn’t think his body is going to burst and scatter like fucking beads on the ground.

~

“Hey,” Shane says, and it’s bracing. “Ryan, hey, waitwaitwait,” and he goes to touch his back, and then doesn’t. He shifts though, sheds the blanket, and he’s even closer, his shoulder against Ryan’s. “Here— I’m going to put my hands over yours, okay? I won’t do anything else, I promise. You decide what’s happening, just— okay?”

It’s a lie, a little. He’s really starting to think Ryan can do it, but he also thinks he keeps stopping, keeps having to stop before the critical point. If Shane can just find it, get it right, maybe he can keep the pressure there where Ryan wants to stop.

Maybe it’s wrong of him, maybe he shouldn’t be so presumptuous, maybe it’ll lose him any trust he’s gained from Ryan, but at least they won’t have to prolong his horrible fucking suffering.

~

Ryan’s lips are quivering. His whole body is chattering, and it’s not from cold. It’s from this sickly, ghostly pain that is drawing notches up his spine. He stares at Shane’s hand for too long. Doesn’t move. His heart is hammering hard enough to keep time with the pain rattling his skull. His leg—god, his leg just… all of him. It all hurts. Like he doesn’t understand how it’s even together anymore.

But Shane’s trying to help. In this weird, bizarre way. The same way he does everything, and somehow—it always feels like the right thing. The weirdest thing. But the right one. Ryan laughs this high-pitched, delirious little laugh, tears streaking his cheeks, and he nods through the blanket still crushed between his teeth. He swallows and pushes. Black spots immediately explode across his vision, or more like black waves.

He’s going to pass out. No, he isn’t. He just has to… keep going, get through this, and it’ll be over. If he can just do this, it’ll be over. He feels his bone groan, like jagged pieces of it scraping against the solid part. Like he’ll just slam straight through it. The thought ratchets knives through his lungs, into his head. He pushes, feels himself stutter again, slip.

Because, god, this hurts. He can’t think. Can’t breathe. It just hurts. God, it fucking hurts. But his hands are there, still pushing—or maybe he’s not pushing, maybe Shane is—he doesn’t know. No, he does know. Shane’s hand is there, and he hears himself through this makeshift gag in his mouth. There’s this high-pitched wail, or whimper, and he feels his “please, please, _please_ ” more than he hears it. “Stop.”

He doesn’t—and then there’s this snap, this grind and _crack_ , and he’s pretty sure he’s severed straight down the spine. He blacks out, because the swelling and the bleeding and the nerves all surge through him so hard it’s like a car hits him.


	2. Part 2

Part 2

Fuck he hates himself. He feels Ryan’s leg slot back into place and God, it rattles through Ryan, through Shane, and it’s not satisfying, it’s sort of awful. He tries to catch him. Twists and wedges his shoulder against Ryan’s back before he hits the floor, sort of scrambles to get him down without cracking his head off of it.

Shane’s shaking all over, he feels sick again, but there’s relief in it too, mingled with the heat of nausea. He takes a steadying breath. His head hurts worse than ever. He presses a palm to it, hard, surprised to find it damp. “Ryan—”

He wants him awake, needs to make sure he really is okay and that they didn’t just fuck everything up more. He’s tense and braced against everything, against Ryan more than anything else. He’s pulled away, but he reaches out to touch his face, still streaked with dirt and mud, and then it’s too intimate and he jerks his hand back, touches his shoulder instead. “Jesus… Ryan…”

~

It takes him a bit. Minutes, probably, maybe five. Before his heart rate calms down enough for him to scramble back up. Back to wherever the fuck he exists now. His eyes flutter, and the light knocks into his head too hard. It’s nothing, though—all of it, the soreness, the ache, it feels so _small_ , because his leg feels _better_. It doesn’t feel like a constant tug of knotted skin dragging at the rest of him like a weight.  
   
His mouth is dry again. So he has to swallow and blink and writhe before he can coax anything out of himself. His eyes find Shane, who he’s honestly impressed isn’t dead on the floor. And he imagines strangling him to death with his bare hands, but there isn’t much malice in it when he rasps, “Fuck you, dude.”  
  
~  
  
“I know,” Shane says, and wipes his palms on his jeans. “I know. Jesus... are— is it okay?”He doesn’t know why but the words _are you okay_ won’t make their way out of his mouth. “Don’t— we need to put something— like a brace on it.” Brace is the wrong word, but he can’t get his mind to work with it feeling like it’s all overheated with sparks. Jesus, he’s freaking out. He’s shaking. He presses his palms hard against his thighs to steady himself.  
  
~  
  
“Well, it feels… better. But I’m definitely scarred for life.”

Ryan blinks up at Shane. And he has the thought, poor guy, which pisses him off. Because Shane isn’t the one who just had his bone reset. It’s hurting like a bitch. Lighting firecrackers through him periodically. But, damn, Shane just looks… he’s pale—clammy. Ryan runs his hands over his face—sweat comes away, he’s absolutely soaked—and then peeks out of them at Shane, gives him a second, gives himself a second, and then he chuckles. Tastes the salty and flecks of dirt that slip into his mouth.

Ryan thinks about reaching up, grabbing his hand. But he doesn’t think that’s what he’s supposed to do here. He’s panting, but he tries to steady his voice when he says, “What’re you talking about? It’s magically healed. Time to go kick some ass.” He sits up, or tries, nearly faints again. Then he just props himself on an elbow. “When Jake broke his leg they set it between two little—do you have boards? I think boards would work.”

~  
  
He laughs a little, a soft, breathless thing. “You sort of do look like you could kick ass, actually,” he says, eyes flickering over Ryan’s arms for a second, before he looks away. The thoughts ground him a little. “Okay. Okay, yeah, I’ll— there’s boards in the kitchen.” He means he’ll have to pull them up from the floor, but that’s what he did for the windows, too, and it’s not like he’s going to be fucking trying to make a casserole in there any time soon or anything. He doesn’t need the floor.  
  
“Also, you… you need to eat something.” Shane’s running low on food, and he mentally calculates everything divided by two, and it just… it’s not great. “What did you have in your pack?” he asks, suddenly remember it, hoping that, on the off chance… maybe Ryan has something they can use. Maybe it’s not all destroyed.  
  
~  
   
Heat cracks through Ryan under Shane’s gaze, what he says. He ought to like it, and to be fair, he lights up a little. Shane thinks he looks like he can kick ass, which is great, because Ryan feels about as ass-kick-ish as wet toilet paper. But he still squirms. Not quite sure why.  
   
“Thanks,” he says, but it’s so quiet and fast, it barely comes out. “And there’s probably mud and rain in there now. But I did have some beef jerky and candy I stole from a gas station.” He flinches, glances back at the Goldfish. He still hasn’t touched them. “How do you get food out here, anyway? I don’t wanna… waste all your shit.” He doesn’t know how Shane gets it, where he wanders to, and he doesn’t want him to have to wander anywhere. “Do you have water? We can start there.”  
  
~  
  
“Oh, yeah,” Shane says, and he scrambles up. A little sound slides out of his throat, sort of embarrassing, a kind of squeak of pain as he remembers that his arms fucking _hurt_. He ignores it though, heads for the stairs. “We’ll have to use the rain water, but… On the bright side, there should be a lot…”  
  
He climbs the steps again. Outside the one un-boarded window there is a little thing he’s rigged up (nearly killing himself by leaning out the window to properly secure this hook thing to the side of the cabin) but he can hang this metal bucket on it, which means there’s sometimes water, and he doesn’t even have to go outside. Shane gets the window open and his arms fucking shake as he pulls the bucket in, his muscles so fucking wrecked, but he was right. There is a fair amount. About halfway full.  
  
There’s more buckets and Tupperware things — anything he could spare, really, around the back of the cabin, but they’re on the ground. He’ll boil those later, use them for washing up, more drinking water, whatever else. He latches the window shut again and goes back down, sets the bucket on the floor, grabs the cup he’d used last from the little table beside the bed and fills it, holds it out to Ryan, and he’s so careful. Careful because Ryan’s still a mess, and he looks bad, and Shane’s trying to do things right, after how he acted last night (but to be fair, Ryan snapped at him first) but Shane supposes, that could be excused, considering everything… fucking everything… God. It hardly seems real. He knows that when he goes out there, he’ll see that grave…  
  
~  
   
Ryan takes it, drinks it. Too fast, really. There’s probably rules about how fast people should drink when they’re dying of thirst, but he doesn’t care. He absolutely downs it and gasps a little. He hands it back to Shane. “Thanks.”  
   
Except that was the extent of where he knows to go, so he just watches Shane awkwardly, then, when it’s too much, casts his eyes around the room. “And thanks for, uh… the leg thing. You—well, I guess if I thank you for everything we’ll be here all day.”  
   
~  
  
“Here,” Shane says, fills the cup again and gives it back. “Don’t thank me then,” he says, and it’s weird, cavalier. It feels weird in his bones as he shrugs one shoulder — like he doesn’t know where it comes from, or what he’s trying to affect. It makes him feel a little too warm, flushed. He really, desperately wants to be clean, wants to put on dry, clean clothes. He wants to get the mud out of his hair.    
  
“Let’s get those— boards. Fix this… then get you off the fucking floor. Then I’m getting this fucking mud off of everything, because I don’t like it.”  
  
~  
   
Ryan wilts a little. Even as he drinks the second cup. It’s not Shane’s fault, but he’s still stuck. He can’t even get _off the floor_ by himself. He starts to say, _can I help_ , but then he can’t imagine how he possibly could. Just imagines Shane would say no and laugh at him. He probably wouldn’t, but the thought is bad enough, and god—then there’s this wound ache inside of him and he’s thinking about Jake. This particular thing shouldn’t make him… shouldn’t bring it back. But Jake needed him. Just being alive was enough for Jake.  
   
Jake being alive was enough for him.  
   
But now he _isn’t_. Fuck. There’s this hole in Ryan’s chest, and it’s gaping, tearing and crumbling open, like it’ll consume him. Maybe this is how Jake felt. When the disease was…  
   
Ryan doesn’t want to think about this. Doesn’t want to fly off the rails in front of this relative stranger… again. He drops his elbow onto his thigh. It’s so stiff. He’s in so much pain that he’s just seeped into it. There’s mud all over him. And Shane _doesn’t like it_. Shane doesn’t like a lot of things, Ryan thinks, and Ryan desperately doesn’t want to make his way onto that list.  
   
But how could he _not_? He’s done all this. Brought this shit into Shane’s relatively… well-maintained lifestyle, well, as well as one can maintain a lifestyle in this mess. His forehead is in his hand, head throbbing, arm screaming, leg doing both, as he takes a breath.  
   
“Yeah,” he says, then musters up the courage, “Is there anything I can do?”  
   
~  
  
Shane is picking the pipe off of the floor so he can use it to lever the boards up in the kitchen, but he looks back at Ryan and feels something spark through his chest like a fissure, a hairline crack. “Yeah,” he says, because he sees it in him, the need to do something, anything... he remembers how much it helped to do something, anything else, after his dad…  
  
“Do you like washing?” He kicks at the muddy pile of clothes on the floor. “You can be like the uh— the Washer at the Ford or whatever, only we’ll use a basin, and not the river,” he tell him, because that’s something Ryan can do from where he is, or from the table or anywhere, really, without using his leg. “And you— you’re going to need something to wear. You can’t just be _shirtless_ all the time, it’s indecent.”  
  
~  
   
Ryan perks up. “Yeah, washing is great.”  
   
Okay, washing isn’t exactly… the best thing he’s ever been asked to do. And it is potentially a task Shane is giving him out of pity, but he did say he hated the mud. He scoots towards the clothes Shane kicked at, knowing he can’t clean now—very aware of it. But he wants to anyway. He smiles at Shane. “What? Am I making you feel inadequate? I guess I could wrap myself in a sheet and walk around like Henry VIII.” He breathes a laugh as the image rematerializes in his head. “Where’s my shirt? It’s probably semi-dry now, right?”  
  
~  
  
Shane goes still under that smile, but he’s holding Ryan’s eyes and God— he wants to see them closer, in daylight, to see if they’re really as dark as they seem from where he’s standing.  
  
“All right, first of all, Henry VIII was a murderer that chopped off everyone’s—” Shane’s eyes gloss over a little as he thinks about his life, his actual life, where he cracks skulls open on a semi-regular basis. “Wait…” he begins, trying to backtrack. “Okay, I’m not like Henry VIII…” he attempts. “You take that back.”  
  
~  
   
Ryan makes an exaggerated, thoughtful expression. Completes it with a little noise to say he’s actually seeing a stark resemblance. “Eh, guess you’re right. You’re probably a little skinnier.” Shane’s got this look on his face, and Ryan can’t figure out what it means. He’s electrified with it. Feels like he needs to do something to _earn_ that look, but he hasn’t, and well…  
   
A thousand questions buzz on his tongue, but he’s so nervous. He wants this guy to be happy, comfortable around him, and based on their interaction up till now, Ryan knows how easy it is to freak him out. And Ryan’s not exactly at his best. Potentially at his worst. “And less whiney,” he continues. “Wasn’t he a total jackass that devised a new religion so he could marry like, twelve women? You don’t even have one.” He grabs at his neck, because it’s sore, and massages a little, rolls it. “He’d probably die trying to stick his dick in a tree or something.”  
  
~  
  
He’s laughing suddenly. It hurts the muscles in his back, but he doesn’t stop. “Wait one— one religion, or one woman?” Shane asks. “I mean, sure, if you’re going to be making wild assumptions—” his eyes flicker over Ryan’s arms again, his chest, and the muscles where they shift beneath the movement and _Jesus_ — “Wait, stick his dick in a _tree_?”  
  
It’s actually somehow… it’s better after that. They work out the brace for Ryan’s leg after some (much) trial and error, but they eventually get it to work. They eat the fucking Goldfish crackers and Shane throws the box into the fire like some kind of offering.  
  
He doesn’t go outside until the sun is high. It’s not so much that they don’t come out, they’re not like vampires, they’re just a lot easier to see, and there’s something— some childhood-logic that makes Shane think that if it’s daytime, he’ll be safer. If the windows are boarded and the door is locked, he’ll be okay. It becomes ritualistic, but the ritual is what makes him feel safe. It’s based in logic. Shane used to reason with the monsters he thought were in his closet before he learned monsters didn’t exist. _‘Don’t come out and scare me, and I’ll leave you alone, too.’_ Shane thinks he co-existed with the supposed monsters in his closet and under his bed until he was about eight. And then he stopped believing in them at all.  
  
He goes outside and it is so, so quiet, save for the birds. He can see the mess of mud and earth where the grave is now, and Shane thinks they should create some kind of marker, maybe. It won’t be visible forever. The environment will reclaim it, as it does every man-made thing.  
  
He gets the water, brings it inside. It kills his arms and his back, but he keeps it to himself because he doesn’t want to remind Ryan of the grave, the digging, any of it. He doesn’t venture out for Ryan’s pack, because he doesn’t want to go that far. He doesn’t want to get close to the trees or the carnage of undead bodies.  
  
So they talk a little — they talk about the most mundane things. Movies they’ve seen, which flavour of Doritos is superior. It’s so normal it’s absurd, but Shane clings to it with everything in him. He assigns Ryan tasks whenever he can think of anything, and the rest of the time he tries to distract him, keep him talking, and man, he can talk. He’s sort of… he’s just a lot. He feels so much. It’s kind of fascinating.  
  
When the light outside starts to fail, Shane closes the cabin up, checks everything — the locks, the boards on the windows. He pours the water bit by bit into the cast iron kettle and makes a joke about how maybe he is like a witch, and maybe he even looks like one, backlit by the fire, steam rising from the water.  
  
There’s a bathroom. Technically. It doesn’t work, because there’s been no running water for months, and it’s sort of dark and creepy and cramped, but Shane sort of gives the tub a perfunctory wipe down, and then fills it with enough water for them to conceivably bathe in. They’ll have to share the water, so that’s… whatever.  
  
“Here,” Shane says, reappearing in the living room doorway. “You go first.”  
  
~  
  
~  
   
The day’s been better than he thought. No more explosions, and Shane’s actually getting easier to talk to. There’s something easy about him, when he’s not dealing with emotions. Ryan likes it. He leans into it, and he talks a lot. Potentially more than usual. Maybe he’s trying to draw it out, spin this thread between them so he’ll have more of it to hold on to. But maybe it’s scary because the more they do, the less Ryan’s thinking he’ll be able to leave.  
   
But his leg’s braced now, and it’s only a matter of time before… but he doesn’t want to think about it. He doesn’t want to get emotional and put a rift between them now. He still hasn’t gone to check his bag, and he wants to, because Shane seems like he wants the food—Ryan would too if a stranger was imposing on his wares—and Ryan wants the radio. Wants the pieces of Jake that might be left.  
   
He just doesn’t want those things to fucking eat them or whatever. He doesn’t want them to have any more pieces of Jake. They’ve already taken so much.  
   
Ryan is using the shovel to help himself around, kinda like a crutch. Shane hasn’t said anything yet, so he’s assuming it’s fine, so he uses that to move towards the bathroom. He looks around Shane, not over, never over, towards the bath he’s prepared. And for the first time he realizes he’s about to—take his clothes off, all of them. Shane won’t be there. It’s not like… Ryan stomps on the thought like an errant bug and eases around Shane.  
   
“Okay, well, this is gonna…” He glances at his brace. “If I drown in the bath, just… bury me and pretend this never happened.” He makes his way to the tub, stares at it. This is going to be the worst thing he’s ever done. He waits for Shane to leave, waits for him to walk away, far away, before he twists and untangles out of his clothes.  
   
Or he tries, but then he trips, falls and his leg jostles. He hisses. “Fuck me, man.” He glances at the door. Hopefully Shane has enough sense not to come charging into the room. Okay, so he can’t take his clothes off without removing the brace. He sighs, prays he has enough sense to get it back on—he thinks he does—and undoes it.    
   
Finally, _finally_ , he gets out of his clothes, and the sheer exposure—the vulnerability in this—in not wearing anything. With Shane… it churns through him like sandpaper. Frays all his edges so he’s shivering even before the cold reaches him.  
   
He slides, slips, really, into the bath so some of the water splashes, and he winces. Hoists his bad leg over the side of the tub. And slowly, he starts to use the water to rinse the mud off. Shane hasn’t mentioned soap, and Ryan’s not about to say anything. Using his voice, in this state, feels wrong somehow. Like he can’t even acknowledge Shane exists until he gets clothes back on his body. Otherwise, he’ll just incinerate straight to ashes.  
   
It takes him ages, but he works through it, gets the mud out of his hair, off the rest of him. And then there’s the matter of getting _out_. He trips, has to cling to the wall to keep from exploding back down to the floor. Making more noise. Which he’s becoming hyper aware of. And then he’s looking at his dirty clothes. He’s washed his shirt, but not the jeans.  
   
And his voice shakes, mortified, as he calls through the door. Hopes Shane’s close enough to hear. “Hey, uh…” He panics, heat rushing him. “ _Don’t_ —don’t like… come in here, but I don’t… I don’t wanna, like, uhh… I need to, uh—can I… my jeans…” He sounds so meek. He hates it, but he can’t make his voice big, or confident, or anything—when he isn’t wearing fucking clothes.  
   
“Are you even there? Jesus Christ…”  
  
~  
  
Shane tries not to be _acutely_ aware of every noise, every curse that Ryan makes, even though he’s literally gone as far from the bathroom as he can, without being outside. He’s wearing a shirt that’s sort of too small, uncomfortable across his chest and ribs and down his arms. The sleeves are too short. He feels like an idiot. It’s one of the ones he had in his closet that he never wore, back where he still had a closet with actual clothes in it… He’s wearing it now because it was what he’d grabbed when he’d literally just taken an armful of things, once upon a time, shoved them into a bag, and ran. He’s wearing it now because he hates it, and if it gets filthy he doesn’t care, and he’ll just have one more excuse to fucking… rip it up and turn it into rags or bandages or something without feeling guilty.  
  
He’s just thinking about that time. His apartment in Illinois. He wonders what happened to it, because he’d gone to his parents’ when things started looking really weird. When they started going bad. He’s just thinking about how they didn’t all make it there when—  
  
“Hey uh…” Ryan’s talking and Shane can only sort of hear, so he moves down the tiny, dark hallway towards the bathroom like a cautious animal, but doesn’t touch the bathroom door, like if he does, it will burn him.  
  
“What?” Shane asks, and startles, flinches at how loud his own voice sounds in comparison.  
  
~  
   
God, Ryan doesn’t want to speak again. But he doesn’t know what he expected. He was barely talking the first time, and he didn’t even make a full sentence. “I just, mean… I washed off, and my jeans are fucking gross, so…” His voice is taking every bit of his breath. It’s quiet. He can’t stand the fact that Shane is there, just… outside the door. He’s covering himself, moving his hands at different angles, even though no one’s in the room. And he’s going to take about forty-five minutes to get back into his clothes, and, whatever.  
   
“I don’t wanna use this water to wash them, since you have to... I can put them back on, I guess. It’s, uh…” He doesn’t know what he’s asking. He should’ve thought about this before. But he wasn’t exactly thinking about _taking off his pants_. His heart beat drums through his collarbone so hard it hurts.  
   
He’s hovering over the brace, thinking he should be doing something with it, but he can’t really put it on if his pants aren’t on first. “This is dumb. I can just… put them back on. It’s whatever.” He grabs his jeans, glad to be doing something with his hands, and hisses again as he jerks his leg too fast. Too much.  
  
~  
  
Shane cocks his head when Ryan hisses, his eyes flickering away from the doorknob, but he’s not really _looking_ at anything, he’s just tensing under the little sound of pain. “Hey, okay, no, wait,” he says, and wonders if he’s going to be able to produce more than one and two syllable words any time soon. “No, don’t, I’ve—” _Wow_ , he thinks. _I’m really not faring too great, here._ “I’ve got something you can borrow. Probably.”  
  
He sort of — he hesitates, waits, uncertain like— first of all, he’s at least a foot taller than Ryan is, at _least_ , and anything he lends him will be comical on him, and honestly Shane’s— it’s not like he has a lot of clothes to _spare_ but there’s at least— they should at least both be able to put on something clean. That’s the whole point of this, all this work, all this heating of water, all this washing of clothes. Fuck. “Okay?” He asks, like he needs permission. He sort of wants it. He doesn’t want to be the one deciding everything. He wants someone to tell him what to do. Maybe he’s wanted it for a long time. Since _all_ this shit started.  
  
~  
   
Shane’s clothes are going to be wildly big. He knows that, and he also knows that Shane is going to have to open the door with Ryan wearing _nothing_. He won’t look, obviously. But it’s the principle. Still, Ryan isn’t going to turn him down. He’s offering, and, well, Ryan’s jeans are more mud than denim currently.  
   
“Yeah,” he says, and his voice cracks a little. “Yeah, okay, cool.” He’s still on the edge of the tub—correction, his bare ass is on the edge of the tub, and it’s just… all kinds of not great. He keeps his hands over his lap, covering… well, just covering. He clears his throat. “Just… uh, warn me, before you open the door or whatever. I guess.” Then, he works up enough for a kind of squirming, “thanks.”  
  
~  
  
Shane swears softly, and sort of says “Yup,” and it comes out weird and hoarse sort of, but he clears his throat and goes back down the hall and finds — something. Something Ryan can wear. And it’s so— it’s so ridiculous, somehow, Shane realizes as he straightens, clean pants in hand, because they’ve— he’s seen Ryan at potentially the most vulnerable he’s ever been. He’s fucking— he’s _saved his life_ , he’s buried his brother with him, he’s fucking set his broken leg, Ryan’s hands trembling beneath his own. Ryan in the bath down the hall, without clothes, should really be the absolute last thing that Shane might consider vulnerable. The last thing that should feel like way too much.  
  
But it does.  
  
Shane sort of taps a couple times the wooden wall on his way back down the hallway, like he’s warning Ryan of his presence before he even reaches the door. It’s something he used to do as a kid, too — make some kind of little noise — always quiet as a cat. He’d appear around corners or at people’s backs, and startle them, despite his height.  
  
He can somehow fade into the background.  
  
“Hey,” he says, and his voice sounds a little steadier. He hits the door once, softly, with his knuckles, palm up, and sort of just leaves his fingers there against the wood.  
  
~  
   
Ryan jumps like his entire body is on hooked to strings in the ceiling. Shane’s making these tapping noises, and it’s like a fucking horror movie. It’s stupid, but Ryan’s that amped. He readjusts his arms again, swallows, feels nerves creep through him. It’s fine. Shane is going to run in and laugh at him or, well, Ryan doesn’t know what he expects Shane to do, but it’s got him on the fritz. He catches his breath, and it’s a few seconds before he says, “Okay, can you just, uh—throw them in? Or whatever?”  
  
~  
  
Shane actually laughs a little. “Okay, I… yeah, sure,” he says, “Or you could just—” he doesn’t bother finishing the sentence. “I’m opening this door, now,” he tells him, and does, but he doesn’t really step inside. He keeps his eyes down and goes to toss the pants in, and then stops. “You know… if these land too far away from you are you even going to be able to…? I mean, I already told you, I’m not good at sports.”  
  
~  
   
Fuck. Ryan did not think of this. He really didn’t. But Shane’s got the door open, and Ryan is on fire. His entire body is truly going to burst into fucking flames. His eyes are massive, breath too heavy, as he stares at the space where Shane is. “Whoa, whoa! Whoa! I—I don’t know, dude! It’s just—I’ll crawl over there or something. It’s…” And re-break his leg, but it’s fine. Totally fine. Better than Shane seeing… oh _fuck_ no. He’s pressing into himself with his arms like he can somehow cover more ground that way, and his eyes keep getting bigger, like he can just use those as another form of cover. “I’m naked,” he squeaks, like Shane might not know that. Like it’s the biggest thing that they’ve faced.    
  
  
~  
  
“Well, yeah, I should _hope_ so,” Shane says, and his voice is simultaneously exasperated and very soft. “I’m not going to look at you— Jesus Christ,” he laughs again, I thought you said I wasn’t a predator, I— God, man, don’t you like— haven’t you ever experienced a changing room— with all your sports? I’m not— it’s fine, you don’t need to— just, I’ll hold it out, and you can take it, all right? You want me to put my hand over my eyes?” he asks, and he’s definitely making fun of him now, because it’s easier than thinking about why this situation is so utterly absurd in the first place.  
  
~  
   
“What?” Ryan really kinda yelps it. “This is not a changing room situation! It’s different!” He isn’t totally sure why, but it is absolutely different. Because Shane is, well he’s this super nice stranger who took Ryan in, and, and it doesn’t matter—Ryan just doesn’t want Shane to see him naked. “For one, you’re wearing clothes, and I’m—my leg is…” He starts like he only just took in the rest of what Shane said. “Hold on! What? You’re not—what? Are you just gonna walk in here? This isn’t—why are you laughing? This is so not funny. I’m just going to stand there while you try to bathe! It’s, I’m…” Shane is making a game out of this, and Ryan is so much more embarrassed. Because fine, maybe he should be a confident ball of masculinity and not give one single shit if Shane sees his fucking dick.  
   
Except. He does.  
   
He really fucking does. He squirms, wants to get some kind of purchase in this conversation. But he’s naked, and it makes everything a lot harder. “Whatever, okay, just…” He clears his throat. “Fine. But predator is back on the table at this point.”  
  
~  
  
Shane’s still laughing, harder now, since Ryan asked why he was, and it’s somehow, suddenly just _hilarious_. “Oka— okay,” he manages, followed by just laughing alone in the hallway like a fucking loser. He sort of gathers himself, still grinning, and steps into the bathroom. He keeps his eyes down, but can’t keep the smile off of his lips. He holds the pants out, gaze flickering to Ryan’s bare feet, the slight swelling, still, in one ankle. That’s as far as it goes. “Here, take them.”  
  
~  
  
Damn it. Ryan’s loving Shane laughing. He’s really laughing, in a really good way, but Ryan hates that it’s at him. He really does. And then Shane’s walking in, and he’s smiling, and Ryan’s body feels so hot that he thinks the bath water still soaking his skin is starting to boil. He might just evaporate in a few seconds. Because Shane looks… well, he’s grinning, and he’s not really the kind of person Ryan thinks he wants to look… like this in front of. He’s imposing, in a weird way, and someone Ryan wants to impress. Maybe that’s it.  
   
It’s so much worse to come to the realization when Shane’s a foot away with a pile of clothes and Ryan is full-on nude. His toes curl, because Shane’s looking at them, and he feels the gaze like a sniper scope. He hunkers down a little further at first, so desperately not wanting to let go of himself, but finally he takes a breath and puts his hands on the clothes, brushing Shane’s fingers a little. Then drags them forward, slams them into his lap.  
   
He laughs a little, because Shane’s laughing, and it’s making him a little giddy, a little lightheaded. In a very different way from the dehydration. But he fucking hates that this guy is so amused at this, at him. So he kicks at Shane. Lightly, because he doesn’t need a forty-foot oak tree toppling onto his naked form. But it’s a retaliation, and he’s desperately in need.  
   
“Dick,” and it’s weak, because he’s still smiling.  
  
~  
  
Shane steps back, sort of into the sink that doesn’t work anymore, and he says, soft, still smiling, definitely still teasing, “There certainly is,” because he hasn’t seen anything, and if he had, he’d probably have shot out of the room and back down the hall or something, but he— oops, his eyes flicker up and lock on Ryan’s, and Ryan is smiling. At him. Shane’s brows raise, a little surprised, and then he realizes, oh shit, that he’s not supposed to look at him. His his gaze skates over Ryan’s cheekbones, over his collarbones, the bruise on his shoulder—  
  
Stop, Shane thinks, and does. He looks away. “Okay, well!” He says, like they’ve just had a lengthy conversation and now he’s got to be off. It sounds like it should be followed by a ‘see you later!’ but he doesn’t say anything, just sort of looks down the hall as his fingers curl tightly around the edge of the sink.  
  
~  
  
~  
   
Ryan is halfway through something about the comment, about the shitty, horrible joke, because he’s so miserably embarrassed he could shrivel—but their eyes meet. Then Shane’s talking like he’s late for a fucking interview. And Ryan squints. His eyebrow twitches in time with his mouth. He’s positive Shane just looked at him, but he’s not panicked. He’s not even mad enough to open his mouth and call him on it. Because, somehow, he thinks he got more retaliation than the kick.  
   
So much for Shane’s blasé attitude. Ryan finds himself grinning, more and more, until he’s giggling, laughing, more loudly than he ought to be. His body is vibrating with it. But he can’t get his shit together, because not only is this absurd, but Shane seems like _he’s_ freaking out. And Ryan’s not freaking out as much anymore. He’s wheezing on his own laughter.  
   
“Okay, well!” he repeats like it’s the funniest thing he’s ever heard, and it is, because he’s laughing again, clutching the clothes to him.  
  
~  
  
  
Shane laughs, faintly embarrassed, and then he looks back. He knows he shouldn’t but he does. And maybe it’s a challenge, a little bit, or maybe he just wants to watch Ryan laugh like that. God, his mouth, though. It’s so… Shane can’t help smiling. He’s trying not to, but it’s there in his eyes, all lit up. He bites his lower lip hard, sort of squints at him. Thinks he should probably get the fuck outta here before this becomes awkward again.  
  
Ryan’s skin is wet. There’s water all over him, beaded. It’s like a fucking… okay. Shane’s really got to get out of here.  He’s trying to keep his eyes above the level of Ryan’s collarbones and it’s only sort of working. “Unless you need anything else,” he says, somehow still manages to make it joking, edging towards the door.  
  
~  
  
Ryan’s hunched over with laughter, and he looks up to find Shane’s eyes again. Shane’s not supposed to be looking, but the way he’s looking—embarrassment slides off Ryan like the water on his skin. He smiles and shakes his head. “Yeah, I’m good, Shane,” he says and lingers on the name. He doesn’t know why, but he does. “Thanks.”  
   
He says it like Shane ought to know this, like it’s common sense, because it is, but there’s a cliff to it, an edge, like Ryan’s drawing him in. Like Ryan doesn’t want him to leave. It’s absurd, because he does not want to be looked at stark naked like this, but he wants to be looked at by Shane, like this. Maybe for confidence, maybe for normalcy. Ryan can’t begin to guess. He doesn’t bother trying as he raises his eyebrows, smile going a little crooked with skepticism.  
  
~  
  
  
Shane blinks, because no one’s said his name in almost a year.  
  
And now Ryan’s saying it, and Shane thinks that even if everyone he’s ever known was calling him at once, right now; that the way Ryan’s just said it… that’s the one he would hear. It’s like he’s never actually known what his name was — what it could sound like — until he hears it in Ryan’s mouth. Or maybe it’s just been a while…  
  
His lips are parted, and he’s just staring. He notices because they’re very dry when he closes his mouth to swallow, and his tongue darts out to wet them, without thinking. And then it’s fucking— it’s ridiculous, because he’s thinking that Ryan’s mouth would be wet, lips damp with the water from the bath, and his mouth is so— and Shane can almost taste it, that water, but he can’t imagine what the rest of it would be — what Ryan would—, and something crackles down Shane’s spine so fast that his breath hitches, and he has to catch up to what Ryan’s just fucking said.  
  
“Yeah,” he says, because he thinks maybe Ryan said thanks, or maybe he didn’t, but he definitely said ‘I’m good,’ which means Shane can fucking go now. And he should.  
  
~  
   
Ryan’s brow furrows, because Shane looks like he may be astral projecting, or he’s just gone and never coming back. He’s still staring at Ryan, though. Naked. Naked Ryan. Then Shane licks his lips, and Ryan feels it down his spine, feels it like the water droplets, but they cling and quiver over the notches of him—over his bruises, and suddenly, he’s covered in goose bumps. His smile is still frozen on his face, because he can’t figure out how to work his expression anymore. He doesn’t know what’s got Shane so absolutely dumbstruck. But it might be contagious.  
   
A sound comes out of his mouth. He wants to say something, but it’s breathy and strained. He rakes his teeth over his lip as his gaze falls, but he still can’t get the smile off his face. It’s this charged, embarrassed thing, that’s got all of him spiked. So he can’t bring the corners of his mouth down. He presses his thighs together, because suddenly there’s too much. There’s an ache. And, oh god, what? Now? _No._  
   
He laughs like a wisp of smoke. A single bark of breath. He needs to speak, to talk, to break this silence that is coursing through him like liquid stimulant and fucking with his body in all the wrong ways. “You okay, dude?” he finally asks, cracked and wobbling. “You kinda look like you’re having a religious experience, and if this is the rapture, then firstly—where has this been for eight months, and secondly, if I’m getting passed over because of the shit I stole from Wal Greens, I’m filing a complaint.”  
  
~  
  
Shane flinches as Ryan laughs, has to shake himself a little. He swallows again, realizes how short his breath has become in his chest and then says, asks — the only thing he could really register — “What uh—?”  
  
He wishes he could backtrack somehow. He wishes he could go back to before he stepped into this bathroom, before he realized that this man is fucking— _beautiful_ (and it’s not just— it’s his smile. It’s the way he’s smiling at Shane. It’s—) but then, he realizes, he’d have to go back to before Ryan showed up at his door which means he wouldn’t even know he existed.  
  
“What did you steal from Wal Greens?”  
  
~  
   
Ryan does not know that now is the best time to have this conversation, but he can’t bring himself to push Shane’s gaze away. He can’t bring himself to say _I’m naked, you crazy person_. His fingers clench over the clothes. He shakes his head.  
   
“No, I just meant… like, we stopped at this Wal Greens while we were…” He isn’t sure how to articulate this. “I didn’t see the owner because, you know, death and destruction. But I didn’t know if it was… if, like, well, we just took snacks—there wasn’t a ton left, and a few bandaids, but before we left the guy, the owner, I guess, pops out from behind an aisle. He was pissed. It was before things were, well… he was still wanting people to buy shit. But we had no money, so we just… well, we ran.” He’s rambling. Focusing on this ridiculous story to keep from focusing on what’s between his leg. Or Shane’s slightly hypnotic stare.  
   
“We were starving, Jake was…” he puts in, like Shane’s already judging him. “He totally fired a shotgun at us too, so you know…” He picks at the fabric of the clothes. “I kinda think I pulled him out of his store, and those things were… anyway, now you know I’m actually a piece of shit.” He feels embarrassment surge through him again. He shouldn’t have mentioned this to Shane. He doesn’t know why he did, but something about this guy just makes him talk. It’s unfair, because Shane never talks.  “Jesus, I know you’re gonna be like what have I let into my house—but I swear I don’t usually steal shit. But there was a whole store!”  
  
~  
  
“No, yeah,” Shane says. “I get it.” He’s frowning again, because he doesn’t understand it, this… this hostility that’s arisen in human beings. He doesn’t understand why people just— just fucking lost their minds when this whole thing happened, this pandemic or whatever it is. Whatever it is… “I don’t think you’re a piece of shit.” He says this carefully, like ‘piece of shit’ is something that has to be articulated properly.  
  
Finally, he looks away. “And I don’t think you’re a useless loser, by the way,” he says. He says this like that’s at all related to anything at all that they’re talking about right now, and the words are spilling out of his mouth, but he’s been thinking about them. He’s been thinking about them since Ryan said it last night.  
  
“You said that my first impression of you was a useless— anyway. I didn’t think that. Just. Just so you know.” He furrowed his brow. He feels like a fucking— “Anyway— I’m gonna,” he says, and sort jerks a thumb towards the door and feels like he’s never felt more awkward in his entire, awkward life, and he straightens up. “You should get dressed.” He makes for the door.  
  
~  
   
Well, Ryan’s main concern was definitely a thief, but he did have the loser thought. Said it aloud. And he is definitely naked and feeling less than super cool at the moment, so it’s nice to hear. Weird, but nice. Ryan just kinda nods. He’s glad Shane’s leaving, but he’s not. This moment felt… important, in some way. But he should endeavor to have moments clothed from here on out, he decides.  
   
“Oh, thanks. Thanks, I’m…” There isn’t anything to add to that. Shane’s leaving, anyway. He runs his hand through his hair, and then lowers it and rubs his nose. He’s desperately in need of something to do. He watches, waits for Shane’s to leave. He should say more, maybe, something about Shane not being a loser—but he’s already said that, really, so he just watches.  
  
~  
  
Shane escapes into the living room, sort of does a weird little lap around it, but his legs are too long to really feel like he’s accomplished anything, and he’s so warm. He’s so warm, and he just feels like he’s going to judder straight out of his own fucking skin and bones. He twists his wrists, shakes his hands out. His arms hurt, still, but he barely notices. “Idiot,” he whispers to himself, “Shut up, what is wrong with you?” He takes a breath, then another, makes himself stand still. This is— this can’t… he’s being ridiculous. He’s searching for things that don’t exist. He needs to stop.  
  
~  
  
~  
   
Ryan takes too long with the pants. They are so long, so fucking long. It takes him about twenty minutes to roll them up enough so he can work on his brace. And then that takes him even longer. He does and undoes it about twelve before finally, _finally_ , he gets it on right so he can roll the pants back down. My god. Shane is truly eighty feet tall. But they’re clean, so Ryan isn’t going to complain. He just sits there, breathing in being clothed and cleaned for the first time in what might be weeks.  
   
The process has calmed him down, chilled out the raging whatever the fuck in his bones. So he’s breathing more evenly, trying not to think about the intensity of Shane’s stare. He doesn’t know what Shane was looking at, why he was so stunned, but it’s fine. Maybe he just zoned out. He seems like the type. And licking his lips, well, it makes sense. His lips are dried. They’re chapped enough that Ryan can see white skin if he looks long enough.  
   
And, oh fuck, he’s been looking long enough. Shane’s mouth is back in his head, and he’s thinking about it—really thinking about it. About how it would feel, how it would—no, what the hell? Zombie apocalypse or no. He cannot do this. He doesn’t know why he is doing this. Shane’s not, he wouldn’t…  
   
Okay. Enough.  
   
Ryan pulls himself to his feet with the shovel, and these pants—wow. He thought he’d rolled them up enough, but they still hang and drag the ground around his feet. He sighs and hobbles out of the room to find Shane. His hair’s still a little damp, and it’s standing on end because he’s let it dry without tending to it. “Okay,” he says, “sorry that took forever.”  
  
~  
  
Shane looks over at him and sort of— thank God Ryan looks like an idiot because he’s saved from thinking that he looks adorable because his hair’s all messed up and his pants — he looks, honest to God, like a fucking eight year old kid on Christmas morning or something. Shane starts to laugh. Lets himself. He doubles over, hitting his own thigh, and doesn’t even bother trying to regain control in a respectable amount of time.  
  
“Yeah, okay, wow, you look—” He’s laughing so hard he has to catch his breath, pull it into his lungs like a gasp. “All right. All right, Ryan,” he says as he straightens. He has to fucking wipe tears from his eyes. It’s a lot to feel in the span of about ten minutes.  
  
~  
   
Ryan sighs. He just stands there, keeps this deadpan, uninterested look on his face while Shane works out this new laughing fit. He can’t even dislike it. It’s at him, and he can’t even be bothered by it. So he just stands there, working his face into unamused neutrality. It’s cute, so Ryan has to fight with his mouth a little to keep it in a straight line. But he manages.  
   
“Are you done?” he asks as Shane gasps and wipes at his eyes.  
  
~  
  
“Yeah,” Shane says, still smiling. He nods. “Okay, well… Why don’t you hobble on over to sit down or something, Tiny Tim—” he sort of giggles, “While I try to— yeah.” He lopes towards the bathroom, shoulders a little hunched.  
  
~  
   
“Don’t call me—gah, you dick.” He does exactly that, he hobbles over to sit on a chair beside the table and catches sight of Shane’s slow, exaggerated walk to the bathroom. He watches it a little too closely. The way Shane walks, from the back, it’s… elegant, almost. A weird word, Ryan thinks, to have popped into his head to describe this bandana-wearing weirdo, but it is. In the most effortless way.  
   
Ryan’s still kinda admiring him when he closes the door. He jerks his eyes to the table, and mutters, through half-gritted teeth. “Get a grip, Ryan.” He should absolutely not be admiring the asshole who just called him Tiny fucking Tim.  
  
~  
  
Shane takes a long, slow breath after he’s alone in the bathroom. He, at least, has the presence of mind to bring clean clothes in with him. The water’s already gotten pretty cold by the time he gets into it, and he doesn’t waste much time getting the thing done. The fact that it’s cold kind of helps, actually. Because he’s trying not to think about Ryan here, before him — and sharing this water and how he’d looked with water sliding into the dip of his collarbones.  
  
Nope, Shane thinks.  
  
It’s a pain to get his hair clean, but it always is because his body just can’t fucking fit all at once into the bathtub, and this minimal amount of water without ridiculous contortions. He manages though, and he does it very determinedly not thinking about Ryan. Or his ridiculously large, crooked smile.  
  
_Not thinking of Ryan_ , Shane reminds himself, scrubbing water out of his eyes. _Not doing that._  
  
He’s finished faster than Ryan was, but he doesn’t have a broken leg to contend with, and the water’s cold. He’s got goosebumps when he finally climbs out, tossing their dirty clothes into the remaining water to soak or something. He dries himself with the shirt, shivering, then dresses quickly.  
  
Fuck, he misses… comfort. He misses flannel pajama pants. He misses fucking… slippers and couches without mold growing on them, and Netflix and popcorn. God, he misses popcorn.  
  
He comes back out into the main room which is warmer, because of the fireplace, and runs both hands through his wet hair, getting it off of his forehead as he his eyes find Ryan’s across the room. “Well,” he says. “This is much better.”  
  
   
~  
   
Ryan is engaging himself in phantom tic-tac-toe on the table when Shane reopens the door. He’s cleaner, Ryan notices, as Shane runs his hands through his hair. It tugs at something in Ryan’s stomach. It’s this… it draws attention to his hair. Ryan hasn’t looked at it, hasn’t seen the way it’s… it’s touchable. Not before now. Shane has very touchable hair. Ryan has to ground himself by running a fingernail over his hand to keep from reaching for it, even with Shane across the room.  
   
“It really is,” he says, isn’t sure what he means, not fully.  
   
He smiles, though. Wishes Shane looked as ridiculous as he did when he came out of the shower. He doesn’t, though. He just looks good. Ryan hates it. Hates that he thinks it. He scratches the side of his jaw, then scrunches his face a little. “Oh yeah, hey, _do_ you have a razor?”  
  
~  
  
“Uh… yeah,” Shane says, like he’s not sure if he should admit this, but then again. “I’ll get it.” he goes upstairs, grabs his bag. The razor is an old fashioned one. A straight razor, and it folds neatly into a wooden handle that fits comfortably in his palm. He hadn’t even actually taken it for shaving, when he found it, but rather because you could literally use it as a knife if you needed to. It was a little collapsible weapon that he sometimes used to shave his face.  
  
Added bonus?  
  
He brings it back down and hesitates, admittedly hesitates, before he places it on the table in front of Ryan. Because it is a weapon. It is.  
  
“I’ve got uh…” he goes to the bedside table and pulls it open. Amongst the things there — useless things — change, pennies, a button, matches… there’s those little travel pods for shaving. They were in the cabin when he found it. He’s running out. There’s only maybe seven left. Initially he’d used them for soap but stopped quickly. He’d need like twenty of them to cover his body and it just wasn’t a good use of his time, or the shaving pods, so.  
  
He comes back and puts one on the table like it’s a pill or something, followed by a cup of water, all this paraphernalia. There’s something luxurious about it. Like he still has the ability to do something like shave, even now. It feels strange, almost like it’s… excessive somehow, offering it to Ryan. Gestures of normality, slightly skewed. A gift.  
  
~  
   
Oh god. Oh fucking sweet lord in heaven, Ryan has no fucking idea how to use this. Like, he knows these are a thing. He’s seen them on TV shows and shit. But he has never in his life seen a razor that looks like an actual fucking knife. Okay, not quite a knife, but closer to knife than a razor. But he’s not about to reveal this. He just kinda smiles up at Shane. It’s probably clear, or at least, something is probably off about his smile.  
   
“Great,” he says, glances at the pod, at least he knows what that is. “Thanks.” He sits up a little straighter, since he’s clearly compensating for lack of knowledge. Also Shane’s final memory should be something good, since Ryan is seventy-five percent sure he’s about to kill himself with this elaborate pocket knife.  
   
“Isn’t there a mirror? Is there a mirror I can use?”  
  
  
~  
  
“Uh, there is,” Shane says. The one in the bathroom was smashed when he got here, so he’d just tossed it. He laughs a little. “But I think it’s too tall for you.” It’s upstairs, and even Shane has to sort of lift his chin to see into it properly. He wonders who even fucking puts mirrors up that high, but it’s something to do with the decor or whatever, things he doesn’t care about, and so most of the time he forgets it exists. “You can just-- I mean, you know where your face it.”  
  
~  
  
“I certainly do,” he says. Works to keep his eye from twitching. He doesn’t know a polite way to say, _hey, dude, can you leave so you don’t have to witness me actually slit my own throat?_ So he wets his face, takes his time with it because he’s going to need as much help as he can get here. Then he takes the pod in his hand and wets it with a couple of splashes. His hands soak quickly, and he waits a bit before he rubs the pod so it explodes into fluffy white lather all over his hands.  
   
_Knows where his own face is_. Like people don’t use mirrors every fucking day for shaving—or like they didn’t, he guesses. Also he’s pissed because a mirror shouldn’t be too tall for an average sized person. He’s not that short. He rubs the lather over his face, takes his time because this is the only part that he’s going to feel comfortable with. He finishes and takes a louder breath than he should. He winces.  
   
He uses the water to rinse the rest of the shaving cream off his hands before he takes the torture device in his hands and slides it away from the handle so it’s this long, horrendous contraption that has no business existing anywhere except a fucking torture room. It’s still a razor. He sees the blade. He’s just got to be more cautious.  
   
His hands shake. Fuck his stupid, shaky hands, as he brings it to his cheek. He’ll save the jaw for last since he’s cut himself on that with a normal-person razor. His eyes flick to Shane, just for a second, but he looks away and tilts his head up. The first stroke goes okay. He’s trembling, but his skin cooperates with him as he presses the razor down to stop a little before his chin.  
   
He tries to follow the same line beside it, but his hand slips and jerks, and he feels his skin slice. “Fuck,” he says, quiet but harsh. He tries again and gets past it, but the third is the same way, and he’s only on one side of his face—this is… wow. It nicks him again, and he winces, pulls it away.  Blood’s starting to bead.  
   
_Great. Absolutely great, Ryan._  
   
He wants to ask Shane if he wants to retract that thing about Ryan not being a useless loser, but he can’t bring himself to even look at Shane. He does not want to be laughed at for this. And he wouldn’t blame Shane for laughing. He’s probably a fucking expert at this—his fucking jawline is… okay, no, not the time to think about Shane’s jawline when he’s shredding his own.  
   
He tries again, and it breaks skin again. He can’t even acknowledge it. Can’t even bring himself to curse because he’s so angry that he can’t get this right. So he just keeps going because fuck this.  
   
~  
  
“Jesus— Jesus Christ, man,” Shane says, moving to close the distance between them. He glances towards the door like he might see one of those things standing there like he’s invited it to tea, and he might as well have, with Ryan bleeding all over the place like that. “Stop, stopstop,” he says, and he wants to reach out for the razor but he doesn’t, and he can’t get the panic out of his voice. “You know that— draws them, right? Don’t.”  
  
~  
   
~  
   
Ryan’s acutely aware of his teeth. Because he’s gritting them and glaring at Shane, well, not quite glaring because you can’t exactly glare covered in shaving cream. Oh, and blood. “Yeah, I know, I just…” He glances at the razor, takes air into his chest until it inflates. “I don’t know how to use—I’ve never used a razor like this before, it’s… I’ve got shaky hands, I can’t help it.”  
   
He’s not focused on Shane because if he does, then it’s going to make him even less capable of doing this like a normal person. He’s just staring at the razor. He needs a second to collect himself because the embarrassment is making his hands less reliable than usual.  
   
“I know, just… okay, okay.” He brings it back to his face, then he jerks it away again. “ _Don’t_ ,” he scoffs, mocks, as if he’s over here trying to gouge his skin off or something.  
  
~  
  
“Don’t—” Shane says again, and it’s shorter this time, more irritated, and he doesn’t want a repeat of last night, so he steps forward and very, very gently and carefully, grasps Ryan’s wrist, and pulls his hand away. “This isn’t…” He thinks _don’t be an idiot_ , but doesn’t say it out loud. “Here— do you want me to do it? Oh for—” Blood is welling up below Ryan’s cheekbone and, one hand still holding Ryan’s wrist, he actually raises the thumb of his other hand to his own mouth, licks it, and then smears the blood from Ryan’s cheek. He’s bleeding lower down, too, but there’s blood and shaving cream on Shane’s fingers now, so he can’t do much about that.  
  
It’s not much blood, but then, maybe it doesn’t have to be.  
  
~  
   
Ryan frowns. “Why do you get so—? I’m just…” Ryan sighs. Okay, this guy is easier to set off than a bomb. And Ryan has never been great at being small, at keeping from detonating things. He generally finds every mine there is to step on. Then he realizes Shane has offered to help him shave and he doesn’t even know what to do with it. But before he can even begin to process, Shane has licked his finger and is wiping the blood off.  
   
Okay, Ryan thinks, maybe he’s not pissed. Maybe he’s just freaked out, and this is how it comes out. He’s pissed, but in a… self-preservation way. It’s not about Ryan. It’s about Shane. Ryan can do this. He can pull back to help, even if he isn’t quite sure how to respond to the offer. “I, uh…” He laughs, but it’s just nervous noise. Not a real one. “I mean, it’s that or I probably should just grow a freaking beard. Since I’m envisioning a full-on disaster with this.”  
  
~  
  
“Yeah, you might actually accidentally murder yourself or something,” Shane says, and his fingers relax a little around Ryan’s wrist. He lets him go, but he eases the razor from his hand at the same time. “Here… okay…”  
  
He tries to think about how to do this, and pulls a chair over, sitting down across from him. That’s not going to work, he can tell right away, even as he sort of half reaches for Ryan, then changes his mind. Shane pulls a face, presses his lips together and squints at some middle distance between them. “That’s not going to work.” He glances at the bed and feels his stomach pull sharply.  
  
So no.  
  
“Let’s— sit on the floor so I can actually reach you. Here, you want your shovel, Timmy?” he asks, letting some mischief creep into his tone. He’s grinning as he pushes his chair back and stands.  
  
He moves over to the fire. It’s warmer there, and he’ll be able to see better, what he’s doing. “Come on.”  
  
~  
  
~  
   
Ryan blinks at his wrist when Shane lets it go. He doesn’t fight when Shane takes the razor, and he’s relieved, very relieved, to have it away from him. He doesn’t know how he feels about Shane helping him shave, but he can’t think of a reason to stop it. His stomach clenches as Shane sits in the chair, but then he’s moving again.  
   
Ryan just watches him. He’s just moving, taking action, and Ryan’s mesmerized by the way he does it. The weird way he does everything. He’s so lost in it that it takes him a second to register the joke. “Oh, haha, you’re hilarious.”  
   
He follows Shane closer to the fire and eases himself onto the ground. He’s proud because he doesn’t just flail and fall. He nestles into the floor like a normal person and takes a breath. “Okay, this is… okay. Please don’t kill me.” It’s a flicker of fear, not really fear at all, but his stomach flips anyway.  
  
~  
  
Shane breathes a soft laugh. “I’ll do my best.”  
  
He settles in front of him, and he’s really— he’s looking him over, but he’s not meeting his eyes. He shifts until they’re closer and then it’s still— it’s not quite close enough, but it will have to do. It’s already much closer than he gets to people normally, and he’s sort of mesmerized by the individual dark hairs of Ryan’s eyebrows, but the flicker of his eyelashes that Shane won’t look at straight on.  
  
Shane swallows and for a second he doesn’t know where to put his hands and then he whispers, “Okay,” and sort of touches his fingertips to the underside of Ryan’s jaw, his thumb at his chin, keeping him in place and something flickers intently through him that he tries to ignore. “Don’t move,” he tells him, and does meet his eyes to make sure he heard, and then, a little louder, another character-esque voice, “Here we go!”  
  
He finds the place Ryan began and retraces the shave. It’s— fuck, it’s very… it’s very intimate, somehow, and he tries not to think about that. He takes in the colour of Ryan’s skin against the impossible white of the shaving cream — realizes, in a strange way, just how alive Ryan is… it’s a weird thing to think, but he’s so— there’s so much of him beneath Shane’s fingers, and he’s barely touching him, and Shane doesn’t even realize he’s holding his breath.  
  
~  
   
Ryan’s heartbeat is rattling through him. Tearing, a little bit, he thinks, like he’ll just collapse beneath it. It shouldn’t. This isn’t like Shane’s actually going to take that razor to his throat, but he’s so fucking nervous he can barely breathe. He laughs, just a little, at Shane trying to make light of it. He needs it, kinda.  
   
He swallows, once, twice, way too many times. The razor glides along his skin, and Shane is so steady. He’s so steady that Ryan wants to fall into him. It’s stupid. Shane would probably scream. But he has the thought anyway. Ryan’s not steady, though. He’s quivering, and he knows that’s going to make Shane’s job twice as hard.  
   
He casts his eyes down a little, finds Shane’s face, and he’s fascinated by the curve of it. The way his nose bends—how straight it is. The way his whole facial structure is so ridiculously unique, like looking at a new form of person. He’s got these wildly long eyelashes, and his face just seems sculpted for concentration. He’s so slow with this, slow lingering and quiet, just like he is with everything. He’s got this tiny, delicate hands that do not belong on his lumberjack like frame, but somehow nothing else would fit. They work so easily with the razor. Ryan’s mind drifts, thinks about if there was no razor—if it was just Shane’s hands on his—  
   
Nope. None of that.  
   
The blade whispers over Ryan’s skin. He can’t help it. His mouth starts to curve up. He begs it not to, begs it to behave, but a smile is forming, and his chest is trying to shake with laughter. The razor nicks a little over the damage Ryan’s already done, because Shane can’t exactly avoid it, and a bubble of laughter shakes him. He winces. Knows Shane’s going to hate it. But it escapes anyway.  
  
~  
  
Shane’s eyebrows shoot up, then knit together. “If you don’t shut up, I’m going to _cut_ you,” he says, absolutely concentrated, and he says it dead seriously, but there’s something tugging at his mouth a little. “What are you laughing at?” he asks, as he finishes the stroke and meets Ryan’s eyes.  
  
   
~  
   
The gaze is intense, and Ryan thinks, _do not laugh_. But his mouth is squirming, like it wants to laugh so much. His eyes widen a little and he presses his lips into a thin line to enact as little movement as possible. “I dunno. It tickles, a little.” He averts his eyes, because it’s a lot, and Shane’s got a blade—and Shane’s face is making Ryan’s stomach roil with shit he does not need or want. “I’m sorry. I’ll stop.” Another laugh squeaks out. “Okay, I’m good. I’m good, I swear.”  
  
~  
  
“Oh no,” Shane murmurs, like _is this what we’re in for?_ holding the blade away from his cheek, brows raised like he’s waiting for him to get his giggles out, like he’s a five year old child. “You good?” he asks, repeats, and when it seems okay, he gets back to it, but he’s smiling a little, very faintly, beneath everything, and he cocks his head a little to see better.  
  
His fingers shift along Ryan’s jaw, pressing every so slightly harder into the soft places beneath the bone as he slides the blade over his cheek again, and there’s this little welling drop of blood, dark in the firelight. “Oh, shit— sorry, did that? Did I hurt you? I honestly didn’t mean to do that.” And he’s brushing at Ryan’s cheek with the backs of his knuckles, blade still pressed into his palm, but the sharp edge facing away from him now, as he wipes at it.  
  
~  
   
Ryan’s so focused on the way Shane’s fingers—Jesus Christ his fingers—press into these little divots in Ryan’s jaw. Places he had no idea were there, but now he can’t stop thinking about them. About Shane touching them. It’s not really constricting his air flow, but Ryan’s dizzy with it, like he can’t catch his breath.  
   
So he doesn’t notice when Shane cuts across some of the damage Ryan’s already done. He doesn’t even feel it. But Shane pulls back because he’s noticed it and brushes away the blood with his hand. Ryan glows. His whole body blazes like an ember. He takes a breath, tries to find a way to respond, then manages.  
   
“I certainly hope you didn’t _mean to_ ,” he says, then more quietly, “no, it’s fine. I didn’t feel it.” Because he can’t feel anything but the steady warmth of Shane’s stupid, slender finger. He doesn’t say that, though.  
  
  
~  
  
Shane meets Ryan’s eyes as he speaks, because he feels like he can in that moment. You’re supposed to look at people when they’re speaking to you, right? And he still can’t quite get their colour. They’re brown, of course, but they’re… he thinks they’re lighter than he thought initially, but he can’t really tell. Maybe they’re just brighter. They catch the firelight, they’re bright even without it. He’s a little hypnotized, and when he realizes, he blinks quickly and glances away and then back, and then away. “Okay.” he says.  
  
He thinks he can feel Ryan’s pulse against his fingers, or maybe it’s his own. Either way, it’s beating fast. He’s focusing on the movement of the blade again, wiping some of the excess cream off, starting fresh. They’re at this delicate place now, right beneath Ryan’s mouth and he doesn’t know how to—  
  
Shane’s thumb brushes the underside of Ryan’s lower lip, and Jesus, God, it’s so soft. He feels his heart do something strange in his chest — skip or double-beat —. He really has this— this beautiful mouth. He looks like he belongs in a fucking painting or something, quite honestly. The firelight glints of the blade as he carefully drags it down over the spot between Ryan’s lip and his chin.  
  
Of course, Shane couldn’t tell, couldn’t see for himself, but his pupils are blown wide and dark, and he’s very still, save the movements of his hands, the faint flickering of his gaze back and forth. All he can hear is his heart, and the gentle whisper-slide of the blade over Ryan’s chin, and it’s sort of rhythmic and steadying, somehow.  
  
He goes over the place once more, and when his thumb slides and catches again on Ryan’s lower lip, it’s not accidental, but he hopes it seems like it is.  
  
~  
   
Ryan can’t focus. It’s just lights, like a fucking rave in his brain. He’s losing it. This slow, soft, touching that also involves a blade that could rip out his jugular. It’s a lot. It’s a lot for him right now, right here, with Shane’s good eyebrows, and his long eyelashes, and his focused gaze that Ryan manages to wilt and bloom under at the same time.  
   
His pulse is beating against Shane’s fingers, like it’s clawing at Shane, begging for him. Like it knows there’s this shit going on in Ryan’s head, so its reaching for Shane—this thing he’s so focused on, trying to bring him closer. Ryan isn’t moving, but there’s a plea inside him that wants to lean into this. That maybe is leaning into this in some weird way. Even as he instructs his pulse to quiet, again and again, it beats harder, faster, following Shane like a dance partner.  
   
It startles him when Shane’s thumb, the same thumb Ryan’s been measuring, feeling, with so much of him, touches Ryan’s lip. It jolts through him, and it burns into his mouth so he tastes it. This strange, impossible taste. He shivers a little, but not much. Maybe Shane doesn’t notice. Ryan’s kinda quivery in general. He doesn’t know why it strikes him so hard, or so much, but his brain is going to burst right out of his skull with all this… this feeling. And his heart, well, he’s pretty sure it’s leapt straight out of his chest and into Shane’s.  
   
It’s so quiet. Ryan hears his breathing too loud, hears Shane’s. It’s this soft thing, this noise that makes Ryan look at Shane. He’s so still. Like he’s a statue, except his hands move in these delicate little arcs. His pupils are wide, and it brings out the brown in his eyes, makes them too many colors—like this autumnal mosaic.  
   
Shane should be a painter, Ryan decides. A painter, or something else that requires precision. His hands are so… god, they’re fucking Ryan up. It’s mostly the razor touching him, but Shane’s hands are… he feels them, even the parts that aren’t touching him. He feels them all the way down to his toes. Like they’re tracing the arced notches of his spine. Like they could erase every scrape and bruise Ryan has ever had. Like they, like Shane could erase everything and color it at the same time.  
   
He’s trying to regulate his breathing. Focusing on the whisper of the razor and crack and pop of the fire. Those are normal, not Ryan-is-freaking-out noises. Then Shane’s thumb touches his lip again, and he can’t help it—a sound sneaks away from him. It’s this skid of a whimper. He doesn’t understand it, wishes fervently it hadn’t come from him. But that’s twice—and Shane’s fingers are so, Ryan can feel them all over him. On his back. On his chest. On his tongue. All over him. In these places they’ve never been. They’re just feather-light, all over him, all at once.  
   
And just, of course Shane would accidentally touch his lips, twice. Of course he would. Because that is Ryan’s life.  
   
“Sorry,” he says, because in the silence he thinks Shane’s fingers may press into his chest and stop his heart.  
  
~  
  
Jesus, that sound flashes straight through him. He feels it all the way down his spine, electric into his fingers, like the vibrations from Ryan’s throat, from his lips, flared straight through the bones of his fingers, up his arms, and into his chest. He feels this jolt all the way up his thighs and it’s so much, it’s way too much. He tries to swallow and can’t, because his mouth is too dry, and he looks away, hisses softly. “Did I hurt you?”  
  
Somehow he knows he didn’t. Jesus, he’s got to— he can’t just stay here. He can’t keep sitting here with him because he’s going to—  
  
His breath hitches softly, and he pretends to cough, just a bit. “Uh— I’m almost done.” He’s not.  
  
~  
   
Ryan laughs. Nervous again. He can feel the shaving cream. Shane is not almost done. He’s not even close. So Ryan just lets himself laugh for a second before he says, “No you’re not.” He’s jittery. Still feeling all these synapses of lightning running through him. “But you didn’t hurt me. It’s fine.” It’s kinda not fine. Or it’s extremely fine. Ryan can’t sort it out.  
   
Shane’s throat bobs with this attempt at a swallow, and Ryan stares at it. Watches it like it’s the most intricate thing he’s ever seen. Maybe it is. He wants to help Shane, make sure he isn’t overwhelmed with… all this. It’s probably just Ryan. Hopefully. Or not. Whatever. But still, Ryan offers, “I can try again? If you’re tired. Or we can wait. If—if you need a second.” He giggles. “I promise I’m not just saying that so you won’t cut my throat open.”  
   
His voice quakes. There’s a burn in it, this light that casts too many shadows off his consonants, so they bleed into the room.  
  
~  
  
He’s biting his lip, working at some of the dried skin there. God, he should have had some water or something… he probably looks…  
  
_No you’re not_ , says Ryan and Shane’s heart just starts beating so fucking fast that he thinks for a second he might have a panic attack. He feels a little light-headed. He back looks at him and realizes that they’ve been— they’ve just been looking at one another, without looking. They’ve been lost in one another without even meeting one another’s eyes, and Shane still hasn’t. Hasn’t met his eyes for moments now and suddenly they’re magnetic and so Shane looks down at the razor he holds instead, wiping it off again.  
  
“Your imagination is fucked up, man,” he says, “I’m not going to cut your throat open. And if I let you try again, you’re going to bleed everywhere.” And his mind is lingering on the way the words come out of Ryan’s mouth, and he wants to hear it again — he wants to know what’s happening, what he’s done, to make him sound like that. Like the words are too big for him, like they don’t quite fit.  
  
He’s got to— they need to finish this. He shifts, knees cracking a little so that he winces, more at the sound than at the feeling, and then he’s sort of looming over Ryan, taller even when they’re both sitting, then settles again, so they’re almost eye to eye, if Shane hunches. He reaches out, doesn’t touch. “You want to. Turn your face so I can—?”  
  
~  
   
Ryan wriggles where he sits. Shane’s mind is going one hundred miles an hour—he can see it. He wants to reach out and catch one of the thoughts between his fingers. He doesn’t. He just waits for him, watches as he messes with the razor. This is so charged. It’s too charged to be normal. Even for the zombie apocalypse.  
   
Then Shane’s knees crack when he moves, and Ryan’s concerned. This guy is made of twigs. It’s a wonder he’s made it this long. Which is hilarious, because Shane’s been the one saving Ryan’s ass since they met. He swallows as Shane restarts, extends a hand but doesn’t touch. He does that a lot, Ryan thinks. Maybe he knows what his fingers fucking do to people. Or maybe he’s just a twig masquerading as a person and he doesn’t want anyone to find out.  
   
Still, Ryan manages this tiny little, “okay” and turns his face so Shane can reach more of his face. It’s a relief, because Shane’s on his eye level, and eye contact feels so intense. Like it’ll swell and burst if Ryan holds it too long. “Like this?”  
  
~  
  
Shane doesn’t respond, not out loud, but he touches him again, and it’s a little more awkward at this angle, but he’s not about to switch the razor to his left hand. He really might accidentally slit his throat, then.  
  
He tips his head a little more, so careful, slides the blade down over his cheek. He desperately needs something to say, and so he says “‘You can wait if you need a second?’” He’s repeating what Ryan said, and he’s laughing a little. “It’s— it’s shaving, Ryan, it’s not— I dunno, surgery.” And he wishes he’d brought up something, anything else, because he realizes how much— how obvious he must have been, how obvious he must be. He forces out another laugh, almost wheezes it, whisper-soft, blade held carefully and leans into him a little as he laughs, his breath rushing warmly against the side of Ryan’s neck, over his ear.  
  
~  
   
The goosebumps before were not goosebumps—they were imposters. What rises on Ryan now, all over him, like it’s on his fucking eyeballs, is goosebumps. Shane’s breath touches him, and he moves close. Closer than is usual for him—and Ryan thinks it’s funny that he’s already assigned _usual_ to this guy he’s known for two days. Ryan’s entire body jerks to attention. Then it slides through him, shudders across his shoulders, into his fingertips so he can’t really feel them save this heated tingling.  
   
“I…” He starts, but it comes out too loud. He feels like he’s shouting, so he whispers, which seems equally weird. “I…” He adjusts to a semi-normal tone, shifting under the way every hair on his body is upright. Under the way his fucking skeleton feels painted neon orange. “Well, you looked like you were focusing. It’s, yeah, okay.” He lets it go, just lets it drop in a breath, because all of his energy is devoted, well, not really devoted—it’s coursing just beneath the surface of his skin. If he pushes too much into anything else, he might erupt.  
  
~  
  
“I don’t understand what you’re trying to say to me, you’re just making words,” Shane says, voice low. He finishes Ryan’s face and it’s like he’s fucking— like he’s cleaned an old piece of art, beautiful in it’s own right, only to reveal these vibrant colour underneath. He swallows and looks away and tries desperately to focus on the task at hand, and then realizes that that’s what he has been doing, and it hasn’t been very useful so far.  
  
He sort of wants to just stop, move away, because his entire body is thrumming. He can feel his heartbeat in his fucking knee, in his shin, where they’re pressed into the floor, and it’s overwhelming. He shifts, carefully, until he’s crosslegged, and his knee brushes Ryan’s good leg — he’s being very careful of the other one. He twitches back. “Can you— just tip your head up for me?” he asks, so he can get the underside of his jaw, his throat.  
  
And Shane thinks that he wouldn’t trust Ryan to do it for him.  
  
~  
   
Shane’s touching him in all these unexpected places. Ryan can’t process it. He just feels the way his eyes are too big for his face, does everything in his power not to look at Shane. Not to stare. Not to feel this thing that’s building in his chest like an earthquake. It does feel good, though, to feel his face smooth out. Less itchy—and cleaner. God, he craves clean.  
   
Nerves clatter through him, almost enough to block out Shane’s knee brushing his leg, but not quite. He’s about to expose his throat to this guy. Some part of him fights it. Some part of him relives the dream he had, of Shane, of the silhouette of Shane, over him with that pipe. There’s the fleeting panic, and his shaking turns into more than nervousness.  
   
A breath pushes past his lips, and he meets Shane’s eyes, very intentionally. Like he can find something in them, like he’ll be able to see if he can really, honestly trust this guy. He doesn’t know what he finds, just this… fathomless pool, this pool of something that is impossible for Ryan to understand and somehow everything he’s ever looked for.  
   
He can’t bring himself to make a joke, to throw anything out there, because he’s panicked. He’s unsure and unsteady and doesn’t know what’s going on in his own mind. He nods once, keeps the eye contact, and it’s just an intense as he knew it would be. Then he tilts his head back.  
   
It feels big. His silence. He spends so long filling the space with words that this silence, it stretches, and it demands something he can’t place.  
  
~  
  
He reaches out, only to discover that his hands are shaking, and he clenches them, relaxes them, tries again. He’s a little steadier the second time. He touches Ryan’s shoulder this time, remembers the bruise, and slides his palm up a little higher, to his neck. “It’s okay—” he says, whispers almost, and it just— he wants to tack ‘Ryan’ or ‘man’ on there, but it just doesn’t come and as he raises the blade to Ryan’s throat he’s struck by the fucking — by this display, this level of trust and then he thinks… _what if it’s not that?_  
  
Didn’t Ryan say, whisper to Jake, beneath all that rain, that he’d be with him, soon? Is that what this is? Does he think that Shane would _do that?_ Shane presses the blade gently down and follows the line of his neck, his jaw, and he can see the place beneath Ryan’s skin where his pulse is pounding fast.  
  
He wants to bring this up, point this out, because it doesn’t make any sense to him at all. There’s so much life behind Ryan’s eyes, that he can’t even fathom…  
  
He pulls the blade up over his neck again, and his eyes are fixed on it, on his adam’s apple, on the hollow of his throat just above the neck of his shirt. “You okay?” he murmurs, because all of the other questions are far too big, and he’s got the blade just centimetres away from the place just below where he can see Ryan swallow and he just feels very…  
  
Shane fits his palm against Ryan’s collarbone, cups it, cradles it. This time, he doesn’t pretend it’s an accidental touch.  
  
~  
   
Ryan’s pulled every single bit of him, every fiber, into not shaking. Shane’s got a knife, essentially, to his throat, and if Ryan laughs this time—then he will wind up dead on the floor. That’s in Shane’s hands. His life. Again. His fingers scratch into Shane’s pants so hard it burns through to his thighs. It’s a brief distraction from his throat. So brief. The blade slides along his skin, and he feels it rise and fall at every bump in his skin. Every dip, every arc, he feels the blade.  
   
Shane could kill him. Every inch, every breath of that blade, repeats it. Whispers it. _He could push too hard, just a little too hard._  Shane is completely in control, of this, of him, and Ryan doesn’t know why he handed that over. He doesn’t know why he let go. But he has, and the sensation is stronger for it. Thrumming across him.  
   
_He could kill you._  
   
A breath hiccups out of Ryan as the razor slides up, up, again. He clenches his hands harder into his leg, to remind him he’s still got them. To remind them they’re not tied behind his back. To remind him he’s not _helpless_. He could reach up, catch Shane’s wrist, if he wanted to. But he doesn’t. Ryan’s body bows with the strokes. Paralyzed, by fear, or by the quiet bite of the blade. The way it cuts, taunts, a little, but never hurts.  
   
It’s all this contact. It’s got him tied on a string. He knows he’s breathing hard, knows if Shane looked, it might look… bad. His mouth is quivering, eyelids fluttering. Sweat slicks along his hands, and breath comes out of him like it’s slipping on it.  
   
The touch, not the blade—something else. Shane. Comes unexpectedly. Ryan’s wrapped around his fears, this current thrumming through him, coiled so tight that the touch shocks him. He moves, and he thinks for a moment the blade will cut a line along his skin—that it’s over. But it doesn’t come.  
   
There’s just Shane’s hand on his collarbone. This warm simmer of strength, strong enough to drag Ryan back to the brink of reality. Almost back to his body. But not quite. His curves reshape, form and bend around Shane’s hand.  
   
“Yeah,” he whispers, because he’s supposed to.  
   
But he’s not. He’s _not_ , because if Shane put the razor in his hand and told him to run it across his throat—Ryan’s not sure he wouldn’t.  
  
~  
  
Shane’s muscles are so tense. He can feel them aching down his back, all the way down his spine, and maybe it’s not just that that aches — and _Jesus, Jesus_ he’s never been so caught up in something in his whole life. He is so caught up in Ryan, it’s all he can see; all he can focus on. Shane thinks he would be shuddering beneath all this intensity if he trusted his hands to do it.

But he needs to trust his steadiness, he needs to draw on the slow, even steadiness that he usually pulls around himself like a cloak, like a blanket, to cover up who he is. Or who he might be, if someone just let him. Made him want to. If he thought who he was wouldn’t just end up being the same old, same old — just Shane. A disappointment and, ultimately, the realization that he was incapable of any real feeling at all.

And he thinks he’s always been just Shane, and he’s always passed through his life without really touching anything, just glancing off of all of it so he got the basic understanding of all these things people feel so strongly, and what if this intensity is false — just feeding off of Ryan’s feeling, because he’s got so much — or worse, what if it’s real? What if it’s real and it comes on like this so suddenly, so nonsensically, and then it just goes away? Shane wonders if he’d even be able to live without this, now that he’s gotten a taste.

And it all feels so—

He thinks he hears something outside in the night, or maybe he just needs to have to have heard something, so that he can stop for a moment. He draws the blade away, and looks away from the way it slides over Ryan’s skin, and his eyes flicker up to his face instead. Shane feels a jolt of something so strong, so intense he thinks his heart’s stopped. It rises in him like a flood and for a second he’s drowning beneath it.

‘ _Listen._ ’ He tries to say, but the word won’t come out. And he doesn’t know if he means for Ryan to listen to him — or what he would even say — or to the noises of the night, and what shouldn’t be out there.

He doesn’t know what to do with this, and he knows there’s something to it that’s so much deeper than just— it’s so much deeper than he even cares to imagine, and he can’t— he doesn’t know how to make it right.

His hand moves almost of its own accord, moving with Ryan, smoothing over his fever-hot skin, and he gently, gently presses his thumb into the hollow of Ryan’s throat, and cradles the side of his neck and holds his eyes for far too long as he tries to think of the right words, but nothing’s coming. He’s stuck. He’s trapped like a wild creature and Ryan’s somehow got a hold on him that Shane can’t break, and he’s not even fucking touching him.

He thinks again of Ryan’s mouth, and his eyes flicker, but don’t look down. He thinks of the heat if it, and the way his teeth don’t seem to fit right and what it would feel like if Shane just pressed his fingers inside to brush against the half-secret place of his teeth, and tongue.

But it’s too much.

And it’s that underneath all the rest of it which is stronger, and squeezing around Shane’s heart. The stronger thing is what’s drowning him. And here’s this stranger he’s got near-quaking beneath his own hands and he half-hates it, but he feels like maybe he could get whatever Ryan’s feeling to shudder right out of him and into Shane because God knows he’s got more than enough space — like a vessel — to hold onto it for him. That pain, or fear, or whatever it is.

And Shane wants to.

And simpler, easier, he wishes he knew how to hug people. Because Ryan looks like he could fucking use it. But Shane doesn’t. Doesn’t know how. And he’s fixated suddenly on the words Ryan said to his brother before they put him in the ground and he—“You don’t have to be…” Shane says. Because if he was in Ryan’s shoes he doesn’t think he would be. And his throat is so dry it chokes him. “What if… What if you stayed here for a while?” And he sounds almost normal, just... his words shake at their outer fringes, sort of blur into the darkness.  
  
~  
   
Ryan watches Shane. That’s all he can do. That’s all he’s going to do. His eyes are stapled there. Stuck. He watches the way Shane’s breath bobs through his throat, the way his eyes flicker. They hold Ryan’s. His touch pools on Ryan’s neck, his collarbone, like warm liquid. Like honey. And Ryan feels it all over him. It weighs him down so much, so slow, he thinks he’ll collapse.  
   
Ryan’s heartbeat hammers against Shane’s hand, the way it moves, cradles, a little bit. Like he’s… Ryan doesn’t know what he’s doing, but it’s making the shaking worse. It’s making everything worse, or better. Ryan can’t tell, but he feels himself bleeding into the touch. The callouses of Shane’s fingers, the scrape of his fingernails when he turns his hand—the warmth, a pulse on the other side of all this skin. All this skin touching Ryan’s. Shane’s pulse.  
   
Ryan’s mouth falls open. He doesn’t know when, but it does, and he just keeps watching Shane. The way he somehow manages to look wide awake and perpetually sleepy at the same time. Watches this intent expression that paints his eyes like a blaze. The way it heightens the pink of his mouth, the almost sharp point of the cupid’s bow of his upper lip. Ryan wants to reach up and touch it, to see if it’s soft or dry or warm. Or all three. His eyes hover over it, flitting back and forth, along Shane’s mouth, down to his chin, lower, along the lines of his neck.  
   
“You don’t have to be.”  
   
And there’s that blade. The one that could so easily, so quickly, kill Ryan. He takes a quivery breath as he looks at it. He thinks of the dream, of Shane with the pipe, and then he thinks of Jake. Thinks of what he’s done. Of how he’s found this shelter now, too late for Jake. How he’s done everything too late for Jake. And he’s already clinging to Shane like a fucking child.  
   
His eyes hang on the blade, hang too long, like he’s dangling off it. You l _et him die_. It’s been in his head since they put Jake in the ground. In the soaking wet ground. But now, in this moment, it’s flaring through him. Because of Shane. Because Shane’s skin is making him feel okay, when he can’t be okay. He can’t be okay when his little brother is dead. When he failed him in every conceivable way.  
   
_You don’t have to be._  
   
It’s not about being okay. It’s about wanting this, here, with Shane. It’s about thinking about fingers around his neck, about crumbling under them, when he just buried his brother. It’s not fair. It isn’t, and yet it’s all Ryan feels. Shane. Shane is consuming him. In the worst possible way. Filling all the cracks and holes Jake left.  
   
_Stay here._ Ryan has been wanting, craving that, still is, on some horrible, awful level. He wants it. To stay here with this person. Who has given so much of himself, of his comfort, to keeping Ryan safe. Who has done everything Ryan couldn’t do for Jake. And he wants it. He wants this, wants Shane, so bad. But he can’t bring himself to answer.  
   
Tears bead along his eyes, but they don’t fall. Just sit there, as he meets Shane’s eyes.  
   
“If I’d been awake… I could’ve saved him.” His voice is hoarse, kinda husky, like it’s riddled in bullet holes. “It would’ve been me.” And then, more gasp than word. “Should’ve been.” His mouth trembles. The tears still don’t fall, but he holds Shane’s gaze. “I wish it’d been me. I wish he’d found you instead.” He blinks so the moisture glistens and blurs on his eyelashes. “He deserves this.” He almost says you.  
   
He doesn’t say, _I don’t._  
   
But, god, he thinks, _I don’t, I don’t, I don’t._  
  
~  
  
Shane goes quiet, and he can feel his heart pounding away, fast but steady, steady, steady. He doesn’t feel steady at all.

 _Oh God, don’t cry,_ he thinks, because it hurts him, cuts at him, and he doesn’t know what to do, and all of the films and all of the people he’s ever seen around him who can hug and say the right thing and protect and comfort, none of that’s him. He missed that class on how to be a decent human being, somehow, and now he’s supposed to do something, and he _wants_ to, but he doesn’t know what, and so he says “Why would you wish—what happened?” And then contemplates cutting his own throat, briefly, because that was probably the worst possible thing. It was definitely the worst fucking thing he could have said.  
  
~  
   
Ryan looks away. He stares at nothing, at the wall, and the tears stay where they are. Still shimmering along his eyelids. He knows they’ll probably fall, but his whole face is trembling, trying to hold them back. He answers with a tone that’s not his. It’s a thousand miles away, and he never looks at Shane. Like he’s in a trance.  
   
“The apartment. It was… we were…” He swallows. “It was on the third floor, so I thought… I thought it would be fine. He kept asking to take a shift.” This weird, hollow smile curls one side of his mouth. “He said I was acting weirder than usual.” It fades, a little ghostly, like it was never there. “Because I wasn’t sleeping. And we locked the door. So I thought it’d be okay…” He keeps staring, like that little girl, with one eye dangling from its socket will come bursting through it. “But I didn’t check the closet. Why didn’t I check the closet?” He blinks, sighs, still somewhere away from his body.  
   
He’s not fighting the tears anymore. They’re still wet, still there, but the heat has chilled. “I just went to sleep.” He blinks. “I went to sleep, and when I woke up…” He turns and looks at Shane, barely seeing him. His eyebrows raise, and there’s a ghastly tilt to his mouth, but he doesn’t keep going.  
  
~  
  
_Christ,_ Shane thinks, and then thinks it again, harder, more helpless. He shouldn’t have asked because he still doesn’t know what to do or say. He knew that it wasn’t going to magically come to him, but he’d asked anyway.

He’d fucking asked anyway, and he thinks that that’s not his information to have, and he’s just made Ryan spill it in this vulnerable moment. And seriously, Shane thinks, he really is an asshole.

He says “I’m sorry,” because there’s nothing else. He drops the blade and pulls his hand from Ryan gently, then presses the heels of his hands to his eyes as the weight of that settles on him and keeps on settling until it’s too much, and he’s sure — he knows — it’s worse for Ryan. “Fuck, I’m sorry, Ryan,” he says.

Is he supposed to tell him that they’ve all suffered that? Like that’s going to fucking help? He knows that’s not good enough. It won’t mean anything beyond ‘We’ve all been there,’ which is useless when you’re _there_ , and in it. “I mean— you had to sleep. We all— that’s just biological. That’s not your fault.”  
  
‘Shut _up_ ’ he thinks to himself, viciously, and he does.  
  
~  
   
Ryan’s trying to make himself act like a person. Trying not to let this guilt swallow him whole. But fuck, his eyes are still on the knife. He’s just watching it and when Shane pulls his hand away, it’s worse. Like now he’s just floating. Or sinking. He had one anchor, one tether to reality, and now he’s got nothing. And his mind is circling that knife like a fucking shark.  
   
_Stop, he’s gonna think you’re suicidal, Ryan. Stop._  
   
One tear has managed to get away from him. He feels it slide down his cheek. He can’t get his hands untangled from his thighs enough to wipe it away. He feels alone in this space. Feels like it’ll crush him.  
   
“Whatever,” he says, like he didn’t just dump an emotional landfill on Shane. “I’m sorry. That was… I brought that up, because… it’s dumb. But I don’t know, if… I feel like staying here isn’t fair to him. Like, it sucked. It sucked so much for him. And you’re…” He gestures vaguely. “I know I sound like a crazy person to you. I _feel_ like one. My head’s all messed up, man.”  
  
-  
  
“That’s okay,” he says. “Nah, you’re fine,” he tells him, and the words are so casual but he sounds soft. He doesn’t know how, but he watches the tear slide down Ryan’s cheek, and doesn’t know he has managed to literally shave Ryan’s face, cup his collarbone, his jaw in one hand, but he can’t reach out to brush away that one tear.He wishes he could.Instead, he clings to something, an idea, a gateway back to solid emotional ground.“You don’t, uh, you don’t sound like a crazy person. You sounded crazy when you said they were _zombies_ , though. Just, I think you should know that.”  
  
~  
   
Ryan raises his head. Squints. He’s tired. _So_ tired. But he can’t believe what Shane just said to him. He rubs his nose, then extends it back to his forehead his hair. “Wh—” He’s having a hard time getting words out right now. He’s having a hard time doing anything, including comprehending what Shane’s saying to him.  
   
“Wh—I…” He shakes his head. He wants to be irritated, be heated, but he can’t quite manage. It’s a little wispy, but he says, “Wh—of course they’re zombies. What else would they be? It’s flesh-eating things that we change into after we get bitten.” His can’t work the t out of the last word, and it turns into something more like _bidden_. He ignores it. “That is the definition of zombie.” He wants to add _dude_ , or _man_ , or something, onto the end of it. To make it sound more alive. But he doesn’t have it in him.  
   
It feels a little better, more like himself, but there’s this itching.  
   
_Jake’s a zombie._  
  
~  
  
Shane’s looking at him, trying to find something but he doesn’t know if he sees it. “Zombies aren’t real,” he says, softly. “Eventually— they’ll—” what? Figure this out? No one’s doing that anymore. Everyone’s literally just trying to survive.

_The definition of a zombie is..._

Something starts to ache in his chest, ice cold. Like fear.  
  
~  
   
Ryan perks up, because Shane is shutting down. Like, _hard_. Like needs a reboot. Shit, did he really not _know_? It seems so obvious. It _is_ obvious. People are walking around growling and spitting and eating other people, and… oh, god. He rubs his face again, because it’s all he can do.  
   
“Okay, hey, chill, it’s…” Ryan swallows. “It doesn’t mean they won’t figure it out.” They won’t. How could they? They, this ambiguous, mythical group, is probably dead. But he needs to bring Shane back. “We don’t have to call them that. We can call them like… boogers, or something. If that’s better. You’re still kicking their asses pretty good.”  
  
He’s still weak, a little, but...  
  
~  
  
That gets him. His face flickers into this expression of utter confusion. “ _Boogers_?” Shane repeats, looking utterly perplexed. But he laughs a little, barely. “What the fuck? Next you’ll be telling me that ghosts are real, too. And I don’t ‘kick their asses’ I more just — flail in their general direction until I hit something.” He waves his arms a bit weirdly, wobbly, to re-establish his ungangly limbs, then stops, drops his eyes.  
  
Until he hits something like Jake.  
  
~  
   
Ryan casts his eyes away, tries to use the moment to collect himself. But he laughs, it’s a softer thing, but it’s real. Because Shane has a lot of limbs and throwing them around in the air like that should be considered a hazard. “Well, to be fair to them… that _is_ pretty intimidating. And dangerous. Add a pipe to that and it’s like death on wheels.”  
   
He bites at his lips, picks at the too-long pants where he sits on the floor.  
  
~  
  
He exhales through his nose, just a breath. Maybe a laugh, but it’s so muted, buried beneath everything else.“You deserve this,” he says, gets the words out somehow, and he takes a weird little breath because he has to keep talking before he loses his nerve and there’s not enough time between heartbeats. “You— the circumstances are absolute shit, but, I’m kind of glad you showed up, Ryan.”And he says it like that, says his name, because he means _him_. And maybe he didn’t know Jake, and it’s not fair, and maybe Ryan’s going to turn out to be... awful somehow. Or maybe he’ll just… maybe he’s the worst thing, for Shane, but it doesn’t _feel_ like it, and he can’t possibly tell him why he feels this way because it would be a lot of— things he can’t explain, can’t even begin to understand.  
  
He’s a fighter, this kid, who shivers and cries and gets angry faster than Shane can catch up. He’s more than Shane can fucking wrap his head around, and he’s terrified, but more than that, he wants to hold on.  
  
~  
   
A fire lights in his stomach. It’s really innocuous, actually. Just a nice, polite thing to say, but it feels weird. Like Shane has to work to get these things out of him, and here this is, and maybe he means it. Jake would’ve been better. Ryan has no doubt. Jake was better. Stronger, braver, better—but he can’t say that to Shane. Shane doesn’t know that, and it hands him this guilt. This guilt he won’t know how to respond to.  
   
So Ryan looks at Shane, brushes his fingers over the area of his collarbone, his neck, where Shane touched. Touched so much. It feels raw now, exposed like the skin’s rubbed off. He smiles, and it’s hushed, but bright. Because Shane’s trying. Ryan can see him trying.  
   
“I’m not sure I believe you. I mean, the shaving thing seems to have taken a _lot_ out of you. Like, do you need a nap?” He laughs a little, then he yanks a hand through his hair. “Jake was good, though. You would have liked Jake.” And then, for some reason, he adds, “He would have liked you.”  
  
~  
  
Shane has no idea how to respond to that so he just says “Uh, I, uh,” so it all blends into one nonsense word, and then he says, “Oh. We’ve— you’re still— you want me to finish this or?” He asks, reaching for the razor again, because Ryan’s still got all that pale shaving cream foam down one side of his neck. Something sparks through him and he wonders if he _should_ take a break or let Ryan do it himself because he doesn’t know if he can deal with that level of... whatever it was, again. But if he lets Ryan do it, they really will get eaten.

“I’m not very good at people,” Shane admits, suddenly, turning the razor over and over in his fingers, eyes down, and he’s not smiling, but it’s like it shimmers around him as he meets Ryan’s eyes. “So yeah, I probably will need a nap. Like a five year old or something. Too much— cake.”  
  
~

Ryan smiles, eyebrows rising. A laugh starts before he can get the first bit out. “So I’m—I’m cake? Is that what we’re saying here?” He lets himself laugh and glances at the razor. “A nap?” He says through a little wheeze. He almost feels bad for Shane. He didn’t realize they weren’t done, but no, yeah, there’s definitely shaving cream still on him. “Can you handle it? Don’t get diabetes.” He’s glad, though, that it’s a lot for Shane. Because it’s a lot for him, and he was sorta worried he was losing his mind. “Okay, big guy, go for it—just don’t kill me. Please.”

~  
  
It’s not the words so much as the way Ryan’s just said them, like— fondly, affectionate almost... and it’s something he’s called Shane like _he’s_ somehow special.

And Shane’s never had anything like that— the name Shane doesn’t exactly lend itself to nicknames, being short enough already. But now he’s remembering the way Ryan said _that_ , too, back in the bathroom, his name, and he has to tamp it all down, fast.

He ducks his head, taking that in, internalizing it, the way Ryan had said it...

He wonders if maybe it’s just how Ryan says most things. Carefully. Shane can hear where he’s careful, every once in a while.

He’s quiet as he reaches out, meets Ryan’s eyes before — only before and not after — he touches him, steadies him, fingers against his throat, the clean shaven side, where his skin is impossibly soft, and his jaw.

He doesn’t look at his mouth. He waits until the blade has slid up over his throat once, and away, before he says, deceptively soft, and all half-cautious wickedness: “Guess everyone’s big to you… you’re _tiny_.”  
  
~  
   
God damn it. Ryan thought it was a one-time thing. He didn’t expect to submerge the second Shane put his hand on him, on his throat, again. But he does. He loses it, a thousand miles below the surface of _Ryan_. Of who he’s supposed to be.  
   
The touch ratchets through him, bounces out to the rest of him like sonar. Shane’s fingertips echo off his skeleton, until all his wires are crossed, and he’s trying to breathe _around_ Shane. Over Shane. Who has somehow soaked himself into Ryan’s skin. With one touch. This touch that’s necessary, required—doesn’t mean a damn thing, and yet it unravels Ryan. Like squalls at his chest, his mind, beating, battering, until he doesn’t know which way is up.  
   
The blade, again. God, it cows Ryan like a whip. He hates it. Hates the way it rips through him, yanks him into place like a fist wrapped around his waist. Ryan’s back wants to arc—Ryan’s body wants to… please, maybe. Fuck. He shouldn’t like it this much. He shouldn’t… his breath burns too hot in his throat.  
   
He tries to cling to something, ends up tangling his hands in his pants again. Or Shane’s pants. But thinking about that makes it worse. “No,” he says, sorta shaky, sorta entranced. He means it to be indignant. “Just you. You are _especially_ big.” His laugh shatters at the end, so it’s giddier, more hysterical. He fucking hates it.  
  
~  
  
Shane swallows, because he felt it last time, this aching, heavy tension, but it was all caught up in something else and now they’re here again and he’s—  
“Yeah, I— I am, that true.” He says it like he’s sort of embarrassed. His height is awkward, makes him awkward. But he’s used to it. He swallows again, dropping his eyes as he wipes the razor off again. It’s the last little bit and he realizes, as he gently, wordlessly, tilts Ryan’s face a little more to the side so he can see, so he can reach, he realizes that it’s almost finished and he— he doesn’t want it to be.And he realizes that it’s slightly fucked up, too, in a way. And he thinks that this guy, that Ryan, that he’s dangerous because of what he _does_ to Shane, and what he makes Shane want to do to him, and it has nothing nothing nothing to do with this blade and everything to do with his hands, his mouth. Or Ryan’s — He doesn’t know.He finishes, gets the last bit of shaving cream away, and it’s mostly clean, bloodless, except the little nicks Ryan gave himself, and those are dried now.So he draws the blade away and, instead of letting Ryan go, he just sets it down, with a soft click, on the floor beside them, and finally lets himself look up, brown eyes flickering to Ryan’s face: to his mouth, his cheeks, his eyes. He doesn’t let him go, but he’s not holding onto him either. It’s just a touch, just his fingertips. Shane feels like that touch is a vice on his own throat, and he’s barely breathing at all.  
  
~  
   
Shane finishes the shaving. Ryan can see he’s finished, sees him set the blade aside. But Shane doesn’t quite stop the touch. Ryan doesn’t even know if he knows he’s doing it, maybe he doesn’t, but he holds it. So Ryan stays still. He can’t bring his body to move, to breathe, under Shane’s fingers. It’s the lightest thing. All fingertips and quiet.  
   
But it owns Ryan in every way a person can be owned.  
   
Ryan holds back his breathing, like he’s breathing on this interval that isn’t quite giving him enough air. Because of Shane. Because he’s scared of pushing at Shane’s hand, like he isn’t supposed to. Every time he breathes his skin sizzles with it, with Shane’s fingers. He works his own fingers out of the fabric of his pants, lets them tremble on his thighs. Silently.  
   
A word rises in his throat, but it dies there. Just collapses back into him as he watches Shane. Ryan’s head is still tilted back, just slightly, like Shane’s going to use the razor again. Then, slowly, agonizingly, Ryan raises his hand—he doesn’t know what he intends, but it brushes over Shane’s. It’s light, a bristle of touch, but his fingers slide over Shane’s like, please. But he doesn’t know if he’s asking _please, let me go,_ or _please, stay._ He can’t tell.  
   
But Shane’s hand is so delicate and soft Ryan pulls away, lets his hands glide back to the floor, but it finds Shane’s knee, nestles into it before he realizes. Then he pulls back, shocked, and his hand floats to the floor, but it’s touching Shane’s knee, his thigh, the entire way. And he thinks it might be intentional.  
  
~  
  
He’s so fucking aware of himself, of his body that he feels like he’s going to break. So often, Shane forgets himself, it’s just his thoughts, and what his body can do for him. Run, sleep, bash in the heads of... of zombies...When Ryan touches his hand, there’s this swoop in his stomach like he’s just slipped and fallen, but the impact never comes, and that’s worse somehow because he’s waiting and waiting for something to happen, for something to end this desperate, quiet thing— It’s so quiet it screams through him.And then Ryan’s fingers touch his knee, his thigh, and Shane’s leg jumps slightly, just enough. So slight it might have just been tension flashing through. The touch lasts. It’s like heat, and it ignites something he’d rather— something he’s not used to— and it’s been so long since anyone touched him with purpose and his breath shakes from his chest too sudden, too sharp, too obvious. He shuts his eyes. He needs to get closer or get up and leave. Jesus Christ, this can’t— it can’t be right for either of them. It’s just— it’s just the fucking apocalypse.  
  
~  
   
Shane stills, and above all, does not stop touching. Does not release his control of Ryan. But Ryan’s got to do something. Power shoots up his veins like a laser cannon at the way Shane goes still beneath him. The way he kind of stops moving, the way he, god help them both, shuts his eyes. Ryan can’t do this. He can’t, and yet, his hand moves up, out, out, out, until it’s trembling, shaking, and tracing the line beneath Shane’s eyes.  
   
It feels like he expected, all delicate bone and soft skin. He swallows. His fingers kinda follow Shane’s cheekbone, still shaking, terrified, of this warm skin, of the prick of new-formed hairs. It’s not normal. It’s weird for him to be sliding his hand, the pad of his fingertips, along Shane’s face. But he’s just fucking doing it. And he can feel himself moving, just a bit. Tilting forward. He doesn’t know what his intent his, but there’s something there. He swipes along the corner of Shane’s mouth, and it pounds through him like a strike of lightning. Like wind and rain. Bites into him like a snake.  
   
The venom pools through him, and he thinks, stop it. He doesn’t know what he’s doing, can’t possibly know, but his hand is still there, exploring, curious, even as it drifts lower, lower, to the cut of Shane’s jawline. This sharp, jutted thing. It hangs there—all smooth, untapped warmth, before he lets it fall. And god, he’s _moved_. He’s moved so that he’s sharing the same breath as Shane, so he can’t tell who’s breath touches who’s lips. If he’s swallowing Shane’s or his own. But he tastes Shane just the same.  
   
Then he laughs, and the heat brushes along Shane’s lips. He feels it bounce back, trace the outline of Shane’s mouth, and Ryan looks away. “See? It’s fucking weird, dude.”    
  
~  
  
Something bites into him, sharply. He kind of laughs, kind of makes this little sound, like a groan. He doesn’t open his eyes, can’t, because he can feel how close Ryan is, and he can’t.“Yeah,” he says, and tries to make himself draw away. Can’t. He’s aware of his pulse, the movement of blood, and he’s trying to mentally direct it away from between his thighs and back into his fucking brain because he needs to think.This wasn’t what he thought it was. Or Ryan’s changed his mind or is giving him an out and suddenly Shane kind of does want to kill him. “Uh, fucking weird,” he repeats, and then drops his hand from Ryan’s face, pulls away. It takes him a second to be able to look at him, and maybe it’s too questioning when he finally does.  
  
~  
   
Ryan finally makes himself look at Shane. And there’s this confused look on Shane’s face, so Ryan drops his head into his shoulders—he’s still got this smile on his face, this wide, challenging smile. Gaze intent, locked on Shane like a scope. He doesn’t really know what he’s daring Shane to do, but somehow, he knows he won’t do it. So he leans into the challenge, let’s one corner of his mouth tip up a little more than the other.  
   
He misses Shane’s hand as soon as it drops, craves it like it’s crack cocaine and he’s totally addicted, but he keeps his face in this wide grin of a smile. He feels freer, like he can move more, do more, now that Shane has released that piece of him. So he knows, completely knows, there’s a kind of mischievous grin on his face.  
   
“Something like that.”  
  
~  
  
He sees, suddenly, gets it, what Ryan’s doing, or maybe he thinks he does. He laughs softly. “Whatever, man,” he tells him, but he’s smiling, and everything kind of falls into place, and it feels more real, or at least more... normal, usual, than all the rest of it. He reaches up because nothing could be too familiar after what they’ve just done, and Shane roughly ruffles Ryan’s dark hair. It’s softer than he thought it would be but he doesn’t let himself linger. “All right,” he says. “Is it nap time?” He asks like it’s an exciting prospect and he’s joking, but he’s forcing himself to his knees, too, unwinding himself so he can stand.  
  
_Here’s the thing,_ Shane reasons, in the few seconds between escaping the hold of Ryan’s eyes and pulling one leg, the one Ryan touched, protectively to his chest as he presses his hands into the floor, ready to push himself up. It isn’t… it isn’t _him_. Isn’t Shane. Ryan’s just lost his brother, his little brother. Ryan’s been running for days, and he’s been soaked and cold and not sleeping, and they’ve only had a box of Goldfish between them today and it’s just… circumstances aren’t lending themselves to anything good, here. To anything that could possibly be considered normal or healthy. And so what if maybe Ryan’s smile just now, crooked, mischievous, is imprinted behind Shane’s eyelids as he blinks, and so what if maybe Shane’s still…  
  
He feels like he’s still waiting for impact and, he thinks, he can’t end up like that again. It’s too foreign to him, that depth of feeling, too distracting. And, he tells himself, if he looked at Ryan a certain way, if he’d thought things he shouldn’t’ve ( _mouth, tongue, teeth, throat, those warm eyes. Shane could have tasted the water on his collarbones and, now, he half-thinks Ryan would have let him_ ) _if_ , Shane tells himself, he had looked at Ryan a certain way, it was only because he’d been here for way too long, alone. Humans aren’t meant for that. Even weird humans like Shane.  
  
And fine, okay, maybe this is good. It’s great. Maybe it will be safer than being alone, or maybe it won’t, but he knows he can’t just leave Ryan, now. He _knows_ it. And, Shane thinks, if it _were_ Jake instead, maybe it would be just exactly the same. Maybe he didn’t know how starved he was, for someone, anyone. And maybe it would be Jake’s hands Shane had braced beneath his own, against a broken bone, maybe it would be his fingertips that Shane still felt, ghostly, sparking like a flint, against his own face, his leg.  
  
It’s just as plausible as zombies, right? The definition of a zombie is those fucking things outside, and the definition of an apocalypse is Shane cracking open his ribs rung by rung to expose his heart to Ryan, to _Ryan_...  
  
_Stop_ , he thinks, as quickly as he can. It could… could’ve been anyone, Shane tells himself again.  
  
Because this is the most dangerous thought he’s had these last two days. It comes unbidden and against everything he’s just convinced himself of — against all the rest of it, and Shane just needs to — he gathers it all up in his head, all these moments between them that vibrate in his memory like live wires, the feeling of Ryan shaking beneath his hands, and how much— how _much_ Shane had wanted to— he gathers up this wild, searing thing, and prepares to mentally shut the lid on it, because that way, he can protect them both.  
  
He doesn’t even _know_ Ryan.  
  
But he wants to.

~

Ryan protests, albeit mildly, at Shane’s decision to ruffle his hair. He doesn’t want to take up this space of little brother, but he’s worried that’s where he’s headed. It bothers him. More than because Jake was supposed to be the little brother. It bothers him in this weird, buzzing away that clips at his pulse until it’s jagged.

Still, he smiles. He needs this easiness between them, even though he isn’t sure what it is. He isn’t sure what he wanted, just now, what was written across Shane’s eyes. He’d meant it as a joke—hadn’t he?

But it wasn’t. Not really. His body reacted to Shane’s hand around that razor—in this visceral, wicked way. Shane’s warmth has stained his skin so he feels it in the wind of his veins. It isn’t a joke. But Ryan doesn’t know what it is. Doesn’t know how to handle it, except as a joke.

He watches Shane unfold, unravel like a tapestry, as he begins to stand. All legs and limbs and lines. This brilliantly controlled chaos Shane seems to manage like a shepherd. Ryan’s eyes follow the bend of his knees. All these pieces of a person. It’s so much. It’s too much. Shane is. He’s staring, he realizes, so he laughs and says, “yeah.” But it’s another whisper.

His hand moves up to his lip, to swipe across the bottom one. Because he’s suddenly thinking about his mouth. About Shane’s mouth. About—Jesus. Is that what he was doing just then? He tucks his hand under his chin, but his tongue follows the trail of his finger over his lip. His heartbeat thrums outward, and it’s beating enough that it’s tipping his balance, even on the floor.

Then he’s just babbling, babbling like he can keep Shane here, on the floor with him, if he can muster up enough words. “Too bad we don’t have Netflix anymore. I miss Netflix. And popcorn. Wow, I really miss popcorn. I had a bag of it I found, in my backpack, but…” He looks woefully at the door. “I doubt I could even get it to pop without a microwave anyway. Another thing I miss: microwaves.”

It all spills out, comes out so fast. He doesn’t know if Shane has a chance to react, or even hear, but he’s still kinda moving like he’s going to stand up.

Ryan doesn’t see it coming, doesn’t know he’s going to do it, but his hand snatches forward. He hits Shane’s torso. Halts him before he can stand. And Ryan’s palm is on Shane’s chest—right over his heart, and it’s weird. Just like before, it’s weird, only this time he doesn’t know what he’s doing. Or, at least, he’s aware he doesn’t know what he’s doing. His fingers tremble, and Shane’s heart hammers under them, kind of fast—faster than Ryan thought it’d be—against his palm.

Well, Ryan, that’s what happens when random strangers grab you without warning.

His fingers curl, bunch the fabric of Shane’s shirt in his hand, but still—he can feel the planes of this wiry body beneath it. Skin and bone and sinew. And it’s like the shirt isn’t there, even as Ryan wraps his hands around it.

“Wait,” he says. There’s this life in it, this Otherness, that he doesn’t grasp, can’t—maybe there’s something else—something dangerous that he isn’t saying. He panics, frozen—grabs the razor with his other hand and extends it. “Don’t, uh, don’t forget this—seems dangerous. And it’ll probably take you half an hour to bend over and get it with all, uh, yeah, so…” He bites his lip, glances down his arm like a shotgun barrel, then slowly, reluctantly, pulls back—and there’s static at his fingertips, crackling between them, but he puts this pillow of space between Shane’s chest and his hand.

Because Shane probably needs it.

Or Ryan does.

~  
  
For a moment Shane had thought Ryan was— that he might— and his heart starts racing, but then it just— “Wait,” Ryan says as he catches at the fabric of Shane’s shirt, and Shane is so still. He’s biting his lip, worrying at it, because here he is trying to shut all this away, and Ryan just has to reach out and Shane’s already thinking about how soft his lower lip was beneath his touch.Shane’s brain goes a little haywire, but then Ryan’s talking and he can focus on those words, at least. He takes the razor from him. Their fingers brush, tangle. “Thank you,” he says, and Ryan’s already let go.“So where’re you sleeping tonight?” He asks. Asks because it’s a practical question, and here he is mentally scrambling to get all of that tension, all of these moments into that little mental box again, but they’re firing around his head like a game of marbles, and he can’t— he can’t quite stop the rush of disappointment in the loss of that touch, or the quiet little voice in his head that sounds just like his own when it laughs softly and says sarcastically, knowingly, ‘Good luck.’  
  
~  
   
Sleeping. That’s like a bucket of ice water down his back. He purses his lips, clenches his hands into these fists in front of him. He wishes he’d held longer, touched Shane more. He wants to do it again, but he’s out of excuses. Except that touching Shane, putting his hand back on his heartbeat, might help Ryan get this further away from him.  
   
He looks around, like there are just so many options he doesn’t know what to do with them. “I don’t know. We could do a repeat of last night and I could just dramatically pass out on the floor… it seems to have worked.”  
   
God, he’s told Shane so much, about Jake, about their life. He didn’t mean to, at all. It just came out. And Shane’s given him nothing. He hates it. But he’s not going to push. He’s already pushed himself into this guy’s life, if he wants his secrets, that’s okay. He guesses. Shane doesn’t owe him anything.  
  
~  
  
He exhales a little laugh, but he’s thinking, putting pieces together. “You really don’t—” he considers the bed, but he knows Ryan’s not going to take it. He thinks he’s sort of starting to understand why, too.“Okay, What if... I’m gonna bring some of that couch down. You can’t sleep on the floor, again. Also, did you say popcorn?” He’s thinking about that pack again, what might be in there. “I think we need to get your bag in here,” he says, “if there’s popcorn in it.”He says it dead seriously. He think he might be.  
  
~  
  
Ryan leans forward a little. The popcorn is something else, something that isn’t going to make him have to think about it—think about everything that’s wrong with him. Think about Jake. Again. God. At the same time, he’s not sure he’s allowed to stop thinking about Jake. But he smiles, anyway. “You like popcorn?”  
   
He scrunches his face, though. “And speak for yourself, I love the floor.” It’s kinda because he doesn’t want Shane to go to the trouble of dragging anything down here, but it’s also kinda because he’s not sure how he’ll react to the idea of lying on something like that, again. He can’t fight too hard, though. Or Shane really will label him crazy.  
  
~  
  
“If you keep sleeping on the floor you’re going to get pneumonia and die. And, how dare you, my relationship with popcorn could never be contained to the word ‘like,’” Shane says. “I think... I think we should get it. I bet we could cook it on the fire. Oh damn,” Shane says, voice brighter and brighter. “We definitely could. Let’s— let’s try.”  
  
It’s dark already, foolish to go out there, but it’s been so quiet. And Ryan looks happier. Shane _wants_ to go. And he’s curious to see what else Ryan has in that bag. Like it’ll somehow tell him more about Ryan himself. But if the popcorn’s ruined, Shane thinks he might actually murder someone.  
  
~  
   
Dread seeps into Ryan’s stomach. It’s dark. He can’t see a lot about outside, but he knows it’s dark. He tilts his head, stares at the door. “Calm down, dude, it’s probably ruined.” He tries to move forward, almost like he’s reaching for Shane, but his brace clangs against his leg and it’s reverberating through him. He can’t bite back the hiss of curses. But he continues despite it, “Like, don’t get me wrong, popcorn is amazing. More than amazing. Potentially the best food ever invented, so I get you, but…”  
   
He bites his lip, picks a few flakes of dry skin off it, then soothes it with his tongue. “But, maybe just… wait until morning. When it’s brighter, or whatever.” He’s suddenly swarmed with the idea of something out there, of one of those things out there, where Shane can’t see it. It’s bizarre. Shane’s been on his own for ages, can _clearly_ handle himself, but… it doesn’t matter. Ryan wants him in here. Not just because he doesn’t want to be alone, or because he doesn’t want to lose someone else.  
   
Because he doesn’t want to lose _Shane_.  
   
“Don’t—just, just stay,” he says.  
  
~  
  
Shane really... fuck he really just wants... not just popcorn but what it symbolizes. Some easier time. Movies and dark theatres and electricity.

He wonders if he and Ryan would ever have bonded over this apparent mutual love of popcorn if there weren’t zombies. And Shane’s watching him touch his own mouth, and he pauses, just watches him do it.

And then Ryan’s asking him to stay, telling him, and Shane pulls himself back to this. To here and now. Cabin, cold, firelight. He’s so fucking hungry. It’s worse now that he’s thought about food.

“I, okay.” He thinks _to tell you the truth, I’m worried about food._ He thinks it but he doesn’t say it. Instead he looks away from Ryan, and his eyes, and his mouth.  
  
“Tomorrow?” He’s already moving to the stairs to figure out that couch. “Do you have anything else useful in there?” he asks from the stairs.  
  
~  
   
Ryan lets out a breath. Rakes his mind for something to say, to pull him away from this fuzzy, liquid relief floating through him. He watches the way Shane’s legs bend as they walk up the stairs. God, his legs. Ryan is fascinated with his silhouette—he just…  
   
Okay. He brings the air he just let out back into his lungs and holds it. Grounds himself. Shane isn’t leaving. Maybe they’ll even have popcorn tomorrow, and damn, he wants it. Now that he’s not worried his mouth is _watering_.  
   
“Uh, yeah,” he calls. “I mean, maybe. Like I said, there was some beef jerky and chocolate bars we took from a gas station. And there’s this… radio… just…” He sighs. He isn’t going to go into that right now. Go into why he’s sure it’s something. “It doesn’t really work, but, uh… some clothes. we had some cans of soup, but uh… we were still working on getting those open.” He brightens. “Oh, hey, I bet that’ll at least still be good. It’s just kind of a mosaic of shit we’d…” His voice hangs a little, then he pushes it out again, “been collecting.”  
  
~  
  
Shane winces a little, thinks _damn_ , and tries to fix it. “Mosaic of shit,” he repeats, like it’s the title of a poem or something. He laughs softly. “Wow.” He isn’t going to be able to carry all this so he just chucks the cushions down the steps one by one, then follows them down, kicking them vaguely into the main room.

“So the couch has mold,” Shane says. “It’s uh— I think it’s fine. Probably. Don’t breathe in too hard.” He sort of smiles at Ryan but meets his eyes way too fast. Just long enough for that shock of connection before he looks away.  
  
~  
   
Ryan laughs, a twinkling, light thing, that bubbles through him and washes out some of the shrapnel lodged in his chest. “Yeah, mosaic of shit,” he repeats as he watches the cushions fall down the stairs. It’s kind of comical, so he’s still smiling when Shane reappears and starts talking about the mold.  
   
He wriggles over to grab the cushions, brings them into a little pile in front of him. There is definitely mold. He shakes his head. “If I made it through all that shit, just to die to fucking… mold, then I’m gonna be _pissed_.”  
   
But anxiety is already shooting through him like a line of fire. He blinks too hard, sees the blankets stacked on the bed in that apartment again. Feels the literal rip through his consciousness, Jake’s scream tearing up his spine. He presses his fingers into the cushion. They’re old, wrinkled, and they feel stained. In the worst way.  
   
_“That bed looks like the stuff you see on the side of the road—you know when people throw out their old furniture, and you’re like, what the hell did you do on that armchair to fuck it up like that?” Jake opens and closes drawers, pulls out what looks to be a Rubix cube and pockets it, not looking at Ryan as he speaks._  
  
_“Yeah, they probably filmed porn in here or something.” Ryan yanks the pillow out of the bag and throws it onto the bed. He does an exaggerated thrusting motion with his hips, and Jake throws his head back in a laugh._  
  
_“Always straight to porn. You need to get laid.”_  
  
_“Are you offering?” Ryan says, and Jake gags, seriously, until he coughs. “Or you think I should go proposition one of the zombies?”_  
  
_“Hey, that one outside still had hair. Solid 8 on the zombie scale. I’d do her.”_  
  
_“Oh, god. No. Gross—that’s… jesus christ.”_  
  
_“Hey you’re the one who brought up incest!”_  
  
_“It was a—okay, you know what, sleep. Now. I’ll keep watch, and like, get the door.”_  
  
_“Dude, no.” Jake says, very sternly. “You sleep. You’ve got so many bags under your eyes I’m starting to think you’re one of them. If I saw you standing over my bed, I wouldn’t hesitate to kill you.”_  
  
_“Now that’s just rude.”_  
   
He clears his throat, sorta panicked. Like he thinks maybe Shane said something. He stops touching the couch, but he doesn’t ask. Doesn’t indicate he wasn’t listening.  He forces this rigid joke into his voice, this rubbery, elastic thing, that sounds like he’s too bored to be amused. “I don’t know why you think this is better than the floor. But I appreciate the effort.”  
  
~  
  
“You’ll be less cold,” Shane tells him, all practicality, but he’s been sort of watching, glancing, as he shakes out the sheet Ryan can use. Something’s wrong again. Shane doesn’t have to stretch too far to guess what it is. “Nothing’s gonna happen to you, man,” Shane says. “I’ll pipe anything that comes near here, okay? And anyway, I haven’t seen a single one of them.”  
  
Not since last night…  
  
“And even if I did, they’d have a hard time getting in. Zombies haven’t really figured out doorknobs.” There it is. He’s giving it to him. Sure, zombies are real. Shane will take his word for it on his one. No one else has given him any information.  
  
~  
   
Ryan doesn’t like that Shane picked up on it—this weirdness. It’s not like he’s ever been good at hiding stuff, but he’s never had quite so much to hide. And Shane seems aware of everything. Like every thought Ryan has, Shane is grabbing out of the air and turning over like some sort of crossword. Ryan scoffs. “I’m not worried about anything happening to me.” It’s true. He isn’t. So it rings truer than what’s beneath it.  
   
“I hope you’ve got a lock, though, and you aren’t just…” He jerks a little at a sound. The wind, maybe, but his body is stretching, prickling at everything. Like it always does now when he tries to sleep. “Depending on the complexity of door knobs to carry us through.”  
  
~  
  
“Yeah, I have a lock, Ryan,” Shane’s saying. It isn’t really just the zombies he’s worried about, after all, but he keeps that to himself too.

He doesn’t know if he believes him. He doesn’t know if he gets this thing about Ryan and beds, but whatever. Roll with it. He drags the cushions over beside the bed anyway, and lays them alongside it because this way, at least, they can both keep an eye on each other. For any reason.

He sort of carelessly drops the blanket down on it, this makeshift bed, then drops down onto the actual bed, reaching for the red rope that’s found its way back to the bedside table. He gets back to unknotting it, searching for the right thing to say. Ryan’s so insistent on getting around by himself Shane decides not to help him.

And the problem is is that he had questions, bad ones, ones that suck to talk about, but he wonders how much Ryan knows that he doesn’t. “Hey... when did— like how long have you been in this? This whole... world ending bullshit?”  
  
He says ‘bullshit’ not like it’s a lie, but rather like it’s just a shitty thing to contend with. It’s bullshit.  
  
~  
   
Ryan uses the shovel to drag himself over, because Shane’s apparently decided they need to sleep right next to each other. Which is fine with Ryan, maybe it’ll freak him out less. To be closer. If he wakes up, if he sleeps at all, he’ll be able to see Shane. Easily. It’s a good idea, so he just drags himself over and plops down on the cushions.  
   
He’s cold so he immediately draws the blanket over himself, wraps it around his head like a hood. He’s sure it looks ridiculous, but he doesn’t care, because even if he can’t sleep—this part is nice. This tiny, little luxury that he’s spent so long without. He peeks his head over the bed, still huddled in the blanket, and tilts his head at the red rope.  
   
   
“How long have I been _in_ it?” he says when Shane asks. “Like, what do you mean? I assume as long as you have. I didn’t actually come from a parallel dimension, though, wait! You do kinda remind me of an alien. Holy shit, are you trying to use me to understand our world? Did you just pick a super shitty time to drop in on Earth?”  
  
~  
  
This is a nice change from Ryan being all jumpy and skittish across the room, so Shane’s already sort of smiling at him as he hauls the blanket up over his head.“Aliens—“ he starts to laugh hard and genuine, and his words come out all uneven and delighted because of it. “Can you imagine?” he says, “Showing up to earth for _this_ kind of shit? You’d be like ‘Wow, oops, we’re obviously not missing much,’” He says it in their weird, cartoonish voices, not-so-obviously meant to be an alien. “ ‘Back to the ship, martians!’ “ He leans over the rope a little, shoulders shaking almost silently, collecting himself.  
  
~  
   
Ryan unwinds into a laugh, pulls the blanket all the way over his face. He can’t quite collect himself. He wheezes and eventually has to throw the blanket back because there’s so much warm breath he’s suffocating, and he’s already near-choking on his laughter.  
   
“Like ‘take me to your leader,’ oh shit—is that? Dude, nevermind, let’s get the fuck out of here. Oh shit, there’s one biting the hull. And just get in the ship and peel out like, doing a fucking donut in the stratosphere?”  
   
He leans himself on his arms, kinda watches Shane, because this guy is funny—and Ryan is… Ryan feels slightly unsteady. Like he can’t keep pace with him. But he’s smiling, and he doesn’t feel like these cushions are going to pull him down into them like a set of teeth. So it’s okay. Watching Shane, it’s kinda okay, even if he doesn’t laugh. But oh, Ryan wants him to.  
  
~  
  
“Yeah, yeah,” Shane agrees, sort of wheezes as he’s trying to get the words out, laughs at Ryan’s loss of control under the blanket. “They have to explain the bite-marks to their master or whatever like ‘Yes sir, it was trying to _eat_ the ship!’ Maybe it looks like a— a grilled cheese or something.” He considers this, pulls a long string of rope from the knot. “I guess if aliens were real, grilled cheese is probably— like that’s a solid food to try if you first arrive somewhere. Or maybe I’m just hungry. Cheese is definitely not a thing in space, though, so I dunno, maybe they’d all be lactose intolerant.”  
  
~  
   
Ryan tries to say something, to answer, but he completely loses himself to laughter. He  can’t get a grip on the breath in his chest, and it’s loud—louder than it should be, really. It’s the worst laugh to have in a zombie apocalypse, honesty, but he can’t bring himself to care. Because Shane has gone off the rails talking about cheese.  
   
“Cheese,” he finally wheezes. He has to wipe at his eyes because he’s kind of crying because this is just the dumbest conversation. “That would be a sad life. No wonder they’re so into butt stuff. They can’t enjoy cheese.”  
  
~  
  
“ _What?!_ ” Shane asks “why do you think aliens are into butt stuff?”He starts laughing so hard, he has to set the rope down. _God_ , Ryan’s laugh is infectious. He wants to keep hearing it. “Are you like one of those weird guys who’s into tentacle porn? You are, aren’t you? Ryan— what’s your last name?” He asks, like it’s somehow at all related.  
  
~  
   
Ryan is still laughing, and he’s still having trouble speaking. He buries his face in the side of Shane’s bed, takes another long time to collect himself. He’s wheezing now, trying to get a grip. At least it’s quieter than the other thing. His vision blurs with tears, and his abs ache. He was already sore, and this isn’t helping, but it’s… not bad. It’s in a good way. This ache.  
   
“No, I’m—no!” He glances up at Shane, wipes his eyes again. “I’m not! Jesus Christ! No, dude! I just…” He almost chokes on his laugh. “I’m—it’s… Bergara. That’s… but that’s not—don’t use that to say I like tentacle porn!”  
   
~  
  
“Yeah, okay, buddy,” Shane says, and he’s drawing away, pulling his long legs back like he’s afraid to get hit. “Ryan I like tentacle porn Ber— Bergara? Ryan-I-like-tentacle-porn Bergara.”  
  
~  
  
“You son of a bitch!” He grabs one of the cushions, yanks it up, and slams it across the bed so it barely impacts Shane. He can’t get much momentum because he’s still laughing. But he does not like tentacle porn, and, in fact, is horrified at the notion. “You like tentacle porn. What’s your last name, Shane? Is it Douchebag? Shane Douchebag? Sounds right!”  
  
~  
  
“Ah!” Shane tries to catch the pillow and fails. “Shane Douchebag Madej,” Shane laughs. “Yeah, that’s— okay, it’s still better than Butt-Stuff, Jesus Christ, _you’re_ the predator!”  
  
   
~  
   
His body burns. But he’s laughing so it’s all mixing together to this electric, light show inside him. He swings the cushion again. “I’m not a predator. I’m—that’s…” Shane Madej. God, that name. It’s… he likes it. He really likes it. Wants to say it aloud.  
   
“Shane Douchebag Madej. Certified Sex Offender.”  
   
His leg gnaws at him, so he lets himself collapse back onto the cushions, bringing the one he hit Shane with onto his face. “Yep. This is definitely mold.”  
  
~  
  
Shane’s torn between outrage at being called a sex-offender and laughter at Ryan’s comment about mold, that he just let’s himself sit with it for a moment, smiling a little.Bergara is not a name he’s ever heard before, but then again, he gets that comment about his own all the time. He supposes that that’s America for you. Or was. Was America. Anyway, he turns his attention away from America’s plight, and their own, probably, to this name. He likes the way his mouth has to form around it. He likes what it does to his throat. It’s a weird thing to think, but then, it’s a new word to work around.

“I warned you,” he says, shifting, wincing a little as he twists around to lie on his stomach, and his arms and shoulders remind him that they hurt. He pillows his head in his arms, but he can’t see Ryan from here so he stares at the wall. He feels too happy, too content, to bring up the apocalypse again. He wants to keep it like this forever. He sort of flails a hand down and grabs at the cushion, leaning over the edge of the bed as he drags it away from Ryan’s face. “Don’t— you’re gonna get visions or something.”  
  
~  
  
Ryan squints at the cushion Shane’s dragged away from him. He feigns a kind of gasp, stares harder at the cushion. “Holy shit! Holy shit, dude! The cushion has legs. It’s like a… fucking spider cushion. I think I’m gonna have to go rogue and kill everything in this cabin to be safe!” He reaches over and tugs the cushion out of Shane’s grip.  
   
He slides it under his bed and stares at the ceiling, still smiling—quiet, and then he realizes, this slow, yawning realization—that for a few minutes everything was fine. Jake was alive. And his Mom was texting him about not answering his phone. And he still had his stupid Prius and Chipotle and his worst fear was that the Lakers weren’t gonna make the play-offs.  
   
For a second, laughing like that, it was all gone. His leg wasn’t broken. His heart fit right in his chest. So it comes back to him like a crash, sorta shatters through him so, even with his eyes closed, his eyelids flutter. He can’t bring himself to break the moment, not for Shane, so he just watches the shadows on the ceiling—tries to let himself feel safe, beside Shane, with this blanket over his shoulders.  
   
“Shane Madej.”  
   
It’s this edged name, jagged, so his tongue bounces with it. Like it hangs there, on his teeth, his lips, a beat longer than most words. He’s never heard it. But there’s a lot of names he hasn’t heard.  
   
His eyes are closed when he continues, but he’s afraid if he doesn’t, Shane will slide off into sleep, and he’ll be left here. Alone with the apocalypse. “I bet you were one of those… intellectuals, who only watched TV if it aired twenty years ago or on one channel for like two episodes. And said ‘yeah, sports!’ any time someone brought up the score to a Lakers game or something…”  
   
His eyes are closed and he sees it. This other reality. Shane in a coffee shop, or at a movie theater, and Ryan wonders of he’d have noticed him. No, he would have. Shane is this… presence. Gangly and, almost transparent. Like if Ryan isn’t looking right at him, he’s not there. It would’ve pulled Ryan in, eventually, he thinks. Or maybe they’d have passed each other and never looked. Or maybe they would’ve been friends, the kind that drank beer and argued about stupid shit until four a.m.  
   
Or maybe Shane would have touched his neck like that, and Ryan wouldn’t feel like a traitor. Wouldn’t feel it in his veins like venom. Maybe they would be in some shared and familiar space, watching a show, and Ryan would realize he hadn’t been watching it at all. He’d been watching Shane. And Jake would accuse Ryan of all this stupid shit. Would say Shane was way too tall, monstrously so, would say of course it's a white boy, and Mom would tell Jake to knock it off. _“It's not your brother's fault he has a weird type.”_  
   
But it would be fine, because they liked him, liked Shane. Because they would.  
   
He opens his eyes, back into this dark, bleak place. Where it feels wrong to have anything, to accept anything. To even want anything from this strange, distant person. Ryan breathes in and it hurts, claws through him. Shane is an alien, in this weird, impossible sense. He feels like he stands opposite of Ryan. On the other side of a precipice, and if Ryan jumps, tries to close the space, Shane might just let him fall.  
   
So Ryan can’t understand why he still wants to, needs to try.  
  
~  
  
The way Ryan’s just said his whole names tangles all through him and he rolls over to pick up the rope again so that he has something else to do. Something to do with his hands. Something solid and tactile and not so… strange. New.  
  
The way Ryan says his name makes him feel like it’s new. Like he’s never actually really heard it before.  
  
He laughs softly. “I mean, I could be an intellectual, I guess,” Shane says. “Are you imagining me like, sitting cloistered in a corner in a darkened library or something? Books piled up ten high. Glasses. I had friends you know. Not just nerd-friends either. I played… I played Dungeons and Dragons,” Shane says, like this is somehow redeeming.  
  
He realizes it’s not and starts laughing. “I also— we made pies! I was good at pies. What was the other thing you mentioned? Oh yeah, sports. Yeah, sports!” he repeats, just giving it, giving it to him like, _You’re right, Ryan!_  
  
He’s still working knots from the rope, letting the untangled end slide down around his arm and over his chest and onto the mattress, getting longer and longer as he untangles it. “I bet you were like— going out to sports bars with your bros. A girl on each arm like— you’re one of those people that jumps up and shouts at the TV whenever someone scores a goal, scares the bejeezus out of the people just trying to eat their supper.”  
  
Shane licks his lips. Okay, maybe he’s fishing a little. Maybe he wants to see if Ryan will say anything about that — girls, a girl. Maybe one specific girl… But he’s doesn’t wait too long, even as he feels himself tense with it, beneath the weight of it.  
  
“You probably drank beer out of those red plastic cups at parties and then— I dunno, did sports things. Chug a beer, then run laps until you _puke_.”  
  
~  
Ryan rocks back. Starts into this whole new laughing fit. “Dungeons and…” He gasps into it, wheezes until it starts to burn. “There’s so much to… there’s…” He can’t get a grip on his words. He has to sit up to try and bring his body into a small space that he can contain, so he doesn’t break apart with his own laughter. “Wow. That’s—okay, okay.”

Girls. Shane thinks he had girls on his arm. And no, well, Ryan did have girlfriends. Not a ton of them. But he had ones he liked. Ones he thought he’d be with forever. Girlfriends. The word slices across his throat, bright and red like the razor. He misses them, the jittery, nagging tug of anxiety through his muscles. When anxiety didn’t mean dying—it just meant not getting a text back.

Or staring at a boy too long. The rush of butterflies and freefall when a guy laughed too long at his joke.

Maybe that anxiety isn’t quite done.

Fortunately, he’s been giggling the entire time he’s having this internal monologue, and it’s only just starting to wind down when he comes back to the present. To Shane. “Firstly,” he says on a long breath, “dungeons and dragons and pie. Wow. I was wrong. You were basically the coolest guy to ever live. That’s official.” He smiles and shakes his head, the laugh pressing into his chest again. And he’s glad. Because the other feeling, this tangled, dizzy feeling isn’t pleasant—not when mixed with Jake and the apocalypse. It’s too much.

“Second, fuck you. Sports are great, and it’s normal to be excited about—have you ever seen Kobe Bryant under the basket? It’s fucking magic, dude!” He’s up again. He’s tucked his good leg under him so he’s leaned over the edge of Shane’s bed again. It’s really kinda hurting his bad leg because he’s gesturing, mimicking a shot, a basketball—which he does not have—with his whole body. “It’s, okay—normal people care about sports! They don’t role play shooting fireballs out of their hands with pies or whatever, and I’m… yeah, obviously sports bars are great…”

 _Were great,_ his mind puts in.

“But I don’t know what kind of parties you’ve attended, but there’s usually not laps until you puke. And, girls on both arms? Wow, you know what, I’ll just take that—take that as the compliment it is, because you clearly think I’m good looking enough to manage not one, but two girls.” He giggles because he can’t even imagine himself in that situation, and doesn’t know why, but he has to say it. It’s too bright, too turned up to ten, so it bounces around the room like a rubber ball. “But you don’t—that’s not, you don’t know what I’m into. Maybe I wouldn’t even want girls on my arms.”

He ends this declaration with his elbows folded on Shane’s bed, chin rested on his hands. He’s tangled himself so much that he needs the break so he can figure out what exactly his leg has done to get him here. So he just looks at Shane from this awkward vantage point, confidence blazing in his eyes, because damn it he’s sure there was a good point in there somewhere.

And Kobe Bryant always puts him in a good mood. Apocalypse or no.  
  
~  
  
Shane’s been watching him since he started pretending to be like Kobe Bryant or whatever, and laughing a little about Ryan calling him ‘fucking magic’ and when Ryan folds his arms on the bed, Shane rolls over onto his side to face him, head propped up in one hand and he’s still smiling, but he looks like he has no idea why. His eyes are sort of perplexed. He’s got the tangle of rope under his free hand at about the level of his chest, fingers rested over it like it’s a sleeping cat.  
  
“Okay,” Shane says, and decides to meet that little challenge of a statement with one of his own. “Girls, guys. Uh, _other_. Whatever. He sort of shrugs his free shoulder, and it’s such a movement, like his shoulder just has so far to go to be hiked up into a shrug and he glances away for a second.  
  
“You are good looking enough. I’ll admit that.” This he says almost defensively, waving his hand. “I can admit that, because I’m not a sports guy. And we don’t pretend to shoot fireballs! Have you even tried Dungeons and Dragons? It’s— you’d love it. Everyone loves it.”  
  
His eyes are sort of flickering around at anything other than Ryan, but Shane looks back now, and Ryan looks… it’s this stupidly weird combination of ‘adorable’ and ‘gorgeous as hell’ and Shane’s trying to fucking reel it in before he gets all fuckin’ mushy about this or whatever.  
  
~Okay, Shane called him good looking, and he’s regretting putting himself in this very exposed position. He feels like his ears might be turning red, but whatever. It’s fine. It’s going to take an act of god to get him unwound enough to get back to his moldy cushions. He laughs again, because it’s the easiest thing to do with all this jittering, crackling energy running through him.“Would I?” he asks. “Then maybe you should teach me.” He reaches out, for the rope, because it gives him something to do with his hands. It’s something to fidget with, and Shane’s not doing anything with it. He’s just stroking it like his pet parrot or something.“Do we use this?” His fingers brush Shane’s as he tugs the rope free. He valiantly pretends it doesn’t send a bolt of heat through him. “Are you, like, a cowboy and this is your lasso?” He winds it around his wrists, the unknotted part, laughs. “Holy shit, you’d be a good cowboy. You need a hat. Are there cowboys in Dungeons and Dragons?”  
  
~  
  
“No, there’s no _cowboys_ ,” Shane says, as he curls his fingers loosely into a fist, like he’s escaping that touch. Or trying to hold onto it. “I dunno. I just found it,” Shane said. “It’s good, right?” He says it like it’s his kid or something. Like he’s proud of it, but his eyes are on Ryan’s wrists where the rope is and instinctively, foolishly, he reaches out for the middle, and twists it, gentle, turning his wrist up so that the wound parts tighten around Ryan’s arms. It’s Cat’s Cradle all over again. _Got you._ “You’d probably be a… a Paladin or something, all… lawful good.”  
  
~  
   
Ryan chokes, or gasps, or makes some form of noise when Shane twists the rope. He did not see that coming, and there’s this trill of fear—but it’s not black, like usual, it’s all synapses of reds and yellows—it strikes him like a match. He doesn’t like it, but he doesn’t… completely hate it either. His eyes hang on the rope where his hands are bound, and he presses his tongue over the sharp cut of his canines before he grits his teeth. But he’s not going to let Shane have this, if Shane thinks this is perfectly normal, then Ryan will too.  
  
_Unless he’s going to use this rope to tie you up in the closet and torture you until you die._  
   
But no, Ryan thinks. He isn’t. He doesn’t know where this trust came from, but it’s there, so the concern is there, but distant—almost funny. He scoffs, twists his wrists a little, trying to get free. “What makes you think I’m lawful good? Did you not hear the part where I _stole_ from Wal Greens? I’m essentially a fugitive.” He’s going for intimidating, but fugitive seems like the wrong word when he’s already got a rope around his wrists. “I would totally be a Sith before I’d be a Jedi.”  
   
That is one hundred percent false, but this is for the sake of the argument, and finding a way to untangle this rope from his wrists before it literally electrocutes him with all this static.  
   
  
~  
  
Shane laughs. “I don’t think you would, Ryan.” He lets the rope go, slowly, like he’s not sure how to do it without looking like he’s done it in the first place, and it’s doing something to his stomach that makes him have to take a long breath. He doesn’t know if it’s Ryan’s... discomfort? Or something else, that made him second guess it in the first place.  
“I don’t think stealing from Wal Greens in the middle of the apocalypse makes you not good. But you could be neutral maybe. Neutral good.”He can’t quite believe he’s basically giving this guy, this— Ryan. He can’t believe he’s giving him a D&D alignment. It seems totally surreal, like the two of them should never come together in the first place. They’re so different.  
  
~  
   
Ryan gets free of the rope, more quickly than is probably normal, but whatever. It’s a rope on his wrists. He’s allowed to want it gone. He laughs, shrugs. “Do I get to pick the—like, what? You’re the dungeon master or whatever it’s called, right? So do you just get to assign me a character? I think I should pick my character. And I want to be chaotic good, because I’ve always liked the sound of it.”  
   
He runs his fingers over the rope, thinks again about maybe lying back down. But he doesn’t. He just sits there, playing with this red rope. “What about you? You’d be true neutral. You’re way too aloof to be anything else. You did come help me, though. But neutral people do that sometimes, right?” He chuckles, actually works one of the knots out of the rope. “You probably only helped me because I was so good looking.” He laughs, because it’s absurd, and because the way it vibrates through his ribcage gives him that nervous hum again. And he has to laugh to keep from screaming.  
   
He tilts his head. “Maybe you could be a druid. Or… no—yeah, a druid. Don’t they shape shift? You should shapeshift.” His chin raises instinctively, kinda proud that he knows _something_. “See, I know video games. I get your stupid nerd stuff.”  
  
~  
  
Shane makes this higher pitched “ehh” sound and says “Okay you can be chaotic good. But then I’m chaotic neutral. And why— why do you think I should shapeshift? Ryan you know— you know I’m not really an alien, right?” He’s teasing, but says it like he’s genuinely concerned for Ryan’s mental well-being.  
  
~  
   
Ryan gestures vaguely to Shane. “Because I don’t… because, I don’t get…” He gestures more deeply. “This.” He leans forward, up, so his injured leg brushes the side of the bed. And he doesn’t even flinch. He’s distracted, or maybe there’s too much other noise in his body. “It’s too, there’s too much of you. There’s clearly some dimensional travel going on. Have you ever seen yourself _walk_?”  
  
~  
  
Shane blinks, doesn’t know if he should be flattered, insulted, or terrified.“I don’t— no? What are you talking about?” He asks, and whatever cool he was hanging onto slips right out. He’s curious, though, mostly curious, but he wants... he tries _not_ to want...He’s chaotic neutral. He shouldn’t care. Right?  
  
~  
   
Ryan feels like he’s been handed a baton. He can see Shane’s control slipping, and he likes it. He wants desperately for what’s beneath all of this. The walk, the quiet scoffs, the sleepiness of his eyes. It’s like nothing Ryan has ever wanted before.  
   
“You’re like an optical illusion, dude. I’ll look at you, and I think—I’ll look away, but then I’m still looking at you, and it’s definitely shapeshifting.” He grins, challenging a little, but this time, he thinks maybe he’s challenging himself. “Sometimes you look like you’re not solid, or like you’ll fall apart or something, and then you look like I could deck you and you wouldn’t flinch.” He reaches out, circles Shane’s bicep with his hand. It fits around pretty easily. “Shapeshifting.”  
   
He lets go.  
  
~  
  
He’s gone all still again, but not tense this time. He swallows as Ryan’s fingers close around his arm. He’s so still, but mentally he’s just grasping for anything, any kind of hand or foothold, but he’s falling so fast that he doesn’t even get his head around the words before they’re out of his mouth.“Sounds like you’ve been looking at me a lot,” he says, and he feels like the ground’s just dropped out beneath him. He curls his fingers in the sheet over the mattress.  
  
~  
   
Ryan’s throat makes a ‘hm’ sound, like he’s considering it. Because, well, that’s accurate. Ryan has absolutely been staring at Shane a lot. But, he’s feeling a little light-headed, potentially overconfident, because it’s all just _enough_ right now. Enough that Shane is looking at _him_ , looking even slightly rattled.  
   
“It does, doesn’t it?” He shrugs, then pushes himself back onto the floor.  
  
~  
  
  
Shane makes these two little sounds that might be trying to be words, and he’s tense again, as soon as Ryan draws away. “What the hell are you doing, man?” Shane asks, laughs. He thinks it’s genuine.  “What— what’s wrong with the way I walk?”  
  
~  
   
Ryan groans, like he just can’t be bothered to have this conversation anymore. “Nothing’s wrong with it. It’s good. It’s a good walk. Just, good in a… extraterrestrial kinda way.” He giggles, wants to roll over, but the leg prevents anymore movement. “There’s just a lot to it. Do you like math? You know that feeling you get when you solve this really complicated problem? It takes forever to solve and you’re exhausted and you look and see you got the answer right?” He pauses, because he knows it’s too much. But he’s tired. And Shane is asking for this. “That’s your walk.”  
  
~  
  
“What the fuck?” Shane whispers. He’s quiet for a moment, still, staring at the space Ryan had been, but then then he rolls onto his back, eyes on the ceiling where the firelight is making shadows.

 _That’s your walk._ That’s good right?

“Are you trying to— are you _wooing_ me with math?” he asks, and he kind of grins a little, even as he lays a hand lightly over his heart like he can fucking just keep it there, settle it.  
  
~  
   
Ryan laughs again, and it’s loud. This jittered, almost howling sound. Because the word wooing is just so funny coming out of Shane’s mouth. It’s such a Shane thing to say. He laughs for longer than he should, and maybe it’s because all his… whatever he’s doing… is catching up to him. He doesn’t answer right away. Just watches the firelight on the ceiling.  
   
“I don’t think anyone _woos_ anyone with math. I was just looking for analogies!”  
  
~  
  
He knows that they’re venturing into weird, potentially dangerous territory here, that they have been for some minutes now, and his smile at Ryan’s laughter fades faster than it should. So he thinks about changing the subject altogether, but then he just... doesn’t. Everything he thinks of sounds like a lame kind of pickup line, all of it questions about Ryan— about who Ryan is, and he thinks it’s so strange that he’s done the things he’s done with Ryan before he even knew his last name or where he’s from or how old he is...The silence drags on for a little while, and Shane wonders if Ryan’s going to fall asleep or not. Or if he has already. And with him right next to him — so close, but also not at all, Shane feels wide wide awake.  
  
~  
   
Ryan doesn’t move. He feels Shane breathing, thinks he’s awake, but then this anxiety sets in. This _he’s asleep, you’re alone_ anxiety. But he can’t bring himself to say anything, to break the silence. Because it feels like such a burden. He swallows, turns as much as a broken leg will allow. He tries to close his eyes, but he’s aware of every part of his body. The way his breathing grinds his shoulder against a stray thread in the cushion. The way his leg itches. The slow, steady burn of his throat. Because he’s probably getting sick. The way smoke from the fire manages to curl and fog in his mouth.  
   
He’s aware of all of it. Sleep hovers over him, jabbing at him in weird moments, bringing Jake’s face too close. Pushing Shane too far away. But through it all, he cannot sleep. He just breathes—this uneven rhythm. It comes on slow at first, like a fever, his fingers shaking against the cushions, his breath breaking across his teeth, sweat along his forehead. His back.  
   
He wants to get up, move, walk around. But he’s drawn himself into the space, and he’s afraid if he moves—Shane will know he’s awake. And that’s somehow worse than anything. That vulnerability exposed to Shane like Ryan’s chest cracked wide open. He closes his eyes.  
   
_Go to sleep. Just go to sleep._  
  
_Please. Go to sleep._  
  
~  
  
Every so often there is a little hitch in Ryan’s breathing and Shane slides in and out of the lightest sleep. Maybe it’s because a stranger — can he still call him that? — is here so close beside him.The fire’s burning lower. It’s colder, darker now.  
But Shane doesn’t think Ryan’s sleeping. And after a while — an hour, maybe less, maybe more, — Shane rolls over onto his side again, sighing, and reaches, letting his arm fall over the edge of the bed to brush one the cushions Ryan’s lying on. He sort of taps at it, dragging a fingertip over the surface. He doesn’t touch Ryan. “Hey,” he says, half a question, voice heavy and soft.  
  
~  
   
“Hey!” It comes out too loud in the silence. It’s been hours, he thinks, or maybe not. But he thinks it has. Of silence. He clings to the sound like a life line, to Shane’s voice. He has to catch his breath, stop the pounding in his chest. Because some part of him, the part that was dozing—half-dozing—thought it was that scream again. That groan. But it’s not. It’s Shane. “Hey.” He’s quieter the second time, like he wants a redo.  
   
Ryan sees Shane’s hand, then, almost reaches for it. It’s this torch in the shadows. Like it’s emanating heat, light, fluorescent, but it’s not. It’s just the pale frost of Shane’s skin. Ryan doesn’t reach for it. He’s prickly and sticking with insomnia. It chips over him, makes movements crumbling like a dried out pastry. Like he’ll infect Shane if he touches him. He swallows.  
   
“I thought you were asleep,” he says, and it’s jittery, sad, pathetic, and he wants to shove it down his own throat until he chokes on it.  
  
~  
  
“Mm, sort of,” he says, voice still a little hazier than normal, but he’s frowning. He doesn’t like the way Ryan’s voice sounded just now. “You’re not,” he informs him, like maybe Ryan wasn’t aware of this fact. He doesn’t move, doesn’t shift to look at him. Like he knows Ryan doesn’t want Shane to know how… how fucking vulnerable he is. How vulnerable he sounds.  
  
He doesn’t pull his hand away.  
  
~  
   
“No,” it comes out like a swab of cotton. Like it’s not a fully formed word—not even a whisper. It’s nothing he needs to say, but he says it just so something will exist in the space. He worries at his lip, glances again to Shane’s hand—he hasn’t moved it. Ryan isn’t sure if he knows it’s there. He sounds sleepy. Half-gone. Shane’s fingers stay still, soft, and Ryan just stares at them like they might come to life. His eyes are too wide in the dark as he stares at them, waits for them to move or do anything other than sit just close enough to him.    
   
“Did I wake you up?”  
  
~  
  
“I’m awake,” he says. He doesn’t want to be. But he wants Ryan awake alone in the dark less so. He draws his hand away, finds the rope where they dropped it, and sort of tosses it on Ryan’s chest. “Make yourself useful,” he tells him, and there’s something gentle in his voice, even though he’s using a playfully annoyed tone. “Help me untangle this thing.”It’ll keep him busy, maybe. It’s easy enough to do in the half-dark, all hypnotic little half-motions, something to ground his thoughts.  
  
~  
   
Ryan feels bad. He’s pretty sure I’m awake means he definitely did wake Shane up. Also Shane pulled his hand away, and that’s having more of an effect on Ryan than he wants to admit. He makes a kind of squeaking sound when the rope hits him. It scares the shit out of him, and then it registers.  
   
He frowns, runs his fingernails over the twine. It catches, and there’s this almost ripping sound, but too soft. “You can’t just—don’t tell me what to do.” But he starts unknotting it, slowly. It’s a mess, honestly, but it is something to do.  
  
~  
  
Shane chuckles softly because he can hear, almost, barely, the sound of the rope sliding against itself. “You’re still doing it, though,” he says, quiet. His fingers close loosely around the edge of the mattress. He wants to reach out again, pat him on the shoulder or something, check if he’s really still there, but there’s no real reason to, and so Shane doesn’t. He opens his eyes to stare into the growing darkness. He wonders if he should get up and get that fire burning higher — more light. He wonders vaguely about PTSD, about night terrors, about sleep paralysis. He can’t quite get his head around Ryan’s fear, what exactly it is he’s scared of, but it’s powerful anyway. Like he can feel it in the air around them both. He doesn’t know how to save him from that. He doesn’t even know if he has any real right to try. Ryan obviously doesn’t want or need Shane to know all these vulnerabilities.But he does. Peripherally. And he realizes, slowly, that he hasn’t offered anything of his own to Ryan in exchange. So he can’t really blame him.  
  
~  
   
“Because I’m _bored_.”  
   
Shane’s gone quiet. The rope is nice, but it’s not what he wants. He wants Shane. Wishes he’d grabbed his hand, maybe. No, not that. That’s too much. But he wishes the hand was still there. He can’t ask for him, though. Can’t ask for more than this. It’s already more than most people would do. Wake up. Be there. Shane must think Ryan’s an idiot—a child. He’s probably wondering how Ryan survived before this. Some part of him didn’t, he thinks. Some part of him died with Jake. It’s in that wet, soggy grave, and he can feel that mud, all the bits of brain and fingernails, all the blood. It’s in his bones.  
   
Words swirl in his mouth, choking and falling back down his throat for so long he isn’t sure Shane’s even awake when he says, “You don’t have to—it’s fine if you sleep. I’ve just got a lot on my mind. I’m not tired.”  
   
It’s not true. His body _pounds_ with exhaustion, muscles so heavy and tangled they feel more knotted than the stupid rope. His eyes burn and crack with this desperation—desperation to close, to fucking sleep. But he’s already shown Shane way too much. Shane’s asked him to say, and as much as Ryan wants to—needs to—he wonders if it isn’t because Ryan needs to. Because he’s made himself so helpless. So pathetic.  
   
Shane doesn’t want Ryan to stay. He feels like asking him to leave would make him a murderer.  
   
Ryan’s hands tighten around the rope as his teeth grit.  
  
~  
  
He doesn’t mean to fall asleep, but he does.

Shane used to be able to sleep through most things. But not anymore. He drifts in and out of sleep all night, every night. He wakes at every strange, small noise, at every odd shift of light. You don’t sleep in the apocalypse. He’s sort of gotten used to it.

He does pretty well, usually, but sometimes, around mid-day, the tiredness weighs him down. If the sun is warm enough, bright enough, or if the day is gray and wet, like it has been, lately he can feel sleep pulling at him, tempting. But it’s not so safe anymore.

Maybe the cabin has held so far. Maybe it will continue to hold, but there is always that little niggling doubt.

He can’t remember the last time he slept through the night, and it’s harder with Ryan there — every shift of his body, every change in the sound of his breath, Shane half-wakes, feels his heart-rate pick up, then remembers.

He can drift off again fast. He used to be able to sleep anywhere. Had. Tents; bathtubs; living room floors; once, a field. It used to be like...a fun quirk. But that was before. Because now, sometimes, people end up like Jake.

Everyone has to sleep, though, except, apparently, Ryan. The one sleepless soul through the endless night.

Shane doesn’t mean to abandon him there, but he does. Sleep eventually drags him under, and he just gives in. The fire gutters down to embers.

Outside, the dead things don’t pass the tree line. Not yet.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> continued.
> 
> seriously, we weren't kidding you guy when we said this was the longest. sorry not sorry.


	3. Part 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Look, I know the spelling is all over the place, and there are 'u's where there shouldn't be, but you're all just going to have to forgive my Canadian ass.

Part 3

Ryan plays with the rope. He knows when Shane goes to sleep, but he thinks he hears him turning—waking up when Ryan moves too much. So he tries to be still. Kinda succeeds. The rope helps, but then even it feels too loud. And there’s all this guilt. This pressing, impossible guilt he can’t get away from. He gives up the rope eventually, squeezes his eyes shut. Swallows the snarl in his throat. The frustration.  
   
He hates Shane. Not really, he doesn’t. But he hates him for being able to sleep, even a little bit. He hates him for not having a broken leg. Hates him for making Ryan need him so much.  
   
He wishes he had a clock, but then he’s glad he doesn’t. He’s just staring at the windows, waiting for light. Shane sleeps. Kinda stops and starts, but he sleeps, and Ryan listens to him sleep. Eventually he picks up the rope again, starts untangling it. Slower this time. And finally, half a night later, Ryan sleeps.  
   
His dreams stop and start like Shane’s sleep pattern. Bring him to the surface and then shove him back down. Make him watch that pipe hitting his brother again, and again. Then Jake’s crawling towards him, hands out, around his throat. And Ryan cannot breathe. He’s trying to say anything , beg him, breathe—scream. But he can’t. It’s just this scratching, scratching that winds down his throat until it rattles inside his chest.  
   
And he coughs.  
   
Then coughs again.  
   
And it yanks him out of sleep. The light’s changed, so he knows he’s slept—at least a little. The rope’s all tangled around his arms, and he wipes it off like cobwebs. He panics, checks to see if he woke Shane up. But Shane’s not there, and Ryan starts to wind up, up, up, until Shane comes back in with the backpack—Ryan’s ruined one—and tosses it to him. It’s dried. It didn’t rain a ton yesterday, but it’s this crinkled, dirt-stained dry.  
   
Shane leaves Ryan to go through it on his own, because this guy is the fucking poster child for privacy apparently. Ryan sets aside a few bags of Doritos, the remnants of his beef jerky, seven different candy bars, two cans of soup—both tomato—and three cans of Vienna sausages. Most of it’s weathered the storm, and zombies, pretty well. The candy bars are, well, less bar and more stain, but it’s all edible.  
   
Then there’s his broken glasses, their two pairs of tennis shoes, disgustingly gross shirts, and Jake’s hat. The one he’d been wearing the day their parents… Jake designed it himself. He was into that. Ryan runs his hand over the baby blue emblem. It’s covered in blood. Jake hasn’t—hadn’t worn it in days after a zombie exploded all over it.  
   
And Ryan’s furious he didn’t fucking bury Jake with it, but he’s glad—somehow, that he still has this. Has this piece of Jake.  
   
Lastly it’s his radio. He doesn’t turn it on, because he doesn’t want to deal with Shane and the radio. Not yet. He doesn’t want to share that with someone who isn’t Jake, so he just sets it aside and looks to find Shane. To offer the food.  
   
But Shane’s wandering again—doing this routine that Ryan isn’t a part of. He just does it. Does all the things he did before Ryan, now with Ryan there, in the way. And Ryan hates it. Feels like the cabin walls are shrinking, crushing towards him. He slides a hand over the bill of Jake’s cap and gets Shane’s attention long enough to offer the food.  
   
He coughs a little as he does, and Shane looks at him a beat too long with this half-hearted uncertainty like he thinks maybe Ryan’s turning into a zombie (he’s not, coughing isn’t a sign of the virus, but Shane probably doesn’t know that because he thinks it’s fucking rabies.) Ryan brushes it off, pretends the scratching in his throat isn’t there. Swallows the coughing when it tries to come back.  
   
It works. Shane lives in his own world, on his own planet, most of the time. He busies himself. So he isn’t aware, not at first, but Ryan knows how coughs work. How sickness works. Knows how this ends. And god, he doesn’t want to deal with it. Some part of him wants to fling himself out of the cabin and tell Shane _thanks, but he’s got it from here._  
   
Of course, if he did that, he would absolutely die.  
   
The day passes and Shane gives Ryan little tasks. Pointless ones, really, because Ryan is a fucking charity case. But Ryan tries conversation after conversation, about basketball, about popcorn brands, and movies, and how much he misses Root Beer. Shane responds about half the time, half the time he’s stuck in his own head, and Ryan doesn’t bother pulling him out. But the conversation gets harder, steadily, as Ryan’s head starts to shriek. Full on banshee wail. Like all those dreams are shoved in there and can’t find their way out.  
   
The day’s barely over half over when Ryan has to let himself cough. Cough until his chest blisters with it. And then he wheezes in breath and drops his forehead into his hands. Because he _doesn’t want to deal with it._ And he’s confident, if he sits like this, for long enough, he can will the cold, or flu, or whatever the fuck this is straight out of existence. He can will this whole apocalypse out of existence.  
  
~  
  
He’s not exactly surprised. He tenses though, anxious, mind running. 

“Hey, man,” he says, when Ryan gets his breath. He comes over and crouches in front of him, all knees, and his fingers pressed into the floor to keep his balance. “You okay?”

But truth is, Ryan doesn’t look okay. He’s sort of glassy-eyed or something. Not like zombies, just like feeling-like-shit. And if he hasn’t been sleeping, after that rain, after all that hurt with his leg, his hands, his face..., Shane isn’t surprised. Anyone would get worn down. Ryan’s not giving himself a break. He senses that, too. In all Ryan’s silences.

He’d tried not to ask about what was in the pack, but he kept finding his eyes flickering over to things he doesn’t understand, things he can see affecting Ryan. But he stays out of it.  
  
“Not feeling good?” He reiterates, because Ryan probably wouldn’t be okay right now, even if he  was at the height of health.  
  
~  
   
Ryan opens his mouth to respond, but another cough wells in him so he just closes it. He stays  
  
where he is. Doesn’t look up. Because he hates this. Just absolutely fucking loathes it from the bottom of his soul.  
   
“I’m fine,” he says after too long. But this hoarse kind of cough splits it right down the middle, and if he wasn’t so frustrated, it would be hilarious. “It’s probably just a cold or something,” he explains like Shane might not know this already.  
   
It’s all in his throat and head right now, but he’s already miserable thinking about not being able to breathe. Thinking about where this could go. Then he coughs and something shakes loose in his chest and shoots straight into his head so hard his vision skews.  
   
“Don’t worry about it,” he says, and it’s the most earnest thing he’s said, possibly, as he jerks up to meet Shane’s eyes. He grabs the collar of his shirt and pulls it over his nose and mouth. “Go away, you look feeble. If you get sick you’ll probably just disintegrate.”  
  
~  
  
Shane scoffs. “I do not look _feeble_ ,” he says, and something ghosts across his mouth like a laugh, but it fades fast. “Is it bad?” He asks. “Seriously.” He wants to know what they’re working with here. Wants to know how worried he should be. 

Shane remembers being knocked out by colds and flu all the time as a kid. It was something he grew out of — home from school with juice and books and no TV because _if you’re too sick to stay home you’re too sick to watch anything_. He feels a momentary pang for that— the simplicity of it, and how incensed he’d been at eight- or nine-years-old that television was off limits when that was sometimes the only way his mind could shut up.

He hadn’t been able to explain that, back then.  
  
He doesn’t know what he can offer Ryan, now. There’s nothing, not even tea or coffee or something hot. There’s not even fucking Tylenol.  
  
~  
   
Ryan seizes this. Because he doesn’t like where it’s going, doesn’t like that it’s leaving him exposed to this guy, for this guy, _again_. He furrows his brow, squints at Shane in a kind of exaggerated rejection of the idea. “Is it _bad_?” he says, still through his shirt. He kinda half fakes a cough, but he can’t go too far with it or it will be a real cough. “Yeah. It’s terrible. It’s…” His eyes go wide, and he almost lets his shirt fall. “Holy shit, do you think it was the mold? I think I inhaled the mold, and now I’m just… I can feel my lungs actually shriveling in my chest.” He mimes not being able to breathe, fakes gagging, exaggerates it.  He does drop the shirt so he can use his tongue to emphasize his swiftly oncoming death. “They’re turning _black_.” He croaks his voice intentionally. It scratches at his throat, but his throat is going to complain either way.  
  
   
He coughs for real, holds out as long as he can, and barely yanks his shirt back up in time. Because, all things considered, he really _doesn’t_ want to infect Shane. “Of course it’s not bad. It’s a cold, or sore throat or whatever.”  
  
   
It really isn’t bad. He’s not lying. It’s typical cold-shit. Headache. Cough. Sore throat. That prickly kind of ache along his skin that seems to have come out of nowhere.  
   
Ryan almost snaps something, almost loses it again, but his shoulders slump. It’s not Shane’s fault. It’s not Shane’s fault Ryan’s body has decided to fail him in every conceivable way.  
   
“Seriously,” he says, like folding Shane’s concern into his tone and handing it back to him. _Return to fucking sender_. “And you absolutely look feeble.”  
  
 ~  
  
Something flashes past or through him, and it’s hot and sort of embarrassing or something— he feels like he did something wrong, forgot an assignment at home.

He raises his eyebrows at him anyway, lets his smile slide into a laugh, and decides that maybe he’s being overbearing. And it’s probably better to not bring up the fact that, without proper medicine, without antibiotics and IV drips and everything else they used to take for granted in America, maybe they’re all fucked.

And he tries not to think about whether illness is a symptom of an infected wound or not, ‘cause it’s not like either of them know how to set a broken leg and what if...?

“Okay,” he laughs, and shifts to sit back, cross legged on the floor across from him. “Just...” _give him something_ , he thinks, _give in_. “Look, I do not. But I used to get sick all the time. Like every winter I’d get these unshakeable colds and fevers like— you remember that fucking putrid cherry flavoured cough syrup? It was like a dietary staple. I’d always get a fever as soon as Christmas break started.”  
  
~  
   
He isn’t completely sure what to do with this. It’s so sudden and peripherally related that he just stares at Shane for a second. At this thing Shane’s put between them. Then a smile turns up one corner of Ryan’s mouth, and he almost laughs, kinda does, but it tapers into a cough. And he’s mad that this came on like this—that it’s just going to be part of him for a few days. Or however long.  
   
“So I was _right_ ,” he says, suddenly triumphant. “You are feeble.” Then he thinks there’s something here, something Shane has extended to him that he should respond to. But he’s so scared he’ll drop it. “That’s a shitty way to spend Christmas break, though. Were you parents—did you, like, get ice cream and bed and stuff? Surely you were compensated for that cherry atrocity.” He wrinkles his nose. “Actually, I think it’s worth it—if this apocalypse means that shit’s wiped out. If this is what it took…”  
   
But he turns his eyes back on Shane, too bright, wanting him to answer, even though Ryan’s misstepped with the damn babbling—again. He wants it to be in his eyes, wants Shane to see it, _I care too. I can help you too. Please let me try._  
  
~  
  
It’s there for a moment, that smile, and Shane feels it in his chest. He swallows.

“I’m n— I’m not,” he’s trying to argue, but he’s wheezing a laugh, and Ryan keeps going, asking, searching. “No, yeah, that’s for sure,” he laughs. “That and the banana— you remember the banana one? Amoxicillin? That can burn in hell, too.”

It must be the worst, to be stuck there. And yeah, Shane remembers that now, all at once. The feeling of being confined to bed, not able to do anything he wanted to do. Only for Ryan it’s probably a hundred times worse. The most Shane had to worry about was missing an episode of whatever. Ryan’s got zombies to contend with, a dead brother, a strange place, and Shane.

He looks away for a moment, then back, and Ryan’s eyes are on him, and he’s just so... open. Shane feels like he’s snapping his own ribs like twigs just to give him what he wants.

“My parents...” Shane starts, and something sticks in his chest. He hasn’t talked about them since... he hasn’t talked about them. He swallows again, continues. “My parents were cool. They weren’t strict about... much. But you know, when you’re a kid everything’s just like— so big. They didn’t let me watch TV if I was sick on a school day, but they sort of gave us free reign to be whoever we were without judgement. They made us get summer jobs, but they pretended to ignore us coming home like three hours after curfew, that sort of thing.”  
  
~  
   
Sadness. Ryan sees it in Shane for what feels like the first time. This bolt of something, of longing, about his parents—for them. And Ryan’s electrified with it. Drawn to it like a magnet. He wants to grab it, tear it in half so Shane never has to long for anything ever again.  
   
His parents. They’re dead. Of course they are. It makes perfect sense they would be. Everyone’s parents are dead, but it changes Ryan’s perception of this person. This cabin-dwelling altruist with his stolen, brilliant laugh—the one that reminds Ryan of Christmas lights, of the frothy vanilla foam on coffee—too good to last too long. Shane’s more than that. He’s a person, who’s lived, who’s lost things. Who’s lost everything.  
   
Maybe he had a Jake.  
   
Shane’s been alone all this time. And as much as he seems to crave it, it’s left cracks in him, holes, and Ryan wants to press his fingers into them until they pull back together.  
   
He almost says, _I’m sorry._ Because that’s what Shane’s face calls for. His words, though—they’re not bad. Not sad, even. But Shane looks like he’s in pain. Pain Ryan caused. Pain Ryan forced him to acknowledge, even for one second.  
   
Instead Ryan smiles and shakes his head. “They sound cool. My parents were just strict in general, so…” He still can’t talk about them without flashes of the cupboard, the puddle of blood—the arm. He wonders if Shane is the same.  “What’s a sick day without television, though? It’s like ‘I’ll just go to school and throw up on the teachers. Thanks.’” He smiles. “At least I’d be entertained.”  
   
He isn’t sure where to go. Whether to offer an out, or keep going. Shane is an enigma. He wants so badly to be what Shane wants, what he needs, but he doesn’t know where to go, what to say, to even begin to be anything more than a nuisance. It sucks, and it drags the life out of Ryan—tangles with this sickness, this hurt, in his chest so his body physically sags a little.  
   
His throat burns before he caves with another coughing fit, which brings his attention to the fact that he let his shirt drop. Shane gets lost in his head, and Ryan thinks he’s starting to get lost with him. Fascinated by everything going on below the surface. The stuff Ryan can’t comprehend. Like Shane’s a hieroglyphic, and Ryan’s just… Ryan.  
  
~  
  
He’s laughing again, softly, but it fades when Ryan starts to cough. He reaches out, hesitates, reaches or again and touches Ryan’s shoulder, feels it vibrate beneath the force of the cough, “All right,” he says. “Fluids. You should drink them so you can stop— expelling them all over the place.” He stands. It takes forever. He doesn’t pull his hand away from Ryan’s shoulder until he physically cannot reach.

It’s the least he can do, maybe.  
  
“Strict how?” He asks, so Ryan can’t argue, to distract him. And Shane’s curious, too. He lets himself be.  
  
~  
   
Ryan doesn’t complain. He’s been thirsty since he got here, so, fluids will probably be good. And he’s only slightly annoyed he can’t get them for himself. He leans back on his arms, lets his eyes close for a second. The burn seals a little, cutting along his eyelashes—so it’s soothed and worse at the same time. And he realizes he’s thinking about that touch, Shane’s, on his shoulder.  
   
He gets his lungs under control and takes his time before he answers.  
   
“High expectations. Very specific high expectations. I majored in film, and Mom was so nervous for me.” He swallows another cough, swallows the way his throat rattles and seethes with it. “She had a lot of ideas about what my life should be. What I should do. Who I should be. Who I should date.” He laughs, and it’s only half cough. “She had a lot of thoughts about that one.”  
   
He’s let himself fall to the floor, and the cabin’s boards are digging into his back again. He thinks maybe he’ll be here forever. In this useless, uncomfortable, sick place. “Don’t get me wrong. My parents were awesome. They were like my best friends. And they’d accept anything, so long as I could prove I was succeeding.” He half smiles, but it’s fading before it forms. “Which, believe it or not, I generally was.”  
  
~  
  
Shane doesn’t know which bit of information he wants to grab hold of, there’s a lot at once, but he settles for something safe, easy.

“You majored in film?” He asks, genuinely interested, impressed. He’d half-wanted that, in a peripheral it-wouldn’t-happen kind of way. But movies, he loves them. He loves stories and how they translate to film, he lives the way cameras capture light in a way more beautiful than the eye ever could. He notices that stuff. He’s always noticed. He notices how things can become narrative, notices physical, visual moments that can translate themselves into meaning if you just shut up and look. If you just accept the way the world plays out in and outside of people; around them. 

He notices, as he turns back with a cup, the way the dust motes find the little rays of sunlight that slip through the tiny cracks in the boarded up windows and half hide Ryan’s face in this hazy kind of soft-light. He knows that, if Ryan just looked at him, one eye would be illuminated, all brown and softly lit, and the other would still be darkly glittering, half-shadowed, but somehow still bright. 

He wants it, he can see it playing out, but there’s nothing to record it. He feels like Ryan should be recorded. He wants that laugh immortalized forever. It’s too much, when it’s just for him, when it’s just between them . Shane has nowhere else to put it. He feels like he needs it diluted.  
  
~  
   
“Yes,” Ryan says, since Shane has clearly dictated this conversation is over. “I majored in film.” He can’t bring himself to be mad. Probably because he’s too tired. He throws a look up to Shane, at the way he’s doing the things he’s supposed to do. Undeterred. Ryan’s mother would like him for that, for the fact that he’s not—unaffected by the world. He’s just doing what he’s supposed to do without the whole emotional bullshit. He keeps moving. Doesn’t let things stop him.  
   
Ryan’s mom was like that. Ryan’s mom wanted him to be like that.  
   
Part of him wants to ask what Shane majored in, wants to pry for more information, but his throat hurts. And he’s scared, if he’s honest. Scared he’ll ask too much and Shane will shutter his eyes like boarded windows. Instead he coughs.  
   
“Incredibly useful now, obviously. Zombies love movies.” He wheezes a little, lets himself fall completely to the floor as his head pounds. “So fucking useful.”  
  
~  
  
Shane laughs as he settles on the floor, cross legged, a foot or two away. Close enough to hand him the cup. “ _I_ like movies,” he says. “But you might have to tell me your creations out loud.”He’s quiet for a moment, wondering if they’ll ever be able to see a movie again. But it’s so... he doesn’t want to venture down that road. It’s way too discouraging. “I could see you being successful at lots of stuff,” he says instead, looking up at Ryan. “Yeah. Little— perfectionist. You’ve got that whole fiery determination going on in those beady little eyes of yours.”  
  
   
~  
   
“Beady?!”  
   
Ryan’s voice oscillates, cracks with the rawness of his throat. He sits up, glares across to Shane. His arm—the one he’s using to support himself—quivers and moans, but he ignores it. “That’s rude. You’re rude.” But Shane called him determined, said he could see him being successful. Wingbeats pound through him.  
   
“Sometimes I just—the other day I was thinking about how to make this rundown gas station cinematic. I was like, if there was a camera over there, to the left, of the fucked up, awful place… it would show the desperation. It would visually represent the shit going through my head. Fuck, it seems so surreal. That this is real and not just something I came up with.” He runs his fingers over his arms. The skin prickles, raises. “I used to want to get into horror. Now…” He tilts his head. “Not so much.”  
  
~  
  
“Yeah,” says Shane. Affirming, low. He gets it. He takes a soft breath, pushes the cup across the floor towards him. He keeps coming back to the same thing, the same insistent question, and he feels almost like Ryan was offering, had put it out there for him, and the thought makes Shane hot and anxious, but now it won’t go away.

It’s taken him a while to come around to it. _Who did you date?_ and he imagines that someone like Ryan... always said the right thing, always remembered anniversaries and knew how to make the right moments special. How to capture them. 

And Shane wants to know so much, how Ryan contradicts or is juxtaposed with these expectations of him...

But then they’re talking about horror, and that’s real life now. “It’s crazy, though,” Shane says softly. “Sometimes things feel almost normal.”  
  
~  
   
Ryan laughs. Thinks about Jake and him fighting over the last Root Beer at the gas station. Thinks about all the times the world didn’t feel like it was falling apart. Even as it was. Thinks about Shane’s smile, and the way Shane, by himself, can swipe the apocalypse to colors on a canvas with his palm. Ryan keeps his eyes closed, still on the floor. He feels the cup Shane’s pushed towards him. Knows he needs to drink it, but his body is raging against him, so he doesn’t move.  
   
“Yeah,” he whispers. Doesn’t add, _with you._ Because it seems inappropriate. It seems like something Shane would shy away from. He coughs a little before he says, “Sometimes.”  
  
~  
  
Shane can look at him like this, cautiously, and he’s trying not to be creepy about it, but he... he’s got this really interesting face, Shane thinks. It’s a good face. His nose is very straight, his mouth, it’s a bit crooked, but it’s that— that imperfection which Shane finds sort of endearing.

He lets the silence settle in and, just on that brink, where he could easily let it slide on into a safety, a wall, he forces himself to swipe it aside. 

“Tell me what unsavoury characters your mother didn’t approve of.” 

He can’t help smiling. He says it like that so that it’s not so serious. So that he can make it a bit, or something, if he wants to. If he has to.  
  
~  
  
Ryan opens one eye, moves his head so he can get a better view of Shane. His brain is kinda sludgey, kinda slow with headache, so it takes him a second to realize what Shane means. “Oh—oh, you mean, with dating?” He pushes himself up again, because he doesn’t know how to keep going. He needs to give himself a moment—uses his body to do it.  
   
“It’s not that she didn’t approve, I guess, of people… she just had thoughts on them. On everyone.” He smiles, more because Shane’s smiling than anything else, shakes his head. “She just wanted me to be happy, and I think it freaked her out when I got… too into someone.” It raises like a question at the end. He meets Shane’s eyes, because no, he hasn’t gone into what _kind_ of characters. And he thinks Shane wants something from this. He just doesn’t know what.  
   
He grabs the cup and takes a drink of it. His throat sizzles beneath it, soaks up the water before it gets to his chest. He takes a few drinks, stares at the ripples his lips have left in the water. “I got,” _no_ , he thinks, _you’re not dead yet_ , “—get really into people…” He almost says girls, doesn’t for some reason. Maybe because he’s looking into these eyes, with all their inquisition, and girls seems wrong. Seems like it would be a lie.  
   
Like it might be omitting something. Just like past tense.  
   
He looks away, like Shane’s gaze has cut into him. “So I ended up getting hurt a lot. It’s not like they were unsavory—well, sometimes they were awful, or I thought they were.” He picks at a piece of dirt that’s caught between the floorboards. “I didn’t tell her everything—my mom.” He looks up then, slams his eyes back into Shane’s like crashing a plane into the ocean. “The apocalypse makes things more obvious, and there’s all this shit she’ll never know now. Stuff I didn’t even know.”  
  
~  
   
Ryan’s eyes meet his, and it feels like something’s blasted apart. It leaves him breathless in its intensity, in its suddenness, and he’s processing Ryan’s words almost at the edges of his mind, because it’s not safe to think it completely... it’s not safe. So why is he drawn to it like a magnet?  
  
Maybe it’s because every time he thinks that there can’t possibly be any more of Ryan, there is. Shane feels shadowed and shallow against him. It’s like comparing a spring-shower puddle on some tarmac somewhere, to a lake, to an ocean. Ryan and all his feelings just crash over Shane in waves, again and again, until he realizes that he’s getting used to knowing what this feels like: not being able to breathe.  
  
“What stuff?” Shane asks, and he’s not using that easy voice anymore, that _I’m-friendly_ radio-show voice. This is lower, softer, more intent. Ryan’s gaze has broken something inside his chest that Shane thinks might be his ribcage, his defenses, his walls, and he doesn’t even pause, now, to check to see if he’s started bleeding, because he knows that he has. And he lets himself — a little — just lets Ryan see it for a second, that flash of bright red curiosity, of giving-a-shit, and— and okay, maybe Shane’s been lonely, too.  
  
And he wonders what he’s even protecting, really. Maybe the fact that he, Shane, might end up being just… disappointing. You can’t be into something if there’s not really anything there, right? Does he even want someone to be into him, intensely? No. It fucking _terrifies_ him. He feels everything in him tensing against it.  
  
So he tries not to think that maybe he’s been lonely for Ryan, before he even knew that Ryan existed. Or maybe that’s just the apocalypse. And anyway, _That’s impossible_ , Shane’s brain tells him. _Physically, temporally... It’s impossible._  
  
_Yeah, but_ , his mind whispers, _zombies were supposed to be impossible, too._  
  
~  
  
Ryan scoffs. “My own mother doesn’t know! I can’t tell _you_.” He hikes his tone because he doesn’t want to sound genuine. Like he actually couldn’t tell Shane. But he needs this to be a bit, because he isn’t sure he can say the words. Hell, he hasn’t said them at all. To anyone. So maybe they’re all made up in his head. But looking at Shane like this, seeing the way his eyes shift and dilate in the light. It doesn’t feel made up. It feels realer than he ever thought it would.  
   
There’s so much inside him. All this stuff, all these thoughts, that it’s crushing—bearing down on him. It would be so easy to give it all to Shane. To throw it out there. But then, what? Shane stops having questions to ask. Shane can make his judgments and walk away, or do whatever he’s going to do. And Ryan is stuck with a scrap about Shane’s parents and sick days. He’s stuck with nothing.  
   
It’s not a game. It’s not a competition. Ryan knows that. He’s just afraid. He’s tearing himself open, bearing a thousand things, to a cocoon that might never open. And he thinks putting that pipe to Jake’s head may not be the worst thing Shane will ever do to Ryan.  
   
But it’s a dumb secret. When everyone’s dead or worse. It’s stupid to keep it.  
   
He coughs and takes another drink. Tries another way. “What about you? Did you date? Or were you always a hermit in the woods?”  
   
~  
  
_That's fair_ , Shane thinks, and he offers up a smile and a couple breaths of a laugh because, sure. Ryan doesn't owe him anything.  
  
"I uh... ‘date’ is a strong word," he tells him, and then looks down. Here's Ryan saying _I get too into people_ and all Shane has to offer is: "I mean I saw people. Sometimes regularly, sometimes not. Sometimes I never saw them again, but I didn't uh-- I don't _date_. There's so much like, expectation. And stress, and I just-- I just want to eat my fucking burger or whatever, you know, and not be like ‘Wow I hope we're going to find out that we're compatible for the _rest of our lives_ while we spend forty-five minutes in this three-and-a-half-stars-on-Yelp fucking restaurant. Do I have food on my face? Are we going to talk about kids? It's just-- I'd rather just... never do that. Ever." He shrugs one shoulder, and he’s not looking at Ryan anymore. He’s looking anywhere but, picking at a knot in the wooden floor. “I mean there’s other ways to pay fifty bucks to get into bed with someone, if that’s all anyone’s after…”  
  
~  
   
His bones beat like a bass at the impact. An actual impact. Or that’s how it feels. _I don’t date._ Ryan doesn’t know why it hurts, why it _bothers_ him. Even if this was something, anything, even if Ryan wanted that—they wouldn’t be going on date to restaurants with Yelp reviews. Those are all hollowed holes in the ground at this point. But there’s something deeper there. About stress. About expectation. Shane can’t give that to someone.  
   
Ryan doesn’t blame him, obviously. It is a fucking nightmare. Wondering what a touch meant or didn’t mean. When a smile is too bright, too sparkling, and you think—maybe. And then you find out, no. It wasn’t something. Not for them.  
   
Or you said the wrong thing and now it’s not. Now you’re not for them.  
   
Now you’re not good enough because you’re stuck on their floor with a broken leg and a head cold.  
   
He doesn’t know where that comes form, but he doesn’t like it.  
   
He shoves it aside—this implosion in him, this war drum, and laughs. It’s genuine, mostly, maybe a little softer than usual, and he’s breathy as he repeats, “Eat your fuckin burger?” It fades into the laughter near the end. Then he coughs a little.  
   
Ryan’s still looking—still smiling, at Shane, but Shane’s looked away. And it feels like a bizarrely metaphysical representation of this weirdness they’ve got between them.  
   
“What? Are you googling the restaurants Yelp rating while you’re out with a girl?” He says girl. He’d rather just assume it’s true. It makes this easier. He adopts a voice, and yeah, maybe it’s too hide his own. “Well, we can’t be together forever because this Huey’s review says the pickles tasted weird?” He shrugs. “Guess I’ll hire a prostitute.”  
   
He coughs again, and still can’t pull his eyes away from Shane. Even though he knows he should. Even though every second is like another knife to the chest right now. And it’s not just because his throat hurts.  
  
~  
  
"Okay," Shane laughs. "I never— let's get something straight. I never said _I_ hired a prostitute, I'm just saying, if you were so inclined, the service is uhhh-- it's available. And I would definitely look up reviews beforehand. I don't want to go anywhere that's serving suspicious pickles."  
  
He looks up, surprised to find Ryan watching him, staring. "I dunno, I— wouldn't you rather just end up falling for someone naturally?" He shakes his head a little and looks away. "I dunno, I don’t even know if that’s how it works now."  
  
Now.  
  
Nine months ago, Shane would probably be scrolling through Twitter or whatever at this time of day.  
  
‘Now’ is absolutely fucking unexpected.  
  
“At least you’d have— at least there would be some kind of… solid—” He doesn’t know how to finish so he opens his arms, palm up, shrugs almost cartoonishly. “What do I know?”  
  
~  
   
Ryan takes a breath. It burns a little. A lot. Too much.  
   
“Well, I’m going to make certain assumptions when you bring that up unprovoked.” He laughs. Finally looks away from Shane, to some shadowed corner of the room. “Naturally? I—I guess so, but isn’t dating part of that? I guess the label of dating can scare people into thinking it’s a date and not just enjoying the person that they’re with. But when I would go on dates, it… that’s what it was. Generally. Natural conversation to see if we liked each other.”  
   
He guesses Shane isn’t opposed to the concept of a person, maybe. The right person. But he doesn’t know how to process it, so his brain rejects it all.  
   
He closes his eyes and coughs again. “Some people make it weird, and then they kiss you in a parking lot as you’re trying to leave and it feels kinda like a crocodile trying to eat your face. Like, that sucks. But, most of the time it’s just… talking about shared interests. I think you’re being unfair to dating.”  
  
~  
  
Shane laughs. "That's pretty specific. Have you had that experience?" Shane unfolds and refolds his legs differently, wraps his fingers around his ankle where he can feel it going to sleep. "I mean, if it's just shared interests, what's the difference between dating and friendship? Speaking of interest-- whatever happened to that popcorn you mentioned? Did it survive?"  
  
~  
   
Ryan drops everything else. “Oh shit—you’re, yeah… I…” He grabs his bag. Digs through it again. Opens a few zippers, searching, desperate. But it probably fell open. It did. He tries to mask his frustration, because fuck, that was one thing they could’ve had. Maybe one shared interest between the two of them. His teeth are gritted, but he keeps his voice even as he says. “It’s definitely not here, so apparently not.”  
   
He tosses the bag aside and scratches at his nose, then his neck, then he gives up and drops his hands into his head under the guise of a headache. Because he does have one. He almost says something whiny, about how pissed off he is, about how his head feels like it could burst over some stupid popcorn, or talks about his head and how much it hurts, but eventually he settles on, “Yeah, I wouldn’t recommend crocodile kissing.”  
   
What he doesn’t see, can’t see with his hands buried, is the plastic bag of popcorn that slides out in the throw and skids a little.  
  
~  
  
Shane moves rather faster than he has so far, sort of stumbles a little as his leg, which is half asleep, protests. So instead of standing, he sort of spreads out across the floor, all limbs, stretches out with all six foot four of himself and grabs at the popcorn bag with his fingertips, slides it closer. He pulls himself back to sitting grinning, like a kid at fucking Christmas as he flips it over a couple times to check. The plastic's not even broken. It's just kind of bent a little.  
  
"Well see, now," he says, in this mock-wise voice that's too much his own under the weight of his grin. "Your mistake was looking in the last place you left it. You're supposed to look everywhere _else_."  
  
~  
   
Ryan is fascinated, amazed, when he catches the way Shane unknots himself to reach for—shit, it’s the popcorn. Shane brings it back to him. Ryan reaches for it. Doesn’t quite make it, but there’s a smile a mile wide on his face. Because Shane’s happy. He’s grinning like an idiot.  
   
A little bit of hope filters back into his heart. “Oh shit! Where was—was it just?” He grabs the backpack again and rummages through it. “Awesome! That’s…” He can’t even be mad that he was too stupid to find it. “Can you make it?”  
  
~  
  
Suddenly, he's laughing and he doesn't know why. He's caught a look at Ryan's smile and for a moment everything feels really... perfect. And there's going to be popcorn. Maybe, possibly.  
  
"Yeah, yeah," he's saying, because he'll _make_ it work, even though he has no idea how to make popcorn without a microwave. Surely it's just heat, right? And oil maybe, which they don't have, but don't these things just come inside the bag…?  
  
He stands, absently shakes his foot out. He's got to stop sitting on the floor. He's looking at the bag like there might be instructions. "I don't know what I'm looking for," he says after a moment. "I um-- hm. Microwave on high for five minutes, uh... in case of zombie apocalypse, offer a sacrifice to the popcorn gods and hope for the best?"  
  
He looks up at Ryan again, hoping for something maybe. Hoping to draw that smile out into a laugh. "What's gonna be our sacrifice, Ryan?" he asks, putting urgency into his tone. He looks around the cabin like he might find a couple gold coins or something to put on an alter.  
  
~  
   
Ryan rocks back and laughs. It hurts a little, and it’s kinda riddled with coughing, but he laughs anyway. Because he’s so damn excited about this. “I don’t—” He keeps giggling, this loud, bounding thing. It comes out of him like a rock along the water. Choppy almost. He ducks his head, glances around  to see if he can see anything.  
   
“I don’t know if we need a sacrifice… I…” He cannot get it together. “I thought you said you knew how to do this! I didn’t know we were going to turn to blood magic!” He coughs again, chokes on it for a stupid amount of time. Then he’s still half-laughing at the end of it. “Fuck, just… I dunno. You’re not sacrificing me, though. I don’t care how much you love popcorn!”  He casts another glance, then grabs one of the candy bars—a Snickers—and tosses it to Shane. Okay, fine, more at Shane than anything else.  
   
It definitely hits him squarely in the head.  
   
“Here—oh shit, sorry.” And then he’s giggling again.  
  
~  
  
"Ouch," says Shane. He actually says 'ouch.' "Jesus Christ--" he stoops to pick it up. "You son of a bitch," he says, and his voice wavers with laughter. He waves the bar at him. "You did that on purpose. I'm going to eat this now, in retribution." He does, unwrapping the Snickers and just sort of putting it in his mouth so it hangs there as he hauls out the pot he boils water in.  
  
He struggles with the popcorn bag for a minute. "It's like Fort Knox," he says after a moment, around the chocolate, then finally bites off a piece and goes to find the razor, cutting the popcorn bag open. It's all clumped together with oil and processed butter in a weird chemically processed lump, and Shane laughs. "Fuck, that's-- look, it's disgusting." He holds up a piece of it, still sort of delighted. He drops it into the pot with a clunk. "It looks like something an alien threw up."  
  
~  
   
Ryan’s laughing again. At all of it. He doesn’t know how Shane manages to dissolve him into this… idiot of a person. But he doesn’t bother stopping, even when it gets worse—when Shane puts the Snickers in his mouth. He starts to say something a thousand times. But he can’t get anything out of his mouth over the breath of his laughter and the coughing. “That’s—” He tries and just breaks into a fit of cackling when Shane can’t get the popcorn open. Because it’s ridiculous.  
   
And then Shane’s disgusted with it. The contents. And Ryan’s gone again. One hundred percent. He coughs so hard his lungs shrivel a little, or it feels like it. “You’re—you’re ridiculous. If you burn that popcorn—”  
   
He giggles again. “Don’t say—don’t say it’s—you’re going to ruin it, you dick!” He wishes he could get up. Go do something. Maybe touch Shane. Wrap his arms around him, push him away from the stove. Fuck, he doesn’t know where that came from. It doesn’t matter. He can’t. He’s stuck on the floor, useless, but at least he’s laughing. At least he doesn’t feel like it’s going to tear him in half right now.  
  
~  
  
Shane looks over at him again and starts to laugh. He's quieter than Ryan, all shaking shoulders and his face turned away, but when he gathers himself, he literally has to wipe tears from his eyes.  
  
With the popcorn in the pot over the fire, he sort of pokes at it until the butter or — whatever it is — melts and then he picks up the Snickers and brings it over. It's a decent sized candy bar. He holds it out, half shrugging like... it's been in his mouth, but he's not going to eat the whole thing. It was Ryan's in the first place.  
  
~  
   
He takes too long to get himself together, and when he does, Shane is extending this candy bar. He doesn’t move to take it. Stares at it, with eyes wider than what is considered normally. They feel big in his face anyway.  
   
“Oh, no, it’s… you can keep it. Eat it later or something.” He looks around, just slightly self-conscious. “I’ve been eating all of your shit.” He scratches his neck, then chews on his lip. His hand moves to take the Snickers, then stops, starts again. His fingers finally catch the bar, but they catch Shane’s hand too. Linger there.  
   
“Are you—I feel like I owe you _something_.”  
  
~  
  
Shane goes still again, but it's not so filled with tension as it usually is. His eyes flicker to Ryan's mouth as he chews his lip, then back to his eyes.  
  
"No." He says, genuinely surprised. "Why?" He laughs softly because Ryan's eyes look huge. "You look like a— just take the candy, Ryan."  
  
~  
   
“Because you’ve…” He flails, arms going wild. “You’ve let me stay here, and not thrown me out of the house for being useless.” He takes the bar, though, because it’s weird as fuck having it linger between them. “And I’m taking your food.” He looks over to the stove. “I guess I did provide the popcorn—but I couldn’t even fucking find it! And, really, I think that’s a small penance comparatively.”  
   
It strikes him that Shane’s mouth has been on his candy bar, and his fingers quiver as he turns it over in his hands. Tries not to think about the heat, the damp, any of it. Nerves tug another chuckle out of him, but he doesn’t say anything else.  
  
~  
  
“You’re not useless,” Shane says, almost laughs it like it’s just a silly notion. He can hear the popcorn doing _something_. Not necessarily popping, but sizzling or something. He doesn't want to burn it, because Ryan— because they were so excited about it. He sort of flexes his fingers subconsciously, missing the warmth from Ryan's hand.  
  
He reaches out, without warning, and presses his fingers to Ryan's forehead to see if he's warm, and he is, a little, but not feverish-warm. "Drink the water," he tells him, "I'm gonna check the popcorn." He doesn’t pull away right away, his eyes flickering between Ryan’s, and he understands why Ryan thinks _useless_ , but he doesn’t know how to fix it, other than just to negate it. “I, you’ve— you’re keeping me entertained.”  
  
~  
   
If he wasn’t so overwhelmed with Shane’s hand on his forehead entertainment would hurt. He doesn’t want to be entertainment. He doesn’t know what he wants to be, but he feels lesser, maybe. Shane doesn’t mean it like that. Ryan knows that. But damn this fucking leg. Damn Shane’s head on his forehead like a cool rag. Damn the way his stomach flips and flutters.  
   
“Entertainment?” he asks. “Somehow, that doesn’t seem like something you need, since you were out here on your own for—how, how long _have_ you been here?”  
  
~  
  
"Here?" Shane asks. "Uh... maybe eight months...? Winter was just ending, so... yeah. Since March, I would say..." He draws away and moves back to the fireplace. "We left my house a few weeks after the panicking started, after people were talking about setting up quarantine zones."  
  
He thinks about how ridiculous it had all seemed, how completely surreal. His parents had thought so, too.  
  
"Remember when the news aired that scene-- the one in New York?"  
  
There had been this... this hoarde, just-- they were flooding the streets, surrounding the people still trying to drive out of that city in their cars. It had been shot from someone's handheld camera or a smartphone or something, from a tall building. The footage was grainy and shaky and somehow even eerier than it should have been, because it was soundless.  
  
"I didn't know what to do, so I just went home after I saw that-- home to my parent's house," Shane said. "I-- we thought it was some kind of... I don't know. Mass hysteria. Like riots or... but worse. We were just gonna stay in the house until it all blew over, but then it just... it didn't."  
  
~  
  
There’s more to this. To the story. Shane doesn’t have to say it, doesn’t even have to show it. It’s there in the absence of parents. In the absence of anything. Anything but Shane. Ryan’s eyes go soft as he thinks about it. He doubts Shane wants pity any more than he does, but he feels it. His body, his soul, burns with it. Something like pity. Something that wants to reach out and stop all of it. But pushing it seems like too much, too soon.  
   
He remembers the footage. He’d been talking about it for months before it, though, the signs. That video came so much later. Just a confirmation of what Ryan had had been saying. He had a roomful of research—on the wall, scattered on the floor. He’d lost friends because of it. People who called him insane. His own mother had recommended meds. Told him all that time in the film industry had his head on wrong.  
   
“Oh, yeah.” He’s quiet for too long. It’s like there’s a piece of metal lodged in his throat, keeping him from talking about that clip. “Yeah, that was…”  
   
That was the day… well, whatever. It’s over now. But he can’t say anything. Can’t verbally acknowledge it. Can’t think about that soundless, grainy picture without seeing what came after it. Without seeing bleached pale eyes instead of brown. Without witnessing his life change into a horror movie right in front of him.    
   
“Wow,” he says, dropping the original line, “that’s… you’ve been alone for a while, then.” Ryan doesn’t think—no, he knows he wouldn’t have made it. He would’ve found a way to die, somehow, be it looking for other people or just being a fool. He would’ve. Shane’s managed. In a weird way, he’s thrived. “Did you just stumble on this place? Jake and me walked for months. We must’ve passed through four or five cities and couldn’t find anywhere that wasn’t overrun in like… a day or so. A whole new downside to city living, I guess.”  
  
~  
  
Shane crouches beside the fire, hands loosely clasped between his knees. He wants— he wants to give Ryan something, but the problem is that all of it is so shit. He decides on the truth though, because he thinks maybe, otherwise, he's going to seem suspicious. Just happening conveniently upon this cabin in the woods...  
  
"I... we're actually, we came from just outside the city. Outside Chicago, so we were protected a little. You know, the pandemonium was all— downtown, central city sort of thing, but then it started spreading out and we—... my dad had gone out, I think to get some water or something, you know, those big jugs, from the grocery store, and he saw something— he must have seen one of those things. Zombies. Doin' zombie stuff, because he came home talking about it and mom and I just— like, we _had_ to believe him. Because he wasn't like that, he never got swept up into sensationalism, and he was saying something about— one of the neighbors, you know, someone we knew, was... uh... eating… someone else. So we decided to leave. It was the worst timing."  
  
Shane hesitates. "We got— we made it to the car. There were people just— you know, it just swept over the suburbs, over our neighborhood in an hour. In the time it took to try and sort things out, and pack. And they were making those _sounds_. I heard them, but I didn't see them, I just ran. Dad told me to drive, so I did... uh… and we drove away from the city... because the traffic was— like, we didn't want to end up in those huge jams, so... we drove out this way, and I..."  
  
He stops, presses his fingers to his forehead, rubbing at it like it hurts. He’s ticking actions off one by one like a list. Accurate, concise, and in order.  
  
No. Not really in order.  
  
"I... we drove for a while... slept in the car because we thought, I dunno, that there wouldn't be any out here? Away from town?”  
  
He wants to stop, but now he can't. He's started talking and he feels like if he just ends the story, it's gonna bleed out into him and poison him somehow.  
  
“Uh, he…— My mom never made it to the car." He's backtracking, but he has to. This is a sequence of events, it’s order important, like evidence — like a crime scene — and he feels like it is. It’s the murder of his life as he knew it, his world. First-degree. Cold blood. And he’s gone through it in his head enough, that he knows he remembers —vividly, but in weird bursts. There is so much _sound_ to these memories… they scream through his head like a freight train flying over him where he lies on the tracks. He can barely hear himself speak beneath it.  
  
"Like, between the house and the car, we lost her... Dad tried to…” He sighs, because it starts to get unclear here, for a little while. Wrought with confusion. “I didn't see what happened. Those sounds really— freak me out, I just— he told me to run, so I did. It was instinctive or something, or selfish? And when dad got in the passenger seat, there was blood just—”  He makes a gesture to indicate arms, torso. “He said it wasn't his. I guess it was— I guess it would've been hers."  
  
He's so detached from this as he puts it into words for someone else. He’s just... it's like someone else's story. Some unnamed family. "Anyway, I woke up in the morning and he was. Just _gone_. Like he was there, but he was gone, his eyes—... He just— I guess he must've been bitten or something. Trying to get her.” _Save her._ More than Shane had done. “He tried to get to me, but the seatbelt... the fucking seatbelt held.” His voice shakes like laughter, but it aches in his throat. “He moved too fast, and it locked up. I just— I got out of the car and just—yeah, I dunno... stood there for a while like he might snap out of it, or some brilliant idea would come to me. I was there forever... I didn't know what to do, so eventually I just... I just left. I left him there. I thought I could cut through the woods to the houses across— I could see them from the road, thought: a couple miles maybe… so I went through the woods and found this place and... and I could hear them. It was getting dark, and I could hear them, and the door was unlocked.  
  
“The place was— fucked. It looked like someone had just lost their mind in here, but there was no blood or anything... for a while, I thought someone might come back, but I found him a few days later in the woods." Shane shrugs a little. It's not dismissive, but... "I dunno. Guess he must've just... given up."  
  
~  
   
It crashes into Ryan like a full-scale tsunami. He’s drowning in it. Shane’s just telling this story, like it’s about a lunch date gone wrong. But it’s… awful. It’s like a claw twisting in his gut. And his blood is just pooling, pooling in the center of him. His gone pale, and there’s, _oh god—no, do not throw up right now, Ryan. Do not throw up when this guy just told you all this awful shit._  
   
He swallows, eyes wide, again and again. He can’t stop swallowing, because he can’t get enough saliva in his mouth. And then he realizes he’s letting this silence just sit there when Shane just—“Fuck.” That’s the only thing that spills out. “Fuck, dude, I’m—I’m so sorry. That’s… jesus, that’s awful.” A seatbelt. His dad would have killed him if not for a fucking seatbelt. Ryan scrubs at his eyes, his nose, because his bones are itching beneath his skin. There’s a gaping horror in him, at this idea that the seatbelt could’ve failed. That there might be some universe where it did. Where Shane’s dad just reached across and killed him—turned him into… one of those things. And he’d have never met Shane, and that… hurts, like an iced wind across his bloodstream.  
   
But maybe it’s selfish. Maybe this has been worse. Living through it. Living with it. Ryan knows how it feels to be attacked by his own parents. But Shane—god, it feels so off. So wrong. Like the whole world has gone sickly gray. “That’s…” He wants to say something. Something comforting or inspiring or anything. But there’s nothing.  
   
Absolutely nothing.  
   
“Well, I’m… I’m glad you found this place… at least.” It feels weak, feeble, but he says it anyway. He moves, slides himself along the floor so he’s next to Shane.  Everything is too heavy. His muscles groan with the strain. But there’s a thread wrapped around his ribcage, this twine that was there before, now tangled around every bone, every muscle, tugging him towards Shane.  
   
He raises his hand, like he’s going to touch Shane, but isn’t sure he should. He waffles, but eventually, after a couple starts and stops, he lets it touch Shane’s shoulder, slide down his arm, just barely. “That’s…” He’s torn between offering something in exchange, some bit of empathy, and not taking this from Shane. And, okay, maybe there’s a cowardice there too. “It’s weird to say I know how you feel, when it’s… literally the worst thing ever, but…” He’s gone shaky again. Part sickness. Part nerves, he thinks. “I do.”  
   
He thinks of a thousand things he could say. About Shane’s dad. About how walking away was the right choice. But what he ends on, “And I’m glad you made it.”  
   
~  
  
He'd thought maybe, it would be cathartic. It's supposed to be, right? But it wasn't. But at least... at least it's out there now. For Ryan. He can do what he wants with it. But Shane doesn't expect him to pull himself closer, he doesn't expect the touch, and he doesn't have any idea how to respond, so he doesn't. He's all caught up in Ryan, and his fucking sincerity, and Shane knows, he _knows_ that something just as awful has happened to him. He knows it with such certainty, it's like a stone sinking into him, cold and heavy and awful.  
  
"It's probably—”  
  
A popcorn pops. Shane jumps a little, and then, in a totally different voice, one that's too easy — so easy that it must be fake, he says "Hey! He gives the pot a little shake. "Something's happening."  
  
_Great_ , he thinks. _Avoid it, like you always do_. Maybe Ryan wanted to talk about it. Maybe Shane should let him. But he doesn't know what it will change.  
  
~  
  
Ryan gets way more scared than he should with the popcorn. He barely holds back a noise that would absolutely sound stupid. He forgot it was there, honestly. But he smiles because it gives them something to move on to. God knows they need it. He pulls his hand back and watches. Takes another drink of water."Hey, look at that!" He has to inject more enthusiasm into it. Because this no-sleep sickness gnaws at him. Dust motes are hitting his skin too hard. But damn it if he isn't going to eat some popcorn.  
  
~  
  
"We did it, Ryan!" Shane says, like this is some great feat. He sounds somehow enthused and soft all at once, and he can feel the pieces of all this past, this horror, falling away a little.  
  
What doesn't, is the place on his arm where Ryan touched him. It's burning a little, all the way up his neck. The popcorn stars actually popping, and for a minute, they're both distracted. When it stops popping, when it starts burning, just a little at the bottom, Shane says "Oh, shit," and takes it off the flame and soft of fans some of the smoke away.  
  
"Oops," he says, laughing softly. "Sorry— there's still some unpopped pieces though..." He looks up at Ryan. "How about that? You happy—?"  
  
There was something there, just on the edge of his tongue. A name, a word or two — not ‘Ryan’. He swallows. Where the fuck had that come from?  
  
~  
  
Ryan's smile curls to something that feels crooked around his teeth. "Incredible. You managed to burn it looking right at it." He examines the popcorn and the smell, fuck, the smell. It hits him out of nowhere and his mouth waters. His whole body swoons under it.He casts Shane a glance after his abrupt pause. Maybe he imagined it, but it trips him up.But he's still smiling when he says, "But yeah. I am."And he kinda is.  
  
~  
  
Shane starts laughing. "You've— you look like you've got a fucking— popcorn-hard-on, man," Shane says, and pushes the pot at him. But he's fucking _starving_ , and he knows this is going to be gone in no time at all, even if they try to savor it.  
  
He feels like a kid, somehow. Like this is sort of ridiculous. Make-believe. They're both just sitting on the floor again, around what is essentially a cauldron of popcorn. It's starting to get dark. He can see the light fading from the cracks in the boards.  
  
And Ryan said he was happy, and that lessens the weight of something Shane didn't even know he was carrying. "Wow, well... there you go." He sort of waves a hand grandly at it. "Shall we?" He says, like he’s some fucking English lord. He feels like an idiot, but he almost doesn’t care.  
  
~  
  
Ryan giggles. He's too tired to argue the hard on comment which is honestly a low point. He nods upwards, at Shane. He wants this. He's so hungry there are literal pains in his stomach. But Shane is too. And Ryan wants, needs, to be able to offer something in return that means something.Maybe the popcorn could be a start."You first. This is your handiwork after all." Then to make it lighter, "And I'm gonna need you to try at least three handfuls before I'll accept it's not going to kill me."  
  
~  
  
He's not going to argue, but he holds Ryan's eyes for a second too long, sort of wondering at him. About him. He's very... he's sweet. He's too sweet for someone like Shane.  
  
He takes one, not three, handfuls of popcorn and gets most of it into his mouth. "Oh Jesus," he says, reverently, around it. And it would be ridiculous if it hadn't been months, if he wasn't so hungry. If he wasn't so _delighted_ to have popcorn right now. What he doesn't get in his mouth, he tosses at Ryan. It's about five pieces. "Here, it's not poisoned, now eat it. It's _your_ popcorn."  
  
~  
  
Ryan flinches under the popcorn. Shane tosses it so the pieces hit him and scatter like birds around a pebble. “Hey!” He looks around and gathers a few of the pieces in his hands. “By the way, now you look like you’ve got the popcorn hard-on. Shane’s not going to let him bail, and Ryan is really fucking hungry, so he throws the pieces into his mouth.  
  
And fuck, his stomach shrieks like like it’s won the damn lottery. It’s so good. It’s legitimately, human, normal popcorn. It tastes better than he remembers, but that’s probably because he has never been starving before. “Fuck, wh--fuck, dude!” He swallows and takes a breath. “You know what, I think it’s fine to have a hard-on for popcorn. I think, if you don’t, then there’s something wrong with you. Because, wow, _jesus_.”  
  
He stares at the bowl and grabs another handful. Then he stares at the handful. This is going to be gone fast. Popcorn is always gone too fast, and this, this is during the apocalypse. He’s afraid to blink.  
  
But he lets it slide away from him for now and throws the handful into his mouth. A few pieces escape and fall into his lap. He laughs again. He feels like he’s doing it too much, given the whole zombie outbreak, but sickness is creeping in and fogging over the concern.  
  
~  
  
Shane tries to remember, tries to calculate how much Ryan has eaten since he's come here, and he knows it's not much. It's less than Shane, and he's had a rougher time of it.  
  
So he's careful. It might be the last time he'll ever eat popcorn, but he's careful. He keeps the conversation going (maybe partially a distraction. “Now all we need’s a movie!”) he laughs, and he doesn't eat much at all unless Ryan's eyes are on him, and he has to keep up appearances.  
  
He used to think there was more in those little popcorn bags than there actually was, and he laments this fact a little, and wonders why brains work that way, as he sucks the last of the butter and salt from his fingers, eyes on the fire, but very far away. He’s still so hungry, but he doesn’t think he’s had butter on anything in months, and it gives this illusion of richness, so it’s almost… it’s almost all right. He thinks about how he's really got to get out there and get food soon, because he's never been this low before, and he's been trying hard not to act concerned.  
  
Shane feels like starving to death in a zombie apocalypse might be preferable to what's out there, but he knows that he _certainly_ doesn't want to experience either of them.  
  
~  
   
Ryan eats. He’s pretty sure Shane isn’t eating as much as he’s supposed to. But he’s really barely hanging on at this point. And the popcorn is so damn good that he just lets himself have it. Even if it was the one thing he could provide, his body is getting too heavy.  
   
The popcorn is a good distraction. It’s this flavor—butter that brightens the entire world. He’s been eating nothing but shit from cans and, occasionally, things he _actively_ found in a dumpster. This is fucking revolutionary.  
   
But after awhile, even the popcorn starts to lose its flavor. His whole mouth tastes like ash. Like the apocalypse is draining everything from Ryan. Still, it’s normal, for a little bit, it’s normal. Shane talks, and they throw jokes back and forth. It’s okay. Everything’s almost okay. Except Ryan’s body has gone brittle.  
   
Shane’s far away, staring at the fire, and Ryan thinks he might know what’s wrong. Maybe. Like he’s starting to understand the ins and outs of Shane’s impossible mind. His ups and downs. Ryan doesn’t comment, though, doesn’t trust himself enough. And there isn’t anything he can do about it—if it is food that Shane’s worried about. Ryan’s provided everything he can on that front.  
   
Which isn’t much. As fucking usual.  
   
Cold sweeps through him, even as sweat pricks across his hairline. He shivers. “I’m pretty sure my stomach is going to kill me before the zombies. Either from lack of food or just sheer indignation of the shit I’ve put in it.”  
  
~  
  
Shane blinks, take a moment to sort of... come back, and then looks over. There was a smile starting, but when he takes Ryan in, it fades a little.  
  
"Maybe," he tells him. "But I think you'll be fine. Popcorn's probably good for you. I mean, it's almost a vegetable." His brown eyes flicker over him. "You should probably— ... you should probably try to sleep a little."  
  
~  
   
Ryan laughs, but it hurts his throat. He keeps his eyes on the fire, not looking at Shane. That word is starting to make him nauseous. Sleep. It should be so easy, and yeah, he should. He’s fucking exhausted. His body is literally beating him over the head with it.  
   
He goes for honesty. “I should, yeah, but…” He still won’t meet Shane’s eyes. Not right now. He crosses his arms over his chest to stave off the chills. “I just… don’t know if I can.”  
  
~  
  
He raises his eyebrows. “I think you can, I think you just think you can’t. C’mon,” he says, unwinding himself, rolling to his feet. He holds out a hand, because Ryan’s left the shovel over beside his little makeshift bed. “C’mon,” he repeats, a bit lower.  
  
~  
   
Ryan scowls, and fine, it probably looks like the petulant pout of a five year old. But he doesn’t like this. He doesn’t like needing helped around. And he definitely doesn’t like _you just think you can’t_. In fact, he repeats it several times in his head in a very mocking voice. He would do it out loud if he had the energy.  
   
“I can do it,” he says, but he takes Shane’s hand away, because the low way Shane says come on spurns his body straight into action.  
  
~  
  
Shane ducks a little, forearm tensing to help him up, and he knows Ryan’s pissed, he can see it in his face but all right, fine. He steps easily into place, Ryan’s arm around his shoulders. He wonders if it’s because they’ve done this enough, already, or if he’s just— if he’s somehow just found a way to fit together with someone else.  
  
Shane’s had that. In little fragmentary moments. It doesn’t happen often, or for a long time, but sometimes his hips slot just so against someone else’s hips, or sometimes there’s an easy brush against a friend’s arm that doesn’t send him tensing or angling away, but that comes from years and trust and safety, and that doesn’t exist anymore. He tries not to think about where those friends, those people, are, now.  
  
They’re both situations very different from this one with Ryan, because Ryan isn’t either of those things, really, so fitting, even though he has to hunch, it’s strange. It’s sort of nice. He likes feeling like he knows what he’s doing here, how to do it. Even if Ryan is sulking like a kid.  
  
He gets him to the couch-bed thing, and slips away to sit down on his own. He rubs his hands over his face and tries not to sigh out loud. “Why can’t you sleep?” he asks. He doesn’t mean to. He supposes the answer should be obvious, but Ryan had said it wasn’t the fucking— the zombies he was scared of. So _what_? There’s nothing in here, there’s no way for them to get in without them hearing it. Shane _can’t_ understand what’s stopping him from not getting rest.  
  
~  
   
Shane is irritated. It makes everything worse, because Ryan doesn’t want this to be irritating. He doesn’t want this to be a thing. But also he’s kinda irritated, and he’s just pedaling as fast as his mind will let him. Backwards. Away from this. He doesn’t want to fight again. He’s terrified of what it’ll do to him in this state. After they’ve been okay.  
   
“I told you,” he says. “The last time I slept, like legitimately, actually slept… in a bed and not on some forest floor or alley dumpster with one eye open… and felt like things would be okay. I woke up to my brother screaming with his arm halfway down one of those things’ throats. I keep seeing it when I start to doze off.”  
   
He looks up at Shane, takes a breath. Saying it shakes too much loose. Gives the clawing sickness a better foothold, good enough that he coughs. “So, yesterday, you said you would make sure zombies didn’t eat me or whatever. I don’t really care if a zombie eats me. Well, okay, I care because I don’t actively _want_ to die. But I guess I’m more nervous that I’ll wake up and it’ll be like…” He almost says, _like your dad_ , but doesn’t. And is fucking glad he stopped that word vomit. “That I’ll have been asleep when something happened to…”  
   
_You_ , he thinks.  
   
It should be easy to say, but it isn’t, so he starts picking at the couch cushions. Just lets it trail and hopes Shane understands some part of it.  
  
~  
  
“Ryan,” Shane says, “ _Nothing’s_ gonna happen here. Like, logically, honestly, we’d wake up. One of us would wake up…”  
  
But, _God_ , he’s sorry. He hates it so fucking much. He hates those things outside, and he doesn’t often let himself do that because then it’s just all too much. He hates that they’ve buried a kid out there not even three days ago. He hates that nothing will ever, ever go back to normal again. He hates that they’re probably all going to become one of those things, or be killed by one of those things eventually.  
  
He tries to shut it off, that hot, boiling, sick feeling. That’s so far off anyway. Right now they’re alive, and it still kind of smells like popcorn, and it’s cold, but he’s not soaked to the skin and… things are okay.  
  
“Anyway,” he says, trying to make this lighter. “If anything happened to me, you’d have more food, _and_ one less person to tell you what to do. Right? I know you’re pissed at me,” Shane says, and he grins a little, like it pleases him. He looks faintly wicked. “Glass half full, right?”  
  
~  
   
He goes rigid. It’s a joke. It’s literally just a joke, but he freezes. Fingers, lungs, eyes. And there’s that delirium, that agonizing burn of tears that’s become a staple of who he is as a god damn person. He’s got this image of Shane with those bleached out eyes—all wrong. Everything Ryan has started to love about him, just _wrong_ , skewed. Contorted like this disease does. In the way that it takes, which isn’t like death. It’s not a breathless swipe. A blink. No, it’s slow. It twists everything you had—makes a mockery of it. Takes everything good and turns it black and ugly. Makes you think about it, over and over, how miserable it would make them. The person they were. That maybe they’re in there somewhere, and they fucking know—they’re just half-living, caught in this Frankenstein version of themselves. And, then, eventually—how miserable it makes you. Because all your memories are tainted with this image. This stain. It takes them from you, not just in that moment, the present. But from your past. And your future.  
   
He’d be alone. No Jake. No Shane. No Mom. No Dad. No one.  
   
Just Ryan.  
   
And he’s so disgusted with that. So disgusted with what Ryan is lately. He doesn’t know what he’d do. He’d try. He was raised to keep trying. But… still. He can’t let Shane see this, this near breakdown that this joke has brought on. He shakes it off, the tears, all of it.  
   
So he looks up and half-smirks. “My life was easier without the patronizing. That’s true.” Then, he looks away again. Can’t hold eye contact for very long. And softly he adds, “You did make the popcorn, though.”  
  
~  
  
Shane shrugs, palms up, like making popcorn really was difficult and he just has to take the credit now. Then he drops his arms. Something’s changed, something in the air, something between them. He shifts a little, trying to shake free of that, gets the blanket out from under himself and pulls it up over his shoulders because he’s cold. “I’m just—,” he says, finally, “You won’t get better if you don’t at least try to sleep. And then I…” he tries to think about what he’d do without Ryan, but the thought is roaring and dark and he pushes it aside fast before he can look too deeply. “Then I, uh…” everything he can think of sounds too mean, and he’s _so_ aware of it. “I forgot what I was going to say,” he lies.  
  
~  
   
He lies down and listens to Shane. His body quivers a little, and he coughs. “And then you’ll have your fucking rations back,” he supplies helpfully. The blanket clings to his skin as he gets under it. He’s clammy, not sure if he has a fever, but definitely that slight ache. And yeah, there’s this far-off paranoia that he’s got some new strain of the virus. But that’s not it. A zombie didn’t sneak in, bite him, and sneak out. Not really their MO.  
   
“I’ll try. I mean, I have tried—I tried last night.” He swallows over the knives in his throat. “But I will try again, now that you’ve _told_ me, because that’s what I needed a tall, gangly man explaining it to me so I can do it right.” He laughs quietly because he doesn’t want Shane to think it’s bothering him.  
   
It is, but it’s not Shane’s fault. It’s the whole damn world’s fault. But not Shane’s.  
  
~  
  
Shane’s laughing. “You do— you do need me to explain it to you,” he says, even as he huddles down beneath his own blankets, facing Ryan’s bed, but unable to see him, down there on the floor.  
  
That fucking floor. It must be freezing. Shane sighs again, rolls over onto his stomach, pressing his face into the pillow like he can muffle it somehow. It takes him forever to get warm. He’s not even really sure that he does, but he does eventually drift off a little because he’s thinking or dreaming about something, someplace else. Some time that’s not here or now. He thinks Ryan’s there, in this dream, but that doesn’t make sense, because he’s home, and the sun’s shining in through his bedroom window in this weird, pale way…  
  
Ryan’s there, peripherally, but Shane doesn’t see him. In the dream, he rolls over in his bed so that he can. Somewhere, he knows that that’s strange. Not right. Ryan wouldn’t be in Illinois, wouldn’t be in his bed, Ryan wouldn’t be before the zombies, but it must be before them, because he can’t be after… there is no after.  
  
And before he faces Ryan, he finds himself awake, slamming into it, and for a second, there’s only darkness.  
  
“Ryan,” Shane says, and his voice sounds wrong and tight in the dark, because his heart is hammering and he doesn’t know why.  
  
~

Ryan tries. Honestly, he does. He does his damndest. Dozes off a couple times early on, but then it’s that falling rush. Only he’s not falling. He’s reaching for Jake. Reaching for Shane.  
   
He tosses and turns, and then gets too self-conscious to turn because he hears Shane’s breathing shift. He’s asleep. Ryan has to cough into his pillow a few times and his nose is starting to take on some of the shit that’s been stuck in his head, because he’s lying down, and he can’t breathe. He can’t breathe through his nose, and when he pulls too much air in through his mouth—he coughs. It’s truly hell.  
   
He’d prefer the zombies.  
   
He eventually gets up, softly, so slowly, to kinda put some distance between himself and Shane. He just wants one of them to sleep. He knows it’s dumb to get up, to give up trying, because he’ll fall asleep if he just lies there… probably. But it’s so frustrating. It’s infuriating, and he’s so wound up about waking Shane up. He uses the shovel, and it takes him so long because he’s being as quiet as possible. He takes the rope too, because why not, right?  
   
He makes it to the table, into a chair, and starts untangling the rope. His eyes start to droop, maybe. He thinks he could fall asleep on the table. Maybe that’s the trick. Be upright. Trick his body into thinking he’s not going to sleep. One-two punch. He smiles a little at his own joke.  
   
Occasionally his eyes drift to Shane. He’s not sleeping soundly. He’s moving a lot. Ryan is sorta caught between wishing he’d wake up and wishing he wouldn’t. Shane deserves sleep. One of them needs to be well-rested, but Ryan also hates being alone like this.  
   
He goes back to the rope. He’s got a really soothing rhythm down. Then he jumps enough to slam his knee into the table when he hears, “Ryan.” It’s loud in the dark, and he can’t hold back the “fuck” that shudders through and out of him. Because that _hurt_. He closes his eyes at the throbbing, and thanks god it wasn’t his bad leg.  
   
“Shit—Shane?” he whispers, like he can take back all the noise he just made.  
  
~  
  
Shane bolts upright at the sound and reaches out instinctually with one hand, towards Ryan’s bed as he does. He doesn’t touch it, Ryan’s not there anyway. Shane’s eyes find him in the dark and it scares him because he doesn’t expect it, half-thinks it _is_ a fucking zombie, and his whole body coils up in fucking terror. But it’s just Ryan.  
  
“Jesus Christ!” Shane yelps, and he’s sort of drawn his knees up to his chest. Things register. He feels sort of sick and lightheaded. “Christ,” he says again, breathless “What are you _doing_ , man?”  
  
~  
   
Ryan sees it unfurl, like the wrong block in a Jenga tower. It just collapse, and he can’t do anything but feel awful because Shane’s stressed out. “Sorry!” It’s all he can get out for a long time. His breath is all coiled around his ribs. He can’t get it out. Because this was what he was trying to avoid.  
   
“Sorry, I was just… I couldn’t sleep and I didn’t wanna wake you up!”  
  
~  
  
Shane sort of laughs, sort of groans, pressing his forehead against his knees. “I think I might be dead,” he tells him after a second, once his heart’s remembered it has a job to do that isn’t trying to make his veins literally just blow up. “How did you even get over there?”  
  
He looks up at him. The fire’s so low he can barely see him at all.  
  
~  
   
“Shovel,” he says with this soft, too-light, too-high voice. Guilt is still pinging the outer rims of his body, but it’s starting to fade. To be fair, that wasn’t his fault. Shane must’ve had a dream or something. It sits weird on Ryan’s chest that Shane may have been dreaming about him. Maybe not, though. He may have just come to and realized Ryan wasn’t where he was supposed to be. Or where Shane expected him to be.  
   
“You okay? Sorry, guess I should’ve left a note.”  
  
~  
  
He’s startled into laughter. “Yeah, I’m—” he says, voice shaking beneath it. “A note.” He lets himself laugh for a moment because it expels all the horribleness, the residual, clinging fear, before he gets himself together. He’s shaking a little, his hands. He doesn’t know why, but he ignores it. The dream is still lingering, a little, and he can’t remember if he said Ryan’s name out loud, but he thinks he did. He decides not to ask.  
  
“Aren’t you cold over there, man?” he asks instead. “Blanket would’ve been too much to bring with you?”  
  
~  
  
Ryan shivers, as if obeying some command Shane never spoke. “I…” He peers into the darkness where the blanket probably is. “I think I have a low-grade fever so my body temperature just can’t be trusted at the moment.” He glances back at the rope, not sure how to proceed from here. Shane might want him to come back, but if he does, then it’ll be same thing. “I am now, though, so thanks for bringing that up.”  
   
“Are you going to scold me because I’m not trying to sleep now?”  
  
~  
  
“Yes,” Shane says, trying to hide the fact that that sends a jolt of worry up his spine. “Because now it’s getting ridiculous. Look— just. Come here. Come back. Do you want help? If I have to come over there only to have you start to bitch, I’m going to be awfully angry.”  
  
Somehow, Shane makes the words ‘start to bitch’ sound intellectual.  
  
~  
   
Ryan laughs, and it hurts again, but he does it anyway. “Ok—okay. I’ll come back. I’m going to get you sick. Where’s your bandana? Put that on.” He eases down to grab his makeshift crutch. He’s getting better at getting around with it, though, so that’s one thing to be proud of. He makes his way back to the little bed Shane’s made for him and collapses into it.  
   
“I’m back. Are you happy? Does it soothe your soul to have me suffering within three feet of you?”  
  
~  
  
“Yes, actually,” he says, “This way I can feed off of your misery, ooh, yum!” His voice shifts into something less insane. “Here, no… I’m not putting the bandana on because I would have to get up to get it. Come up here.” he actually shifts over, like this isn’t just a wildly unusual request. “Seriously, let’s go.”  
  
~  
  
   
“What?” And this time it’s absolutely not the illness that cracks Ryan’s voice. He just stares. Gawks really. At the top of the bed. At Shane. Trying to process what the hell Shane means. “What do—what?” It’s an innocent request. He laughs, and god, it’s so nervous. Coming apart just, barely there at all. “I… man, then you’ll really get sick. You don’t—you don’t want me in your… you…” He keeps laughing because he has no idea what else to do.  
   
This bed isn’t that big. They’d be touching. A lot of them would be touching.  
  
~  
  
“I do want it, actually,” Shane says, and there’s something in Ryan’s voice, in his nervousness, that makes Shane almost warm enough that he thinks he doesn’t even need the body heat. But that’s his argument. He uses it, he’s sticking to it. So he barrels ahead. “Because then at least we will both be warmer, and if you want your fever to break, you can’t be shivering down there on the floor, so get up here. Come on.” He pushes the blankets down enough, still an invitation. “Come on, man, you’re going to make me let _all_ the cold air in.”  
  
~  
   
Shane’s voice is doing that thing again, where Ryan’s just moving, even as his own brain is like _no, stop, don’t do this_. He climbs into the bed, and it’s all warmth. Shane hasn’t been on all of it, but it’s got his body heat all over it, and it seeps into Ryan. He’s hot, jittering with it. Like he’s just breathing in Shane in this whole different way. He’s stiff, kinda rigid, not sure where he can touch and what he’s allowed to do. He keeps his eyes, probably still too wide, on Shane the entire time.  
   
“I… okay… do you want? What do you want me to—should I?” He laughs, it’s breathy. “Where do you want me—” Wait, that sounds weird. “This bed looked bigger before.”  
  
~  
  
“Where do I _want_ you?” Shane repeats, laughs softly, even as he shifts over further, a little away from him. “I don’t— just,” he says, carefully pulling the blanket up over them both. He has to reach over Ryan to do it, and he’s very careful. It’s like playing with a kitten. He doesn’t want to startle it, or get all its sharp little teeth and claws embedded in his fingers.  
  
“Just be careful of your leg.”  
  
He realizes, now, that he can’t bend his knees like he normally does to fit completely on the bed, without hitting Ryan, Ryan’s legs, so he sort of pulls himself up to the headboard and twists until he can lean his head on his hand, lying as diagonally away from him as he can in the tiny bed, and that saves him a few inches. He has to curve over Ryan a little, to fit. He hates his height, but Ryan doesn’t need to be as far up on the bed as he does, so it’s not… it could have been more awkward. Still, he furrows his brow a little, shivers, full-bodied, and it’s not just from the cold. “Okay… yeah it _could_ definitely be bigger,” he says, but he can feel the heat coming off of him. His knuckles skim Ryan’s shoulder as he reaches up to press them against his cheek. He is warm, but Shane’s not _concerned_ about it yet. He hopes he doesn’t have to be.  
  
~  
  
   
Ryan’s makes several unhelpful noises as Shane moves. He’s like a damn tarp, trying to administer himself around Ryan. Ryan wishes he wasn’t in the bed, wishes Shane didn’t have to do this. What he’s trying to say is _I’ll just go back to the floor_ , but he’s so flustered that it comes out in fragmented, “I’ll just” and “it’s…” and “you don’t have to…”s.  
   
Shane touches his cheek. It takes Ryan a bit to realize that, because Shane’s hands skimmed his shoulder and he’s so painfully aware of every touch. Every move Shane makes. But the cheek lasts longer, bounces through him.  
   
_Breathe, just breathe, Ryan. It’s fine. Everything is normal. People touch each other all the time._  
   
Shane’s checking his temperature, he realizes. It makes more sense, but the touch doesn’t stop glowing, lighting the whole room like a house fire. “It’s not bad. I don’t even know if it’s a fever. My body just feels… whatever. Don’t stress about it. Or…” He laughs. “If you were going to stress, you should’ve thought of that before you invited me to bed.”  
   
He wriggles a little bit. Eases away from Shane’s hand. His first thought is to bring his legs up, curl into a ball, but he can’t because one of his legs is still in a damn brace. “Fuck—oh, okay.” He touches Shane’s chest, feels the skeleton of it all over again, uses it to brace himself as he slides back as far as the bed will allow.  
   
He usually curls his hand in front of him, but if he does that now, he’s going to have his hand on Shane’s chest all night. Which isn’t super acceptable, probably. Another nervous laugh bubbles out of him. No, he just needs to turn around. He shifts, kinda awkward, because doing a full one-eighty with this leg is going to be a bitch.  
   
He moves to grab it, but his hand slams into Shane’s thigh, skates a little too close to things he should not be thinking about or touching. “Sorry,” he mumbles. He sits up, adjusts the leg and then lies back down with his back to Shane. It twists, and the leg hurts for a second, but Ryan doesn’t flinch. He lies his head down and takes deep, gasping breaths.  
   
“Okay,” judders out of him. “This has been great. I’m having a great time.”  
  
~  
  
Shane tenses beneath Ryan’s touch, and it’s so ridiculous — this was his idea, so he really should be better at human contact, but he’s not. He’s not. He just stays still, lets Ryan push away, and then his fingers slide over his thigh again, the inside, and he hisses softly, but it’s lost in Ryan’s apology, he thinks. He hopes.  
  
He takes a shuddering breath as Ryan resettles, back to him, but then he’s laughing again. “Yeah? Great,” he says sarcastically, and then, “You okay?”  
  
He’s looking at him, eyes flickering over his dark hair, and the shape of his ear. Then he catches himself and looks away. “We don’t have to uh, talk about Brokeback—” he begins, and he doesn’t know if it’s to make him feel better or to annoy him, but he sort of wishes he hadn’t started to say it.  
  
~  
   
Ryan loses it. Because, fucking of course Shane would bring up Brokeback again. He just couldn’t let this awkwardness happen without shining a megawatt light bulb on it. Ryan shoves his face into the pillow, and it muffles his laughter. Which is good because he is cracking the hell up. “Oh,” he says, but then he can’t get it together in time to talk. So he laughs for a while, and then again, “Oh, what? Oh, is this not when we both review our fucking thesis statements on _Brokeback Mountain_. I thought—I definitely thought that was what we were about to do. I was prepared and everything.”  
   
He laughs again. Twists so his head’s facing Shane, so he can look at him, and he doesn’t feel so awkward for a second. Maybe because Shane made it better, because Shane called attention to it so Ryan doesn’t feel like it’s all inside him, threatening to explode. It’s between them, and maybe together, they can deal with it. He smiles, and it’s soft, because he’s tired, and it’s still soft when he turns enough with his arm to shove Shane’s shoulder playfully.  
   
“And no, I’m not okay, because you’re a dick.” He laughs again. “No, shit…” He brings his hands to half-cover his face, still giggling. “Forget I said that. That word is off-limits for the next twenty-four hours. So you’re a douche.”  
  
~  
  
Shane’s eyes fix on Ryan’s as he turns to look at him, and that smile fucking stops him in his tracks. His mind just goes blank, and then Ryan shoves him a little, and his shoulder, his arm slides against Shane’s chest, and he can feel the heat of it through his t-shirt.  
  
He smiles when Ryan calls him a dick, or maybe when he shoved him, or maybe when he started talking about thesis statements, Shane can’t remember. He can’t remember the last time it was this easy to laugh. “Okay— wow, twenty-four hours is a while, though, Ryan, but thanks for— thanks for assuming I have that kind of stamina, that’s really nice of you.”  
  
~  
   
“What?” He shrieks it. Goes to turn and this time it does kind fuck with this leg, but he’s facing Shane now. Leg pounding. “What—that is…” He wheezes. “Okay. First off that is not what I said. At all. You are just saying… you’re an asshole, just so you know?” He stays like that, torso facing up, and looks at the ceiling. It’s not incredibly comfortable, but he likes the closeness. Likes being able to see Shane. Feel him more than he could on the floor, or even on his back.  
   
“You’re the guy who doesn’t date. You probably wouldn’t even last two minutes.” It’s an awkward conversation topic, but it doesn’t feel like it anymore. It feels okay. Even if it blossoms a sort of heat into Ryan’s chest. It’s not a bad heat.  
   
~  
  
“Wow, I— wow, okay,” Shane laughs. “I’d say ‘try me,’ but I feel like you wouldn’t be into that.” They’re going out there, way the fuck out there, and he doesn’t know if it’s going to ruin everything or not. His heart is slamming against his ribcage so hard that he half-thinks that if it was brighter in here, Ryan would be able to see it. He can feel it rocking through him like a time bomb, just pulsing pulsing pulsing. His fingers curl in the sheets between them, and they’re so close to Ryan’s chest that he can feel the heat radiating off of him, but he isn’t touching. He’s millimetres away, but he’s not touching.  
  
~  
   
One side of Ryan’s mouth quirks up. It’s a lot, yeah, but it’s okay. Maybe because he’s tired, maybe because he’s sick. There’s a thousand reasons why, but whatever it is, he turns his neck so he’s looking at Shane again. “Like I said before, you don’t know what I’m into.” But he doesn’t give more than that, because he’s already on dangerous ground. He can feel his feet sinking in this mud. This mud that could easily suffocate him. But Shane’s not talking about _him_ not being into it.  
   
“But you probably couldn’t handle m—it, anyway.” He raises his eyebrows. “Too much pressure. Who knows what kind of pickles we’re dealing with here?” His smirk is kinda overtaking his face, and he knows it, but he doesn’t care. He tosses his head up so his hair falls across his forehead. “Better hire a prostitute to be safe.”  
  
~  
  
He hears it, the beginning of that word — _you wouldn’t be able to handle_ — and this time he doesn’t comment on it. Instead he just gives in, laughs a little. Doesn’t mean to lean down over him, but he does, a little, draws his hand away so his forearm is pressed to his own chest, keeping himself from rolling into Ryan, where his weight makes the mattress dip.  
  
It would be so easy to do it, Shane thinks, suddenly.  
  
He lowers the arm propping his head up, uses it as a pillow instead so he’s lying down properly. His hand hangs over the edge of the bed, suspended. He thinks maybe Ryan’s hair brushes the inside of his forearm but he can’t be sure.  
  
“I don’t have any money,” Shane whispers.  
  
~  
   
Ryan doesn’t know if he’s ever going to stop laughing. And this time it’s even more intense, louder. This choppy, twining sound. Almost enough that he rolls back over so he doesn’t assault Shane with the sound. “Oh, but… but that’s the only—otherwise, you would absolutely be onboard.” He doesn’t turn over. He looks at Shane again. “Maybe you should see if they take Goldfish crackers.” He closes his eyes. Realizes he’s twisted so he’s facing Shane now. “It worked on me,” he adds.  
   
Fuck, he doesn’t want to have this ordeal again. But his hands are close enough to his chest that he’s able to avoid him. “Not the popcorn, though… never the popcorn.” A sleepiness has draped itself over him, but he’s only half-aware of it. Most of his awareness is on Shane, on all the juts and bows of his body. All the soothing cool of a breeze. Shane reminds of a breeze. Shane reminds him of a lot of things.  
   
He’s so different, so unlike anything Ryan’s ever seen. But there’s so much of the world in him too. So many things Ryan’s never seen in a person, but in the air, in life.  
   
“There’s so much of you,” Ryan mumbles, and it’s sleepy, distant. He doesn’t know if he actually said it. He’s still smiling, but it’s faded. He looks up so his hair brushes along Shane. Some part of Shane. He doesn’t know which. His hand splays out a little further, and two of his fingers dust across Shane’s arm. He doesn’t pull them back. Doesn’t really understand it’s happened. He coughs a little, but sleep mutes it.  
   
His eyelids flutter and he mumbles something, a sound, something that starts with _you’re,_ but his eyes are closed, and it fades into sleep. His fingers go limp with it, rest gently, but heavier into Shane.  
  
~  
  
Shane’s breath keeps hitching into these soft little maybe-laughs. Ryan’s just talking nonsense, sleepy, his voice heavy with it, and Shane doesn’t say anything else, just lets him slide into it. And he is so, so fucking awake, even after Ryan’s breathing evens out. Eventually, he shifts, very slow, very careful, because his arm is starting to ache, and he doesn’t know where to put it so he just draws it very carefully back into his own chest.  
  
It’s so warm like this. It’s warmer than he can remember being in a long, long time. He closes his eyes and thinks — _okay, this is fine_ — he can just rest, until morning. It’s almost as good as sleeping. He wonders why the fuck they can’t both sleep at once.  
  
But he does fall asleep. (He must have. He wouldn’t have moved closer, otherwise.) Shane wakes up because he’s not used to the warm solidity of another body beside him. Against him. He doesn’t move as he remembers the night before, realizes where it’s got him. Ryan’s still easy against him, so Shane doesn’t move. It’s like playing dead or something.  
  
His face is practically tucked into Ryan’s hair. It brushes his skin when he breathes against it, and his forearm is _pressed_ against Ryan’s torso, so he can feel his breath — the soft and hard places — ribs, soft rise and fall of breath. The hair on the back of Shane’s neck stands up.  
  
He blinks, eyes squinting open, and there’s light coming in through the unboarded window upstairs. It looks like late morning. Somehow, all this is so much more intimate, in daylight, but he feels stuck. And he’s— well he’s _comfortable_. Or he was. Now he’s freaking out a little. At least he’s not—  
  
_Okay,_ Shane thinks, _Stop thinking about anything to do with that._  
  
~  
   
Something moves, jostles Ryan. He’s in his bed. At home. There’s someone in his bed. The thought is there, and then it’s gone. He’s not really having _thoughts_ , though. He’s half asleep. Trapped in several places at once. But then there’s just this expanse of nothing, and he’s falling back into it.  
   
He tries to say, “I’m up,” to the half-real mother coaxing him out of bed. Because he has school. But he’s not. He’s absolutely lying to her, so the noise he makes is this quiet sound that’s caught between a grunt and a whimper. He shifts, slides against the sheets, until he gets a hold of Shane’s shirt and burrows into it. All the way against his chest.  
   
His legs bend so they brush Shane’s, almost tangle in them. And Ryan is entirely unaware of it. Just knows there’s something, maybe a body, maybe something else, that he wants to move closer to. Because it’s warm, and it’s something to nestle into so he can lose himself again.  
   
And he does. What little life seeped into his body from Shane’s movement bleeds out of it and he’s asleep again.  
  
~  
  
_Shit_ , Shane thinks, and he’s barely breathing. He thinks his heart’s going to wake Ryan up, the way it’s slamming against his ribs like it wants out. He keeps his eyes closed, tries to keep his breathing steady.  
  
And it sort of works. Surprisingly quickly, actually. He extracts one long arm from between them and it hovers there, suspended between the blanket and Ryan’s body.  
  
_Don’t,_ Shane thinks, because he’s going to regret it, later, no matter which direction this goes. Either Ryan will wake up, and this will be all gone — Shane can practically hear his embarrassed squeak now. Or… or Ryan won’t wake up right away, and they will stay like this, and Shane will hold him, for a moment or two, and pretend to sleep, and then he’ll know what that’s like, when Ryan freaks out and pulls away.  
  
But then, it’s the goddamn apocalypse, so Shane gently, gently, settles his arm around Ryan’s waist, and f _uck._  
  
Fuck, somehow, he didn’t realize how small Ryan was, because he can reach all the way up, up his spine, and his fingers brush the back of Ryan’s neck, and Shane tenses a little. _That’s it, idiot,_ he thinks to himself, rather harshly. _Wake him up now, when you can’t escape._  
  
~  
   
Ryan makes another soft noise when Shane brushes his neck, a kind of _mmf_. Like he might be having a conversation, on some plane, but if he is—even the dream isn’t clear. It’s just faded memories of things that aren’t the zombie apocalypse. Of a kiss on his collarbone. A hand down the front of his chest. A whisper too close, too low at his ear. But it’s not concrete. There’s no Jake. No death. Not right now.  
   
He says something that starts with _Sh_ , but it’s not quite Shane’s name. An abstract version of it. Because Shane’s in his head. The one thing from this shitty place that’s come with him into whatever half-realm he’s existing in. His hand slides over Shane’s side, tugs at him, and his fingers curl so they dimple Shane’s skin.  
  
~  
  
_Okay, no,_ Shane thinks. This isn’t right on a lot of levels. It’s not fair, it’s not right to do this when he’s awake and Ryan’s not. Ryan doesn’t know, and Shane’s not in a position to just assume that he can, that he could— just fall into it. He swallows, but he is stuck now, he doesn’t know how to pull away discreetly. He knows Ryan’s going to hate it when he wakes up and fuck, fuck.  
  
He sits up. He does it fast enough that Ryan’s fingers sort of fall away from him, and Shane’s skin aches as the warmth leaves. And shit— his body’s not in tune with his head, and he’s half-hard, just from that one little insistent touch, and Shane’s desperately glad for the blanket over them both.  
  
~  
   
Ryan still doesn’t wake up. The movement jars him, and he blinks. Eyes open, but mind still closed off. Still distant. “What?” he asks, like Shane’s asked him a question, but it’s groggy, stretched out and hoarse. Sleep has taken hold of him and is not letting him go.  
   
He coughs a little, glances up, and his mind registers Shane. It registers the cabin. A little bit. It knows this isn’t weird. Know this makes sense on some weird plane. “What’re you doin?” It comes out slammed into one word—still a layer away from awake. He closes his eyes again, curls into as much of a ball as his leg will allow, this time not pressing into Shane because some part of him knows it’s Shane and knows pressing is bad. But hasn’t quite caught up enough to know the rest.  
  
~  
  
“Nothing,” he says, soft, “S’okay, just getting up.” In a second.  
  
He has to look away, think about something else, but Ryan’s voice is in his head, all sleep-heavy, and it’s with sheer force of will that Shane moves to get out of bed, once he feels like he can stand up without going lightheaded. The cold air hits him like a wall, and he whispers “Fuck,” and hesitates. He’s not used to being this warm. He thinks, actually, he might be sort of flushed. He scrubs as his face, and then thinks, _fuck that_ , and rolls back under the blanket again. Careful, careful not to touch. He knows it’s only going to get colder.

~  
  
It’s a while later. The day feels half gone when Ryan finally wakes up. Ryan’s eyes are so _heavy_. So freaking heavy, but he feels—good. Rested. He still can’t breathe right, and his head is full, still hurting. But he feels less feverish. His throat’s marginally less sore. Overall, less awful than he did last night. And god, his limbs feel elastic, not stone anymore. He sits up, yawns, wipes at his eyes before he glances over to Shane. He’s got his back to him, and Ryan half-smiles. Apparently one of them had sense enough to stave off the awkward.  
   
It thuds in his chest, though. That Shane is so far away. It’s not like he _wanted_ to wake up tangled in him or anything, but… well, he doesn’t know why it stings. Hurts like the throb in his leg. Oh well. He’ll live. He’s flushed from how stupid he must have sounded last night anyway.  
   
He touches Shane’s shoulder, doesn’t know if he should shake or not. If Shane’s asleep, he wants to let him. “Hey?” he whispers it so it barely reaches his own ears. “Hey, you up?”  
  
~  
  
“Hm? Marginally,” Shane answers, opening his eyes. It’s mostly true.  
  
He slowly, carefully stretches until his feet hit the baseboard and it’s still not enough. He squints, rolling back a little to look at him and feels his heart stutter a little. He wonders if he remembered… noticed any of that. “How’re you feeling?”  
  
~  
   
Ryan brightens, smiles. “Marginally. That’s not even…” He shakes his head. “I slept, though, so… I feel pretty damn good all things considered.” It’s kinda comical because his voice cracks on the end note, but hey, it wasn’t a cough. And he always took shitty voice as a sign that things might be getting better. Maybe it was a short illness. God, he hopes. He doesn’t want this to last a week or whatever.  
   
“Thanks for, uh…” He gestures to the bed. “Thanks for this. You didn’t…” He scoots over to give Shane some space. He looks like he needs it. “I didn’t mean to run you halfway off the bed.” He worries his lip. “I didn’t kick you or anything, did I?”    
  
~  
  
_That would have been easier_ , Shane thinks, and mostly, he’s relieved. Because Ryan doesn’t remember.  
  
“No,” he says. “You’re— you were fine. And I’m still not sick.” He sits up, one hand smoothing down his hair in the back unconsciously before he looks back at him. “I haven’t actually been warm in a while,” he admits, scooting back and leaning against the headboard. He still doesn’t want to get out of bed, but he has to. He’s starving, for one. “I forgot what it was like.”  
  
~  
   
Ryan is relieved, but then, why the hell did Shane move so far away from him? Fine, yeah, he’s sick. That should probably be enough. But it’s not. Still, at least Shane’s warm. And he doesn’t seem disgusted that Ryan’s in bed with him. He probably would’ve gotten up by now if he was.  
   
He probably wouldn’t have asked in the first place.  
   
“Let’s hope it stays that way, as far as sickness is concerned.” He pushes a little further over to give Shane some room. “But I guess you’re body’s self-defense kicked in because you are absolutely going to fall off the bed.” He around the room. “It is warm, though.”  
   
And then, he slides his legs over the bed. And fuck, god, it’s cold. It is so cold. But he keeps going, because if he doesn’t, then he’s going to get hung up on Shane being far away and why that bothers him and why he’s an idiot. “Do you, uh…”  
   
He doesn’t bother with the shovel, just one-legs it all the way to the pile of food from his backpack. Shane’s left it separate from the rest. Probably so Ryan can get to it easier. “Do you—do you want food?” He grabs a bag of _Nacho Cheese Doritos_ , tilts his head at Shane.  
   
“I don’t know what you’ve got, but I have Doritos, or Vienna sausages… because I am not dealing with soup right now. Do you have a can opener? Don’t answer that. I’m sure you do—you’re basically the guy from _Man vs. Wild._ ” He’s rambling. “Anyway, do you want something? What’s mine is yours, I guess.”  
  
~  
  
It’s a few days later — not quite a week when Shane can’t— he just fucking can’t eat Doritos or canned meat any more. And they’re low enough on food that every time he thinks about it, it makes him feel physically sick with anxiety, and so he decides to go out.  
  
It’s a grey day. There’s actually some snow on the ground, but it’s soft enough that it doesn’t crunch when he walks on it, so at least he can be quiet. Stealth is the key, here, too, because it’s not just zombies out where the houses are.  
  
It’s surprisingly quiet outside. There’s hardly any wind or anything. He sees a quick flash of something, a fox or a cat as he reaches the place where the woods end, and the dead end signals that he’s in unknown territory. He doesn’t take the street, but cuts through someone’s backyard.  
  
The thing with these places is that you can usually tell when someone’s squatting there. He knows which houses to bypass because he’s seen shadows in their windows, the twitch of a curtain. He has a piece of paper that’s been folded and unfolded so many times that it’s soft from wear, and it’s got holes in all the creases, but it’s got the houses numbered on it. The one’s he’s cleared, the ones he thinks people are, the ones that might still have zombies inside…  
  
He doesn’t like that each time he comes here, he has to walk further and further into civilization. He knows that a lot of these houses might have been cleared while he wasn’t here, too. Nothing’s certain. For a while, he lucked out with the store-room of a convenience store, somehow maneuvering his too-tall body in and out of a small basement window. Not the best thing for a quick escape, he knows, but it was almost a month’s worth of food if he rationed.  
  
A few months before Ryan though, he’d come back and someone had cleared it out. Everything.  
  
So it’s houses now. More dangerous, but more interesting, too. A lot of people left their doors unlocked. A lot of people have spare keys under welcome mats, in mailboxes, under the stones in the garden. Shane has a little collection of keys. It’s a lot easier and quieter than breaking in. And it means he can come back and, sometimes, find the food still there, untouched.  
  
He’s learned how to do this right. If he wraps the cans up in whatever he can find — dishcloths, paper towels, newspapers — they don’t rattle together. It takes up room, but it’s not going to draw attention. He takes the bags out of unopened cereal and cracker boxes and opens them so he can roll them up smaller. Usually it only takes two or three houses. He can’t carry much more than that, but there’s two of them now. He’s starting to feel really anxious by the time he’s done five, despite the bright welcoming yellow of the walls in here, despite the sunlight illuminating the kitchen he’s crouched in.  
  
But he’s been here too long. There’s a voice outside, definitely a person and Shane freezes, goes still. He ties the bag off and slips out, drops the key as he’s trying to lock the door. It rings out against the concrete step and it sounds so loud. He knows it’s not. He doesn’t see anyone, but he gets the fuck out of there anyway.  
  
The bag’s too heavy. He can feel it biting into his shoulders, but it’s not that he’s worried about. It makes it harder to move fast or quietly when it’s like this, but… there’s not really a choice. He’d rather get a lot of food and then stay away from those houses longer. It's better than coming back repeatedly as they run out of little collections of food at a time.  
  
He goes through the trees too fast, makes too much noise, but nothing comes. Nothing hears him. He emerges back out into the field, his breath misting before him and he can see the cabin, can see the smoke rising from the chimney and wonders about it… if that can be seen from the houses. He’s never thought to look.  
  
He’s worrying about this as he stares across the field. He’s not paying enough attention. To his right, there’s a little snarl. It’s faint. He almost doesn’t catch it. Maybe he wouldn’t have if something didn’t catch his eye, peripherally. He looks over and there’s a woman. No, not a woman. She’s bent all at wrong angles. They see each other at the same time, and Shane freezes.  
  
And she lets out this blood curdling scream and starts running at the exact moment Shane looks away, tries to calculate the distance between himself and the cabin.  
  
He thinks, maybe, he can pipe her. He waits too long. Another one breaks out of the trees, attracted to the sound she makes, maybe. He imagines more of them, bursting from the woods, but so far it’s just two. He’s farther, but she’s maybe fifty yards away and closing in fast. Shane takes off. He slides a little in the snow and thinks that he hadn’t thought about traction when he went out today. He should have. But he’s fucking running. He thinks about dropping the pack, but it would take too long to get out of it. By the time he reaches the cabin, his breath’s cutting into his chest. He hits the door but it’s locked — “Fuck!” It’s bolted, because he didn’t want anything to happen to Ryan. He _told_ Ryan to lock it.  
  
“ _Ryan!_ ” He screams it. It’s so panicked, it tears at his throat. He’s got the pipe in one hand, but they’ve closed in together like wolves, they’re too close. He won’t be able to keep them both back at once.  
  
~  
   
Ryan’s experimenting. Pushing weight onto his foot. He knows how long broken legs take to heal but he doesn’t have months to sit around and be useless.  Today, for example. Shane has gone, wandered into Neverland, to get food. Ryan doesn’t even know where he’s gone. But he wants to go with him—wants to help. Make sure Shane doesn’t have to do it every time. Shane needs a break. Desperately. He does too much, and sometimes, it’s like he’s on autopilot. Ryan thinks maybe the constant doing is pulling him further away from the rest of him.  
   
He attempts standing, walking, and it’s still just this head-splitting pain, but okay, maybe it’s getting better. He limps, tries to put weight on his leg as he walks a straight line across the room, from the table to the bed. It’s slow—agonizingly slow. And he wobbles, has to hop a few times because he’s left the shovel across the room so he doesn’t wimp out.  
   
He makes it to the table, but fuck, he needs a break. The little bit of weight he put on his leg is already eating away at it. He groans, puts his hands around it like he can soak some of the pain out. But it’s… better. Yeah. He’s pretty sure it’s better. A week, maybe. He can walk by then. He’ll fucking figure it out. He marks it. Sets it in this little calendar he’s got going in his head.  
   
The radio is on the table, so he grabs it, flicks it on. There’s just static as he ticks through the stations. He can still hear Jake promising he heard something. And Ryan believes him. Jake wouldn’t lie. But Ryan has found nothing but static. To be fair, he hasn’t checked in ages. Hasn’t turned it on around Shane yet, because it still feels like taking something from Jake. And he just can’t.  
   
The stations yield nothing, but something outside jars him away from the radio. Something frantic, loud, something very _off_. He kills the radio, as his eyes cut left, then right. Holds his breath. Waiting for more of that sound. Unless he made it up.  
   
No, there’s a sound. There’s definitely a sound. Running. Is it running? A loud bang draws him to a recoil. Then he hears the rest of it. Fuck, Shane—it’s Shane.  
   
“Shit!” The word tumbles out of his mouth in time with Shane shouting his name.  
   
He’s up instantly, takes two steps, and his leg buckles, gives so he hits his knees. Pain registers, distantly, but not really. “Shit, shit!” _Get up. Get up, get up, get up!_ He thrusts himself back up and slams into the side of the door opposite of Shane. “Hold on!” he says.  
   
The bolt. Fuck, where’s the bolt? He just… fuck, it’s up, _up, Ryan, you fucking idiot. You just locked it._ He grabs it, shakes it like he can tear it off. His mind roars in panic. Like he’s never operated this damn bolt before, like it’s this foreign language he never learned. Fuck. He just knows that he has to get it open. His knee digs into the door. “Open, god damn it. Fucking open!” He slams the bolt up with his hand. It sticks. Sticks. Sticks. Sticks.  
   
“Fuck!”


	4. Part 4

Part 4

_“Fuck!”_

_~_

_His leg_ , Shane thinks, and panic is rising in him until it hits this screaming pitch, and underneath it he’s blaming himself for being so fucking stupid.  
  
He shoves at the door like that’s gonna work, but of course, it doesn’t. And if he was in there, he wouldn’t want it to.  
  
It rattles as Ryan hits it from the other side, and Shane’s gasping nonsense and curses at the fucking door, and Ryan’s name, pleading, pleading.  
  
And he thinks about how Ryan— how _Ryan_ is going to lose someone else, he thinks about how those things are going to sink their teeth into Shane’s flesh and poison his blood, and their gross, wet, rotting mouths will leech all into him all because Shane didn’t want to eat any more vienna fucking sausages.  
  
He thinks about how Ryan _needed_ him, and Shane will leave him again.  
  
_Fuck that._ He turns away from the door, pipe clutched in his hand. Those sounds they make— and their eyes…  
  
Those eyes that see nothing but their next victim. Shane half-loses himself in them, their wide open mouths, like they’re already locking their teeth around his shuddering bones.  
  
~  
   
“Please, please, please,” he’s asking no one. Because the universe obviously doesn’t give a flying fuck. He turns and tries and begs. Pull. Stick. Pull. Stick. Then the metal shinks as he twists another time, pulls, pulls harder than he’s ever pulled anything, and the bolt sings free. He’s sorta propped against the door so he has to shift.  
   
_Shane, please be okay._ He keeps saying his name. He can’t get anything else to come out of his mouth. And he realizes, that’s who he was begging. He swings the door open, and there’s Shane with his goddamn back turned.  
   
“Shane!” He snaps, angrier and grittier than anything he’d ever heard himself say. There’s those things—they’re right fucking there. They’re at the door. They’re on Shane. He grabs around the bag, grabs Shane. Tugs with every bit of his strength so he’s essentially _thrown_ Shane into the cabin. And those things. They try to follow.  
   
“Fuck _off_.”  
   
God, it hasn’t been that long. His stomach shouldn’t drop like this, break like this, like he’s seeing them for the first time. But the noise, and the eyes, and the broken jaws. It’s so much. It’s _too_ much. One of them reaches, reaches for him, and Ryan blinks hard, like the light’s gone too bright, as he jerks back, grabs its arm and jams it over the door frame hard enough that it almost snaps off.  
   
Then he shuts the door on it, once, twice, until the arm severs and hits the ground. He kicks, or, well, more slides it out with his foot. He doesn’t have much leverage with his piece of shit leg. And tries to slam the door in the face of the next one. It sorta works. They crash into the door. But one of them is half over the threshold so he’s pushing against it. The door rattles. He can’t put his full strength into it because of his damn leg. And they _won’t – stop –pushing_.  
   
Then his bad leg hits the ground, and he slips. Tries to keep his weight forward, tries to keep them out.  
   
He’s so scared. So scared to look back because what if they’d already bitten Shane? What if he did it _again_? What if he let someone else _die_? Not just someone else. What if he let Shane die? What if he turns around and there’s a bite, or Shane’s looking at him like one of those things.  
  
~  
  
Shane stumbles back and hits something, the kettle, trips. He drops the pipe and it rolls away across the floor. Ryan’s way too close— way too fucking close to those goddamn things and he lunges forward again, adds his weight to Ryan’s to get the door shut. Somehow, it works. The zombie goes _crunch_ , and his throat constricts in nausea or a laugh, he doesn’t fucking know. He reaches over Ryan’s head, slams the bolt down. It jams his fingers a little, but he doesn’t care. He grabs Ryan around the waist and the chest and wrenches him back. Somehow gets him off the fucking floor and pulls him away from the door where those things are still battering themselves against it.  
  
He doesn’t know where to stop, or how. He’ll never get far enough away from those monsters. Ryan’s weight throws him a little. He crashes into a chair and it scrapes across the floor and sends him panicking again because he can’t place the sound. And then, somehow, they’re against the far wall, near the beds— the cushions are still there on the floor, but Ryan hasn’t slept on them since that night they shared the bed. The pack cushions him a bit, he can’t catch his breath. He feels like he’s fucking choking.  
  
He lets Ryan go, gets the pack off and drops it to the ground like that will work, and his fingers are tugging at the zipper of his sweater, but he can’t get it to work. It feels like it’s fucking strangling him.  
  
~  
   
Ryan panics at the hands on him, bucks against it once, but then he gets it. It’s too human, too normal, to be anything but Shane. Real Shane. Human Shane. Shane yanks him back, and they stumble. A long ways. Or it feels long. All the way across the cabin. Ryan’s heart hammers the entire time, slamming against his chest like it’ll tear free. But Shane. His breathing is all wrong.  
   
_Please be okay. Please, please._  
   
He can’t stop seeing it. Like when he turns, it’ll be there—some gash, some torn skin, all muddy and broken and soaked in blood.  
   
_Please don’t leave me._  
  
They slam into the wall and Shane drops the pack. Ryan whirls, using the wall behind Shane to keep himself upright. “Hey, hey, hey… easy, hey.” He’s talking over the roar of his own heartbeat, because Shane—god, they were so close to him.  
   
Shane’s tearing at his zipper and Ryan grabs his hands—they’re fucking freezing—pulls them away and takes over. “I’ve got it—I’ve… whoa, hey.” He slides the zipper of Shane’s sweater down and helps ease it off his shoulders.  
   
His eyes are scouring Shane, jumping and starting and bolting from face, to shoulders, to legs, to stomach. Trying to find blood. “Are you okay?” he asks finally. His hands touch Shane’s neck, his chest, his side. They nick at his waist, slip a little under Shane’s shirt hem, desperate, desperate to see everything. To make sure. To know. But it’s just skin, skin warmed with fear.  
   
Ryan wraps his hands around Shane, feels for some kind of tear. Nothing seems off, but he can’t stop touching, looking. He’s so sure there’s something. Something he’s not seeing. Like he’ll take a breath and the bite will be right there. Right in front him. And Shane’s eyes—they’re wide, terrified. And brown. Ryan needs them to be brown. To stay brown.  
   
“Are you hurt? Are you—here…” He pulls Shane onto the cushions. He doesn’t have enough balance to get them to the bed, and they sleep there—so maybe this is better.  
   
“Just breathe, okay?” His hands hover over Shane, searching, searching. His fingers quiver, try to follow after his eyes. Nothing. There’s nothing. “Just breathe.”  
   
_He’s okay._  
   
Ryan thinks it, again and again. _He’s okay. He’s okay._  
  
~  
  
He hates this. He hates it, because some rational part of him knows he should just be getting it together. He’s fine. They’re both fine, he thinks. He doesn’t really know how they got down here, on the cushions on the floor, but they are, and he reaches for Ryan.  
  
He reaches for Ryan and fists his fingers near the shoulder of Ryan’s shirt, over his chest, and pulls him closer, shifting until he’s almost leaning into him because he is so solid, and Shane really really thought he was going to die out there. Thought he was going to leave Ryan alone. He presses his palm to the back of Ryan’s neck so he can’t pull back, and for a second, just a second, Shane rests his forehead on his shoulder.  
  
It’s almost an embrace. He’s panting, makes this one single desperate sound — residual fear — but at least he can breathe now. The pounding on the door is already getting less frequent. _They’re like goldfish_ , he thinks, _out of sight out of mind._  
  
~  
   
Ryan stills. Tries to get his heartbeat together. It’s a fucking mess right now. Shane pulls him in. His palm on Ryan’s neck alters the rhythm of Ryan’s heartbeat, his breathing. It blossoms, some impossible, endless vine, that weaves and rips through Ryan. Then Shane rests his head on Ryan’s shoulder. And, okay, it’s a lot. It is so much. But it quiets him—quiets everything. He quivers a little, unsteady, but he levels his breathing. It comes out in bursts as he stares at the wall behind Shane. Then, gentler, calmer. One, two, three. One, two, three.  
   
“It’s okay,” he says.  
   
And he means it. All of it. _You’re not dead. I’m okay. You can have this. For as long as you need it._  
   
He leans into Shane so their chests mold into one another. One hand hovers over Shane’s hip, and the other hangs awkwardly in the air behind him. Ryan exhales, lets the one behind Shane settle on his neck. He’s so thin, Ryan can feel the rungs, the crooked notch of his spine, like there’s no skin at all. His fingers skid up to catch in Shane’s hair. God, it’s so soft.  
   
_Really? Shut up, you moron._  
   
But it is, and Ryan lets his hand feather out. The hair bristles and falls as he shifts. It’s this soft swish of sound like Ryan’s comforter back home used to make when he slid into bed. He curls his fingers rhythmically, almost stroking with his thumb. He’s afraid too much will throw Shane into another frenzy. He doesn’t put his other hand on Shane’s hip. He rests it on the floor, so his thumb barely brushes Shane’s leg.  
  
~  
  
He’s about to pull away, when Ryan touches him. The pounding on the door stops, and all Shane can hear is the blood rushing through his own ears, until he can’t really tell if the pulse is his or Ryan’s, they’re so close. It takes him a long moment to draw back, but he does, has to. This feels almost dreamlike, like he’s going to blink and he’ll be back out there again.  
  
As he draws away, his hand slides to Ryan’s jaw, tips his face up so he can meet his eyes, because if Ryan looks at him, if Ryan’s looking at him, then he’s really here. “I’msorry,” Shane breathes. He doesn’t know for what. For scaring him, for making him hurt his leg again, more. And he’s only just beginning to register the panicked way Ryan touched him, searched for the bite, and he realizes that maybe— maybe they’re on exactly the same page in this. Maybe they both need— something the other has.  
  
Shane has never needed someone to ground him before. For a moment, he reaches up, kneeling in front of him, both hands on Ryan’s face, on his cheeks, just fucking looking at him, just holding his eyes. He feels like Ryan’s name’s burned into the inside of his chest, his throat, where his scream made it raw.  
  
He still can’t quite steady his breath. It comes out of him in rushes, diaphragm shaking, like crying, but there’s no tears in his eyes.  
  
~  
   
This flash, this shriek of feeling, soars through him when Shane tips his face. It drags Ryan back to reality, and then Shane’s got his hands there. On Ryan’s face. Touching, touching, touching. Ryan can’t figure out where to look. He meets his eyes, bounces to his mouth, then his jaw, then back up to his head. His mouth twitches between a smile and something else, something foreign. Then Shane just gets a grip on his eyes, and he cannot look away. Doesn’t want to. Or some part of him doesn’t.  
   
He’s afraid to talk. Because Shane’s still not breathing properly. He’s all hitched and wound. But Shane apologized, and he can’t let it sit. “You’re sorry? For what?” He raises a hand and wraps it around one of Shane’s.  The contact is warm, pulsing. He squeezes the hand like he can push some of his steadiness into Shane. They’re so small—Shane’s hand, they’re slender, fragile enough that Ryan wonders if he might break them. But Ryan keeps his eyes on Shane’s.  
   
“Do you mean to tell me that you’re responsible for the apocalypse?” He softens, though, because Shane is so frayed. Ryan aches to be soft, to help him. “And to think, I _trusted_ you, Shane Madej.”  
  
~  
  
The laugh rushes out, shakes. He coughs a little. His throat hurts, his chest hurts. He makes a strange little motion, draws one hand away, uncertain, then touches him again, fingertips sliding around Ryan’s ear, not quite brushing it, then down his neck, and then he does draw back, lets him go. “Hey,” he says, “Same, man. Thanks for— thanks.” He drops back onto his heels, and his eyes are flickering over Ryan now, too. Over his arms, his chest.  
  
“You didn’t— you’re okay? They didn’t touch you, huh?”  
  
_Same, man._ The words are so fucking… just so casual. He means _I trust you_. And he does. He _really_ does.  
  
~  
   
Shane’s touch shatters across him. Ryan’s breath comes too heavy down his throat. It bunches in his lungs so his body pulls up like there’s a string drawing his spine towards the ceiling. He prickles—all of him. Like he’s a damn snow globe Shane can wind up on a whim with these tiny, quiet touches. Ryan has to work to get his breath out. Shane probably see it, the way it rushes out, trips and hiccups.  
   
_Answer_ , his brain says.  
   
“Wh—?” He shakes his head, stares at Shane, trying to get his head on straight. “No, no, they didn’t. I’m sorry it took me so long with the damn bolt… apparently I am an idiot under pressure.” God, he probably gave Shane PTSD for the rest of his fucking life.  
   
He laughs, but it’s uneven as he glances at the pack. “You, you ran all that way with the supplies… that’s…” _Stupid_. He could have died. “That’s amazing.” His eyes yank back up to Shane when he says, “You’re amazing.”  
   
And, god, he means it.  
  
~  
  
“No,” he says, “I was an idiot.” He’s frowning. He moves until he’s sitting properly, elbow braced against the knee he’s drawn to his chest. He braces himself against it, curling his fingers against the tremoring his hands are doing.  
  
“I…” he hasn’t talked about that place, yet, the houses, where the food comes from. He hasn’t talked about it, because he doesn’t want to freak Ryan out with how dangerous Shane _knows_ it is going in there, semi-regularly. “I dunno. Maybe I’ll make a different plan next time?” he says, but he’s so fucking tired suddenly. Exhaustion’s just weighing on him, mentally, physically. “We need a better system. I shouldn’t’ve…” _shouldn’t’ve left you. Shouldn’t’ve put you in that position…_  
  
He looks up again, looks at him. Knows Ryan doesn’t like to seem weak. Shane thinks he’s anything but, but bringing it up now won’t help matters, and he can barely get the words together coherently in his head anyway. Or at least, can’t fathom how to get them out in a sensible manner in this moment.  
  
~  
   
“Maybe.” Ryan scoots closer to him. He’s afraid to look away right now. Shane doesn’t seem stable. He seems lost. He has even more in his head than he usually does. “I could go with you. Once my leg’s better.” He glances down at it, because oh boy, is it angry. But he’s gotten used to its bullshit. “I walked a little on it earlier. Maybe I can actually do something soon, like in a week or so.”  
   
He doesn’t ask where. He senses Shane’s not comfortable with it. But he wants to know, needs to know what kind of danger Shane is putting himself in. “But it’s not your fault. You were doing what you had to do.” He doesn’t want Shane reforming his life around Ryan. He _hates_ that. His hand moves like he’ll touch Shane again, but he doesn’t.  
  
~  
  
“I dunno if you should be walking on it,” he says, almost anxiously, because it’s the only sane thing he can seem to get out of his mouth. God, he’s tired. He shifts, just enough so that he can lie back on the cushions. His legs are way too long but he stretches them out anyway, one by one. He feels like it makes him shiver harder, as his body tries to relax.  
  
“God, this— this is disgusting,” he says, because there’s a definite mold smell. “Why haven’t we burned this yet? I want to burn it.” He presses one shaking hand over his eyes.  
  
~  
   
Ryan doesn’t protest. Shane couldn’t take a protest right now, so he just says, “Okay.” Even if he doesn’t mean it. Shane has to calm down. “It is pretty gross.” He thinks, but burning might attract zombies, but no. He can’t talk about that. Not if he wants Shane to relax. “I’m sure we can find better uses for it than burning.” Ryan’s eyes follow Shane’s legs a little too closely.  
   
His hand moves again. He wants to touch Shane. He would want touch, but he’s scared it’ll be too much for Shane. An overload. “Do you—do you want water or anything?”  
  
~  
  
“No, I’m okay.” He feel sort of like the room is spinning, like passing out. He’s okay. He can feel Ryan beside him, warm, steady — or at least present. He doesn’t know how to ask him to stay. “I’m okay,” he repeats, lowing his hand to his abdomen, eyes on the ceiling. “Just— adrenaline or something. Or running. This is why I don’t uh… do sports.”  
  
Ryan likes sports. Maybe Ryan will start talking about sports again and they can both chill out.  
  
   
~  
   
“You were very opposed to sprinting when we first met.” He touches Shane’s shoulder. Because he just needs to touch him somewhere, to shake the need, but his fingers make it awkward. They hover in the air, then they touch Shane, then pull back too fast. “It’s probably altitude sickness or something… you are _absurdly_ tall.” He scratches at his neck. “How tall are you? Like six two, six three? You’re definitely taller than six foot.”  
   
He’s rambling because he’s nervous. Shane looks like he’s going to pass out. “I’m kinda mad you squandered your height hating sports.” He’s starting to return to the real world, where Shane’s okay, and all these sensations come sprawling back. Like cold and pain and exhaustion. He lies down next to Shane because if he doesn’t, he’s going to wind up with his hands all over Shane, and it will be all kinds of inappropriate. “But actually, the average height for NBA players is…” _Was_ , he guesses. “Six foot seven, and you’re definitely not that tall. Kobe Bryant is six foot six. It’s crazy because unless you meet them in person. You assume they’re all normal height because they’re all on the court with each other, and they’re all ridiculously tall, then you meet them, and a guy you thought was tiny is actually half a foot taller than you.” He looks at Shane, the full of his body. “You’d be… you could definitely be a point guard, though.” He considers. “If you didn’t suck.”  
  
~  
  
Shane smiles a little. “I’m not six foot seven,” he confirms softly and then Ryan is lying down beside him and Shane exhales, and it’s almost all relief. It’s relief enough to close his eyes because he suddenly feels okay, feels safe, like even if he passes out, he’s not going to end up in danger. He listens to Ryan talk, shifts a little so there’s more room, so he’s facing him, but his eyes are still closed. “I don’t… I don’t even think I know what a point guard is,” he says, almost murmurs it. “And hey, that’s a low blow, I can’t even defend myself… I’m six four. It’s too tall.”  
  
~  
   
Shane’s looking at him, and it’s all soft and quiet. Ryan tears at his lips with his teeth, glances down. “It’s not too tall. It’s okay if you suck at sports. I’m sure you’re good at other things, like whittling or something…” He still has his lip between his teeth as he walks his fingers, down, all the way so that his hand is next to Shane’s—the one that isn’t on his stomach. Their pinkies brush, but Ryan doesn’t hold the contact, just keeps it there, close. He watches Shane, blinking, curious.  
   
His voice is gentle, still wishing he could do more for Shane. “A point guard is the guy who controls the offense. He sets up plays. Gets people to where they can score.”  
  
~  
  
He feels it, that tiny brush of contact and for a second, he just leaves it, lets it go, but then he takes in a breath and extends his fingers, catches Ryan’s the wrong way, messily. It’s easier, when he’s not looking at him. He doesn’t hold on, just keeps the touch there. “I really want to make a joke about ‘scoring’,” Shane says, “But I can’t… so let’s just pretend. Anyway, I only understood about— thirty percent of what you just said, but… keep trying to tell me about sports, that’s… or whittling. Why whittling?” He feels sort of like his brain’s going haywire. He squints up at him for a second, then tucks his head down, eyes closed again. “Do I look like a whittler?”  
  
~  
   
Ryan swallows beneath the contact. Contact he asked for. He feels his hands shaking a little, but he doesn’t push the contact further. Maybe leans into it. He doesn’t know. “Let’s just pretend…” He wheezes a little on the last word, starting to laugh. “Okay.”  
   
He shrugs, stares at the ceiling, lost in the way Shane’s hand collides with his. What it means. That Shane responded. Tries to pull himself back from it. “And _yeah_ , you look like a whittler. I could see you in a rocking chair of something, with some hay in your mouth, just… scraping away on some little… gnome or something.” His eyes rest on Shane for a beat. “If you don’t like whittling, then what do you like?” He laughs again. “Besides pies and dungeons and dragons.” He takes a breath. “Or is that your quota filled?”  
  
~  
  
He takes a breath. “I’m not really that interesting, Ryan,” Shane says, and now, safe, calming a little, he’s seeing everything again behind his eyelids. Those things, how fast, how _wrongly_ they moved. He blinks and focuses on Ryan’s shirt — something solid and real. He’s close enough to study the fabric of it, the way it’s not just one solid thing, but so many tiny little interwoven threads. And he remembers the way Ryan’s hands had been on him, panicked, checking checking for bites, for blood.  
  
Shane swallows. “I used to like music… listening, not— not playing.” _Ryan’s fingers against his neck, hands sliding down over his chest and beneath his shirt._ Shane’s skin feels tight against his bones now, as he remembers the way Ryan’s fingers felt on his sides — tight and terrified — and compares it to the touch in the bed the other morning, and how gentle it had been in that different, separate moment.  
  
They’ve been sharing it, still. That too-small bed. And each time it’s— one of them faces away and they don’t touch and Shane is so so careful not to end up too close again. And he wakes through the night to Ryan’s soft shifts of breath, or sharp jolts out of sleep and he knows he’s still not sleeping. Not really. But at least— at least he’s warm. At least Shane’s right there with him.  
  
He always wants to reach out to him, in those safe, dark moments. Safe because he’s half-unseen, and he could pass it off as sleepy. He wants to reach out to Ryan and touch him and say ‘Hey, shh,’ but he never does.  
  
“You were pretty freaked out, huh?” Shane says, tilting his head up a little to meet Ryan’s eyes. And he thinks he understands. He guessed before, but now he thinks he gets it, and it rushes through him and he doesn’t know if it makes him feel hot or cold — like scalding water, like a frozen lake — for a moment, it’s both. “You thought I’d been bitten.” He wants to hear him say it. He desperately needs something to grasp — a handhold, a rope — so he can pull himself in. Into this safe, unknown place. Into Ryan.  
  
~  
   
Ryan wants to disagree. Adamantly. Shane is easily the most interesting person he’s ever met. He’s everything, and he’s nothing. And he’s completely enchanting to Ryan. A ridiculous phrase, really, but he is. Ryan once rode in a hot air balloon, over these hills, this breathtaking insane view. This thing he’d never see again, not really, not from this angle. That’s how it feels when he looks at Shane. All these things at once, from this angle he shouldn’t have.  
   
He doesn’t say that, though. That would be incredibly awkward. Music. What a ridiculous answer. Everyone’s into _music_. Ryan’s still catching his breath, though, still pulling himself out of the panic now that Shane’s okay. So he doesn’t say anything. And Shane continues before he has a chance to.  
   
Ryan grabs onto his arm, looks away from Shane. He pinches, because he needs to figure out how to respond to this. It’s obvious, easy, really. Ryan was terrified. Down to his fucking marrow. It was Jake all over again. But he’s not sure how to say it, how to admit that to Shane.  
   
“I mean…” Another nervous laugh. “I… yeah, of course I was freaked out. You were stuck out there, and I couldn’t… get the damn door open, and then…” He takes in so much air through his teeth it stings. “You had your back to me. And they were…” He doesn’t know why he’s recounting this. Shane was _there_. A breath bounces off his lips, almost amused. “I was worried you’d been bit, yeah. I don’t…”  
   
_Please don’t leave me._  
  
“I didn’t know,” he whispers.  
  
~  
  
“Yeah, I know,” Shane says, but he doesn’t know if he really does.

“Out there, I... you know how moments like that put things into perspective, like— you figure out what’s important.” He doesn’t know how he’s managing to sound so casual, but he’s managing. “I realized— I thought maybe you weren’t... you might not be able to get to the door in time, so I thought ‘I’m fucked...’” his breath shakes, just a little. “But then I thought that there was no way I was going to... make you deal with that all over again. I thought...” how does he put this into the right words? “I guess I just... you know, didn’t want that for you. You deserve better, you know. So... I’m— I’m not planning on going anywhere. Like, I feel like maybe we could do this, this apocalypse thing better if we— kind of... keep doing this. I’m trying to— do you know what I’m trying to say? No, I’m just rambling—”

 _Jesus, help_ , Shane thinks. He sounds like he broke or something. Like his brain broke. He has no idea if he’s even making sense.  
  
~  
   
This is a curve ball. Ryan didn’t expect this. Not from Shane. He seems like emotion has to be pulled out of him tied to a pick-up truck revved to eighty miles per hour. It paralyzes Ryan. Leaves him there, lost, like he’s taking in that view and someone just stole the basket from under him. He’s just falling. Ryan hates heights, and he feels like he’s falling, falling, falling.  
   
In more ways than one.  
   
“I… you…” He blinks, sits up and shifts. He needs to say something, anything, so Shane doesn’t think he’s rejecting this. He’s not. He wants to sink into it and vanish. But he’s still falling and he’s pretty sure when he lands he’s going to splatter all over the walls of this cabin. “Yeah,” is what comes out of his mouth. “Yeah, I…”  
   
_Get it together._  
   
He plays Shane’s words back. Slowly. Shane is rambling, a bit, so he has to parse it. To figure out what it all means. To figure out Shane. Which, truth be told, seems like a forty year project. He stares at Shane’s face, the way it twitches with uncertainty, with irritation, at himself for what he just said, presumably. But it’s pulling Ryan up a little. And he thinks, maybe he just isn’t going to hit the ground. He’s just going to fall, fly—whatever he’s doing—forever.  
   
“You… you fucking idiot, you were about to die, and you thought, ‘ _oh poor Ryan he’s going to be sad_ ’? That’s what you thought about?” Ryan shoves at Shane. But how many times had he thought that? About Jake? About dying? Maybe that’s the saddest part of it, the people left behind to pick up the pieces. The people you let down. He’d like to think he hurts more than Jake, than his parents, now.  
   
“But yeah.” He smiles. “I know what you’re trying to say, and I… hell, I’m clearly getting the better end of this deal because you’re… like, Darwin’s champion, and I’m basically an invalid.” He rests his hands fully on Shane’s, just for a second. “I would be happy to _do this apocalypse thing_ with you.” He tugs it back, has to, or he’s going to curl around Shane’s fingers, hold them, make it weird. Weirder.  
   
“But stop bossing me around all the time! And worry about yourself, not me, the next time zombies are trying to slobber all over your face.” He yanks his head away. The next bit is almost too soft to hear. “It would suck, though, if you… it would suck if… to, lose you, or whatever.”  
   
Lightning rips up the back of him. _Lose you_. He said it aloud. He’s scared of it, of those words, of what he’s saying. That Shane has wormed his way into Ryan’s heart like a defect, altered the fucking rhythm of his breathing.  
   
And to lose him would imply that in some way, in some capacity… Ryan _has him_.  
  
~  
  
He’s a little stuck on that, what Ryan said: “ _You… you fucking idiot, you were about to die, and you thought, ‘oh poor Ryan he’s going to be sad’_?

He’s more stuck on that than the touch on his hand that comes after. Or the fact that Ryan says he wants to— and then Ryan draws away from him before he can react to that touch...

“I... yeah,” Shane says, softly, like a revelation. Yeah, that really would have been his last thought. He rolls onto his back to feel more solid, grounded in this place.

And then Ryan’s talking about _losing_ him and he doesn’t know exactly why but it vibrates through his ribs, his heart. Shane’s just trying to keep up to all this. “Okay, hang on,” Shane says. “First of all, I think you _like_ me bossing you around.” He has to look up at Ryan like this, lying on back, and he does, lets himself for a second. “And second. Second, you won’t. I’m not going anywhere.”There. Easy, concise. Better. The words slot into place in his head, like a promise.  
  
_I’m not going anywhere._  
  
~  
   
His eyes go wide. There’s so much there. So much Shane has given him. “Okay, no, let’s get something straight.” He kicks at Shane with his good leg. A thought occurs to him, and he just _moves_ with it. Emboldened. Shane’s little touches, this emotional blast, has given him confidence. Has given him… something.  
   
Potentially clinical insanity.  
   
He jerks so his legs straddle Shane and his hand presses Shane flatter against the floor, against his chest. It’s almost awkward, because of his ever-straight, broken leg. But he won’t let it be. He can’t tell what Shane’s pulse is doing because his is too wild, too untamable, to hear anything over its shriek of: _what the hell are you doing?_  
   
“I don’t _like_ you bossing me around.” He holds Shane’s eyes. “I listen because… because…” Fuck, okay, maybe he does like it a little. But he’s not admitting that right now. Not yet. Maybe not ever. He fists Shane’s shirt in his hand, leans down so Shane’s breath pants his mouth hot. “You _clearly_ can’t handle confrontation.” He cocks his head, keeps his eyes on Shane’s. And potentially forgets to breathe.  
  
~  
  
Shane can’t get a full breath, and he’s gasping softly, quickly, and Ryan is so close to him he can feel that heat bouncing back, can feel Ryan’s breath along his mouth as he speaks, and Shane’s all wide brown eyes, and racing heart and he can’t do anything but tense beneath him, one leg coming up sharply, automatically defensive, but he stops it.

Instead, he reaches up and fists his fingers in Ryan’s shirt, so that his knuckles brush his skin. A rush of heat floods his stomach, his thighs.

He thinks of a _thousand_ things to say. _You can’t handle my hands on you_ — the razor, the rope.  
  
What comes out is the only thing he can work his mind around without dragging Ryan down to him.

“Can, too.”  
  
~  
   
_Oh, shit._  
   
He didn’t expect this. To be fair, he didn’t expect anything. He had no idea he was going to do it until he was doing it, and now he’s done it, and Shane’s got his shirt in his hands. His knuckles are just touching Ryan’s skin, brushing back and forth, and he doesn’t understand how there’s so much _contact_. Electricity crackles through him, his chest, his heart, his thighs, his— _nope_.  
   
His mouth quivers, maybe his hands do too, maybe the whole of him is quivering and he’s coming apart at the seams. But he keeps taking breaths. Because now this is a challenge. One he issued, and it’s just Shane’s stupid bony knuckles under his stupid soft skin.  
   
He swallows. It feels like a large swallow, one that takes significantly longer than normal swallows. He bites his lip, sorta, his teeth don’t really bite down, they just suck his lower lip back. “I don’t think so.” He shoots back, a whisper—also slightly shaky.  But he narrows his eyes, avoiding the holy hell out of his Shane’s mouth with his gaze, but instead it catches on the length of Shane’s eyelashes, and has to swallow again to stop the fire burning up his throat.  
  
~  
  
His eyebrows shoot up, and he uncurls his hand against Ryan’s neck, slides his fingers up, a little, into his hair. “I do.”

 _God, oh God_ , he’s shaking, and he’s sure Ryan can feel it. It’s this full-bodied tremor, like electricity buzzing inside him. When he speaks, it matches Ryan’s whisper.

“It’s just that I can use words, and you—“ he slides his thumb over one of the almost-healed cuts from shaving or tree branches, between Ryan’s sharp cheekbone and his eye, and it’s too much, but he didn’t start this. “You apparently solve everything with roughhousing.”

It’s a challenge, he tells himself, to see how far Ryan’s taking this, and why, and Shane’s holding his body, his hips, away from him as much as he can, pinned on his back, even where he wants to arch up.  
  
~  
   
Ryan’s whole body arches. His shoulders hike, and they roll down the rest of him. Shane’s fingers feather along his neck, and it’s soft—wicked soft—like silk fire. They trace rivulets like drops of water, whispering so the touches are just enough to prick—prick this primal, tingling sensation that coils and coils around Ryan’s spine.  
   
He’s still close to Shane, so when he gasps—or inhales, he doesn’t know whether he goes in or comes out, but it feels like his body tries for both. His hand unfurls over Shane’s chest and he huffs, chest heaving. He wants to stay in control, but this is a _lot_. His body is unraveling. Like Shane’s breaking it apart with his devilish hands. _Fuck_. So much of them moves, glides, all flourished fingers and…  
   
Shane’s thumb brushes over his cheek. “I d- _oh_...” He really doesn’t mean for it to come out. He tries to bite it back, but it’s this shocked, burst of breath. Because Shane nicks one of the cuts on his face. Fuck if Ryan knows where it’s from, he didn’t even know he had it, but now his entire existence narrows to the scope of it. It stings, _aches_ in this thrumming, begging way.  
   
“Fuck,” he gasps. He’s so out of breath, and he doesn’t know why. “You.” He slams his hands on either side of Shane’s head, drops his head to the side of Shane’s face so he can pant properly without Shane suffocating on his breath. But he can’t move away. Not yet. If he moves—he doesn’t know what his body will do. Doesn’t trust it.  
  
~  
  
Shane’s fingers slide from Ryan’s face as he drops down, hover awkwardly in the air. He swallows a gasp, and it sticks in his throat. He shouldn’t, he really shouldn’t, but he does, he wraps his free arm around Ryan’s waist, so careful, so light. He lays it along Ryan’s spine, and his fingers slide into the hair at the back of his skull. He fits here again, so easily, like he had that first night in the bed.

“Fuck _me_?” He asks, and then a rough jolting gasp of breath like a laugh that doesn’t quite make it. He shouldn’t do this, take this, but fuck it, he almost died.  
  
His other hand still hovers, near Ryan’s hip, but Shane doesn’t touch him. He doesn’t trust himself, or what he’ll do, with contact like that.  
  
~  
   
Ryan freezes. Shane’s fingers on his spine unscrews some critical part of him, so he forgets—completely—what happens now. He forgets how his jaw works, his mouth, legs. He doesn’t move for so long, too long. As it washes over him. And when he does, all he can get out is a giggle pitched a little higher than usual. He drops onto his forearms so he’s about three inches from the floor. His head falls so his mouth is at Shane’s ear.  
   
God, that touch on his spine. It’s fucking spiritual. It’s light—too light, just like Shane’s thumb brushing over his cheek, just like Shane. This transparent, half-person that becomes so solid, so strong, in these moments. These stolen moments.  
   
Ryan turns his head, and he is right at Shane’s ear as he says.  “Yeah.” It quivers. “Fuck you.”  
   
His breath reverberates off Shane’s ear and makes him too aware of the shape of his own lips. He leans up, so their eyes are locked. He’s panting. Sweating. He’s fucking sweating, and not just from before—not from panic. From something else. Shane’s kinda leaned back a bit, trying not to touch, but touching. Touching in all these places, like keys in locks and bullets in chambers. Touching in all the right places. The places that trigger and skitter down Ryan’s spine like beads.  
   
Ryan dips his head lower, because he’s not in control anymore. He knows that. And there’s this funny kind of comfort in it. His mouth is almost on Shane’s. Could be. If he took another inch, took one more breath of space. He crooks his elbow and presses a palm into Shane’s shoulder. Lets his thumb skate over the hollow of Shane’s throat.  
   
He senses the hand, the one not on his hip. The one close to his hip. Because Shane knows—he knows that Ryan will shatter if he touches it. Ryan can’t shatter, not right now, not like this—but he wants to. Wants it like air.  
   
He licks his lower lip, looks away before he meets Shane’s eyes again. “Roughhousing?” he asks. “Is that what you call it?” It’s shaky, just cinders of his usual voice, but it’s him. It’s him reaching and pulling on this thing Shane has a hold of between them.  
  
~  
  
Shane’s still just shuddering, and when Ryan speaks into his ear, he has to _bite_ back a sound, squeeze his eyes shut.

He only opens them when Ryan pulls back, and then he’s holding those bright-dark eyes and he’s so close, so close to just giving into it. He can deal with the aftermath later.

But what if, Shane wonders, it changes everything? Everything they’ve just said, staying together? But then he asks, _why does it even have to be so complicated?_

And on top of that, on top of all of it, Shane thinks again that Ryan is so much stronger than him, and that makes something sharp and anxious twist in his stomach. It’s the press against Shane’s throat that does it, and he swallows against Ryan’s touch, just letting him, letting it happen. Because... Ryan is sweet. He’s holding him down, but Shane trusts him because he’s honest, gentle; he feels everything too easily—

Ryan is so responsive to everything —to what Shane’s hands do, to what they have done — that Shane wants to touch him everywhere, just to see what it elicits.

He’s staring at his mouth as Ryan speaks, and it takes Shane a moment to realize he’s been asked a question. “What’s wrong with that?” he asks, as he twines his fingers harder in Ryan’s hair, not to hurt, but to hold him there, close.

He draws his hand away from the air around Ryan’s hip and touches his arm, the ghost of a touch, and wonders if he could touch his mouth…  
  
~  
   
Ryan’s floored Shane hasn’t let go. It’s making his heart beat way too fast. It’s got his entire brain on the fritz. He catches his lip beneath his teeth for real this time. His body judders when Shane deepens his grip. This is a whole new side, a whole new level of Shane. His body is cowed by this innocent, curling touch. And he is terrified of it, but he isn’t.  
   
He wants it. God, he wants it. Shane’s got his hand tangled in Ryan’s hair—this sort of instruction. And, okay, Ryan does like it. Maybe some part of Ryan wants to shrink into it and let go. Because his whole life is running and trying and working. But being under Shane’s hands, under his _control_ , takes away the need to move. To _do_.  
   
Maybe that’s Shane’s angle. Make Ryan admit it. Well, fuck that, he’s not going to.  
   
“It’s a weird word. It’s a _you_ word.” He laughs. “And are we roughhousing? Is this roughhousing?”  
   
His hand snaps out and snatches the one Shane’s got hovering over his hip. He drags it so it’s caught between the two of them. His thumb trails over the lines of Shane’s palm, and he smiles. “You’ve been carrying supplies around too long. Your hands feel like sandpaper.” They’re calloused. Tired, like Shane. Ryan’s eyes soften at that.  
   
He brings the hand beneath his chin, so it presses against the hollow lines of his throat and cuts his breathing off a little. It doesn’t matter. He’s barely doing it anyway. It’s easier this way, when Ryan’s in control. Shane’s hands aren’t the problem. No, Shane is. Shane’s direction, Shane’s commands undo him.  This is easier, doable. Quieter. Even if some part of him craves the other, craves Shane’s control. Even if some part of him despises admitting that.  
  
~  
  
Shane’s fingers flutter against the soft skin there, against Ryan’s pulse. His eyes change, confusion.

“It can be,” he says softly, and he’s taking in all the parts of Ryan’s face. He eases a little, in his hips, his back, or shifts. They fit closer but it’s not a touch with intent. It’s just a touch. He curls his fingers very softly around Ryan’s throat but he’s slipping away from this, from them. He’s in his head. “What do you want me to do, Ryan?” And it’s so soft his name almost becomes something else, something new.  
  
~  
  
The question is so sincere it makes him laugh. Realizes Shane may think Ryan's got a thing for choking. He laughs harder. "Not..." He pulls Shane's hand away. Thinks about pulling it to his lips. But it's too much. Way too much. All of it is. He replays the words though. Isn't sure he knows the answer.He just holds their hands between them. And says, "You don't need to do anything." He leans, slides away as he releases Shane's hand. He crawls, waiting on Shane. "You're enough on your own."  
  
~  
  
He reaches after him, the touch gone so suddenly that he’s thrown. It’s a little aborted motion, and he pulls his hand back to his chest. He thinks about sitting up, pressing closer again, but he’s exhausted. He draws his leg up further though, and it slides against the inside of Ryan’s thigh.

_You’re enough on your own._

He wonders if this is all... for Ryan, if it’s just because it’s been forever since he’s been with someone. Shane had hardly even thought about it until now, but he knows not everyone’s like that.“Let’s... are you going?” He asks, some of that perplexion still creeping into his tone. He wants to say don’t but he doesn’t know what this is. Whether he even has a right to.  
  
~

"I thought..." He's unsteady again. _I thought you wanted me to_. He pulls back over Shane. Hands braced on Shane's shoulders. All uncertain now. Shane's so strange. He says things aloud, acknowledges them in a way Ryan isn't sure he can. It's enamoring. In the scariest way.

Ryan is overcome with it. With how he thinks he would do anything for Shane. With how he's never felt his control slip out of his hands and into someone else's before.

With how Ryan is at Shane's mercy. "I just..." Shane's leg brushes this thigh and it strikes like a whip along his tailbone. He shakes, barely getting out the words.

"What do you want?"  
  
~  
  
“I—” he laughs a little, but Ryan shivers and Shane finds his fingers, both hands, curling into the bottom of Ryan’s shirt, near the sharp curve of his hips.  
  
“Wh— what, are you asking me _right now_? I’m not thinking clearly right now,” Shane says. Because it’s easier. Because he can’t go bigger than this: _right now_. He can’t. He meets Ryan’s eyes, and he doesn’t know how to have a conversation like this, entwined, close.  
  
He’s never done it before.  
  
But Ryan talks so much, Shane supposes he can’t really be surprised. Mischief flickers through his eyes at the thought.  
  
“I don’t want you to just leave,” he says, and doesn’t add _because I think that might kill me._  
  
The heat that’s been pooling in his stomach has cooled, but he’s still here, he’s still feeling him, intensely, in every single place their bodies touch.  
  
~

“I don’t know,” he says, and it’s honest. Shane’s hands are rattling through him and he can’t think. His knuckles are at Ryan’s hips. Both of them. And Ryan’s head is so light, charged like clouds before a thunderstorm. He can’t think. It’s taking everything to remember to breathe. Shane asks him not to leave, and there’s so many meanings, so many things that Ryan’s trying and failing to grab onto.

But his fingers are just curling along the divots of Shane’s collarbone, sorta clenching like he’s afraid he’ll fall off. “Are you—?” His nervous laugh bounces off Shane. And he feels the glint in Shane’s eyes like a fist clenched in his chest. “Are you even speaking English right now?”

Shane doesn’t want him to leave. He said that. Ryan heard it. If that’s what it meant. God, is that what it meant? Ryan’s thoughts are in tatters a thousand miles across the room, and he’s stuck, pinned like Shane’s the one on top of him. He almost wishes that were the case so he wouldn’t be the idiot here. Wouldn’t be the one who’s supposed to pick this up and do something with it.

Because it’s sliding through his fingers.

He slides his hands over Shane’s shoulders. His palms trace every dip, every crest, like it’s clay and he’s smoothing it, until they’re on the ground again. He drops his own shoulders so he’s squarely over Shane’s face. His knee digs into the ground, and his broken legs groans at the angle. He’s been propping himself up, he realizes. That’s why his arms are shaking. One of the reasons. But if he falls then he’s going to touch Shane, touch him in a thousand places. And Ryan’s going to have to think about all of them.

“You don’t want me to leave?” he says when he catches his breath. “Why?” It’s too much. So he pedals back. “Are you trying to figure out what to do if a zombie pins you? Is roughhousing code for survivalist training in your world?”

~  
  
_Why_?

The word makes him gasp a little, but then he’s pulled it back, flipped to something else and Shane wonders if he’s ever going to get a grasp on this, on Ryan, really.

“Oh, I—“ he laughs a little. “If you were a zombie, I’d’ve piped ya,” he tells him, and he gets his fingers beneath Ryan’s shirt to unfurl them around his hips, against the soft skin of his stomach, presses his palms against him, curls his fingers around Ryan’s sides the way Ryan did to him, in his sleep.

“I— you know, I— I’m not _opposed_ to this.”  He says it like he’s discussing whether or not he likes apple sauce or something. It’s almost casual. He wonders how he achieves it.  
  
~  
   
Ryan is tied on a fucking string. Shane’s fingers slip around his side so Ryan feels every rib like a hatchet across his skull. The touch blazes, ratchets through him. A chill—this heated, spiked chill—skates all the way up his spine. He swears his vision pops, and of course, because he’s spiraled completely out of control—he gasps. He kinda draws it back into his mouth, but it’s out there.  
   
Shane says, “I’m not _opposed_ to this.”  
   
Ryan’s arm jerks, gives. He falls, and his chest thuds against Shane’s. He catches himself so their foreheads don’t smash together, but his lips are a crack of static away from Shane’s.  Ryan pulls away, and it’s hard, Shane’s metal and he’s a magnet.  
   
“I’m not either,” he says. There’s nothing casual about it. It’s all sparks and cracks. Shane is yanking him around like a rag doll. It’s a _game_ to him, and Ryan is… it’s not a game. How much he wants to give himself to this. Even scrambling to figure out what this is. How much he’s thinking about Shane’s hand on his throat, on his hips, on his neck.  
   
~  
  
He gasps again, the breath kind of shocked out of him, and then they are so close, and Shane makes this soft sound in his throat that he’s never heard before and then he’s moving, saying, “Okay...” and his hands move to Ryan’s shoulders, pushing, forearm across his chest. It’s careful. Somehow he gets him over, as careful as he can of his broken leg, and leans over him. “Okay,” he says again, and lets himself run a hand down over Ryan’s arm.

He needs a second, needs to collect himself, but he’s a little lost in Ryan’s eyes.  
  
~  
  
Ryan just goes with it, because why not? Everything else has gone disastrously. A noise a little like ‘wh’ comes out of his mouth, but he gives up. He thinks Shane’s just easing him off, which would simultaneously relieve and destroy him, but then Shane is over him. And Ryan’s airway is clogged. His entire vocabulary is caught in his throat, and it’s just buzzing there, sliding down his insides like paint. Eventually another sound comes out and it’s probably a whimper, but all Ryan hears is the roar of his own blood.  
  
He bites his lip. Staring up. Wide eyed. He’s never understood the expression seeing stars. He always imagined if he’d been hit hard enough to see those, he’d be dead or unconscious. But he does now. And he thinks Shane may as well have piped him.  
  
~  
  
It’s a lot. The way Ryan looks at him is a lot, the soft sound he makes. Shane doesn’t want to pull away, but he’s got to. This is too much for them both, maybe, and he doesn’t know why.

He draws back slowly, aware that it’s not very fair after he asked Ryan not to leave, but maybe Ryan wanted to.

He pulls back until he’s not over him, until his hands slide away.

“Sorry,” he says, but he doesn’t know why. “Take a breath, Ryan.” It sounds condescending. He really doesn’t mean it to. “Let’s— it’s a lot.”  
  
Or maybe he’s just being a coward.  
   
~  
   
_Take a breath, Ryan._  
   
Ryan flinches like Shane slapped him. But he does take a breath. Because he hadn’t been. Breathing. And suddenly he hates it, despises it, the sound of his own name, tastes it like ash on his tongue.  
   
_Take a breath, Ryan._  
   
He slides his elbow up under him and doesn’t look at Shane. He doesn’t want to look at anything. So he doesn’t. It’s not Shane’s fault. Ryan started it, and then Ryan got twisted in it like a fucking idiot. And, okay, maybe Shane could read him. Maybe Shane pulled back because he’s nice and he knew Ryan couldn’t handle it. He knew it wasn’t a game to Ryan.  
   
So it’s a nice gesture, really.  
   
But it tears through Ryan like an iced wind, all jagged and gnarled, so he’s still not breathing right. It’s like he’s sick all over again.  
   
_Just play it off. It’s fine. Play it off._  
   
Heat is weaving his veins into too-tight knots. His whole body hurts. Enough that he’s not sure his whole skeleton didn’t break when that zombie grabbed him. He still doesn’t look at Shane. Doesn’t really feel or see or hear anything after: _Take a breath, Ryan._  
   
_He doesn’t mean it like that._  
   
But it doesn’t matter, because Ryan keeps playing it back, and the tone is sharper and sharper every time. Eventually, Ryan says, “Jesus, I’m hungry,” because he doesn’t want Shane to see him coming apart. Doesn’t want Shane to see anything. Because he’s a little bit humiliated. “What’s in the bag anyway?  What was worth nearly dying over?” But he doesn’t hear himself say it, barely knows he’s talking.  
   
_Take a breath, Ryan._  
   
~  
  
Okay, he fucked up. He knows he fucked up, and he’s just about to reach out, try and fix it somehow, but then the moment’s gone, and Ryan’s onto something else and Shane...He looks over at the pack, remembers in a flash the way it had felt when it was choking him. How Ryan helped him, _Easy_. And suddenly, Shane feels exhausted all over again. He reaches over Ryan for the pack anyway, draws it close. “Yeah, they had— I got tuna and soup and stuff. And soap, even...” these things don’t seem as exciting as they had when he’d found them, and he wonders if he’s already fucked this up, and what was he thinking, assuming it would be fine?

“I also got... here.” He tosses a box in Ryan’s direction. “Instant potatoes. It’ll almost be like real food. There’s some other stuff in there, have a look.”

But Ryan hasn’t looked at him once, and Shane fucking _misses_ it and it’s been like thirty seconds.

Damn it. Why is he such an idiot?  
  
He’d gotten too caught up because… because people didn’t act like that, didn’t look at him the way Ryan did, just now. Not at him.  
  
And Shane has _no idea_ what to do with it.  
  
~  
  
Ryan catches the potatoes, turns them over, stares at them. But he doesn’t see them. He manages a smile. Even though his heart is still trying to wind down, to find its natural beat again. He holds onto the potatoes and tries to swallow it, tries to do the right thing. To get over all this… disgust. This near self-loathing that’s bubbled into him.  
  
He glances, smiles at Shane. It’s half-hearted, weak. But it’s a start. It’s something. It’s everything he’s got. “Soap is good because I’m pretty sure I smell like ass.” He scoots himself over to the pack to glance inside it. “Rinsing only goes so far.” He laughs, still can’t get his eyes to find Shane unless he drags them. “Who would’ve thought?”  
  
He doesn’t even look at Shane when he says, “It’s… I know it’s half my fault you had to make this trip, and I know I sound like a broken record. But thank you. You didn’t have to do all this, but you did, and…”  
  
He tries to say it’s okay. That he’s not so shattered he can’t appreciate what Shane has done. What Shane’s given him. That it’s okay if Shane doesn’t want… any more than this. Any more than what might have been elaborate masturbation. Shane stopped himself because he cared enough about Ryan.  
  
That should be enough. More than enough.  
  
“Thanks,” but his voice breaks, quivers more than it should, and well, it’s the best he can do.  
  
~  
  
He pushes away the repeating _I fucked up_ , ringing through his head and says “That’s— don’t— don’t thank me. We both have to eat. I was the one that couldn’t stomach any more— whatever. I wanted to go.”

He didn’t. Not really. But it couldn’t be avoided. He thinks about the zombies, about the people he heard... he doesn’t tell Ryan.

He’s watching him now, peripherally, trying to figure out how to fix... this. “I’m... are you okay?” he asks him, reaching out to touch him. He stops a little more than halfway there. “I wasn’t trying to...” What? Escape? He was though, a little. Because he didn’t know why it had started in the first place.  
  
~  
  
Ryan looks at him. Puts a lot of effort into this confused expression. Shane is good at reading him. _Too_ good.

"I'm fine. Except the you-nearly-dying thing." He leans back on his arm and makes himself hold Shane's eyes.

_I wasn't trying to..._

God, he hates that. He hates being on the sad end. Some part of him wants Shane in a way he can't give. And he hates it.

"Wasn't trying to what?" It's defensive, even though the breath, the near-laugh. "You didn't do anything wrong. It's fine. Chill."

~  
  
“I just thought you—” he breaks off, one fast confused flicker of his gaze between Ryan’s.

 _Chill_. Okay clearly he’s seeing, inventing, looking for something that doesn’t exist. Didn’t exist. Fuck, the guy probably just needs to get off. Maybe _Shane_ needs to get off. Maybe he was hoping to create something... a little more solid. _Chill_.

“Oh,” he finishes, somehow almost bright despite the flush of cold in his chest — something he doesn’t want to examine too closely. “All right. Well, I’ll try not to nearly die, or die.” He smiles. It’s superficial. Maybe, like he’d initially thought in bed the other night, Ryan was looking for someone else. Shane just happened to be there. Convenient.

 _Oh_ …  
  
~  
  
There's hurt. There's definitely hurt. He didn't mean for that. He wants to erase it, but there's this throbbing ache in the center of his chest.

But he reaches for a truth, anything, and says. "Good because losing you might kill me and fuck if I'm letting those fuckers take that from me too."  
  
~  
  
Shane sort of imagines this is what it feels like to be shot. He doesn’t even know what the feeling is, that hits him, but _something_ does and for a second he’s reeling, blinking at Ryan, lips parted.  
  
He gets out an unconvincing little laugh, hears it wheeze out softly on his shaking exhale and says “I just said you won’t.” But that feels like hours ago, now. Before Ryan pushed him down, held him there, curled his fingers into the tender place above Shane’s collarbone like he wasn’t planning on letting go. Shane can’t even begin to fucking fathom how any of this got started, but it was Ryan, and then he— Shane’s never been so taken in, so caught up in anyone before. He draws his lower lip into his mouth and looks away. “Let’s— let’s just…”  
  
He’d asked him _What do you want me to do?_ and Ryan had back-peddled hard. And Shane thinks he probably should have known what to do, or maybe Ryan had someone, _had_ had someone who did and it’s not Shane.  
  
“I’m” he waves a hand vaguely in front of his face. “Sorry, I’m still a little rattled.”  
  
If he was a sane person, it would have been from the zombies. It’s not. But maybe he can pretend it is.  
  
~  
  
Rattled. Wow."Yeah me too." He laughs. "I'm sorry for tackling you right after... I'm an idiot. It's a miracle I'm not dead. I make the worst choices.

"Like falling for the guy who hit your brother with a pipe?Falling for, shit. Is that what this is? This winding clawing weight inside him. The hot flashes of skin on his. Of the thousand shades of brown in Shane's eyes.

_Fuck._

_You fucking idiot._  
  
~  
  
“Okay,” he laughs, still soft, still not altogether genuine. “You’re fine. Don’t— don’t die. I’m getting used to you.” He thinks _I don’t think it was a bad choice_ , but he’s scared of where that will land them. “You want to make this?” he asks, flicking the box of potatoes. “Potato flakes? Good old… box of carcinogens?”  
  
~  
  
Ryan laughs. “Sure.”

The day is less weird than it should be after that. Ryan throws himself into pretending he’s fine, into not being weird. Into not thinking about Shane almost dying or the panic or the way Shane’s breath felt on his mouth. So he talks more than usual. About nothing. About Dungeons and Dragons again. And the NBA. He hates it, that this is his defense mechanism. It’s to talk more, to do what amounts to almost begging for attention. Most people could stay in their own heads, be aloof, quiet—like Shane—but the words in Ryan’s mind cut like daggers.

He hates it in there. It’s why he talks so much. Why he has to. Shane makes the potatoes and, god, it’s so nice. Nice to eat something that isn’t chocolate or… it’s so good Ryan’s stomach doesn’t know what to do with it. Like it forgot things like potatoes exist. Even if they are instant. Even if they were flakes. They feel like the most flavorful, wonderful thing he’s ever had. They sit on his stomach instead of sticking to the walls of his throat.

Shane’s still pulling the shit where he’s letting Ryan eat more, but Ryan’s being intentionally slow. He can pull it right back. Shane seems to have an issue taking care of himself, and well, it makes Ryan feel a little less useless. To see him. To see Shane, not taking care of himself, because it makes Ryan think maybe he can do it.

If Shane even wants him to. Ugh, no. Ryan’s there again. Thinking about where he wants this to go, or where he thinks he wants this to go. He can barely understand the language in his own head. Thinking about where this is definitively not going.

He’s thinking about it all day, getting in that bed, after that weird, stupid closeness Ryan forced on him. It inches towards him like a knife to his throat. It pricks his skin, wells and bleeds like blood. It’s going to suck. It’s going to suck, but Ryan’s going to just… deal with it. Because if he says what he wants to say, I’ll take the floor again, after they’ve shared it so many times—it’ll be weirder. Worse.

So he squeezes as far as he can over his side—is it his side, is that what he’s calling it now—of the bed. Clenches the sheets beneath his fingers and closes his eyes, and knows, knows like he hasn’t known in weeks: he’s getting nowhere near sleep.  
  
~  
  
Shane tries. He _really_ tries to be present, to stay with him. It’s the least he can do after today. And Ryan can talk _forever_ , it seems, and it’s not that Shane doesn’t want to listen, it’s not that, it’s just that he can’t handle it all, take it all in, on top of his already too-loud mind. But _damn_ , he tries.

He’s waiting though, for a Ryan to suggest the floor again. He’s dreading it, but it never comes, but with the way Ryan takes the far side of the bed, with the way he curls his back to Shane — it’s just like every other night, one of them always faces away — but he can feel it this time. It’s different.

He doesn’t say anything. Maybe he’s been getting too quiet as the day goes on, but he’s so— he’s so emotionally drained. It’s not Ryan’s fault, but Shane doesn’t know how to tel him, doesn’t know if it would be weird if he did.

So he just... he tries his best. He says nothing. He gets into bed with Ryan and stares at his back, at the curve of his neck before it disappears into shirt collar, into blankets, for a long time.

He tries to sleep.

Maybe he gets there, a little. It can’t be too long, because the fire is still half-burning, but it’s almost embers. He wonders when he started telling time by things like this. The shadows, how high the sun is on the wall, how low the fire burns, how hungry he is...

He blinks into wakefulness and it’s like he hasn’t slept at all. He hasn’t moved, he hasn’t stopped thinking about Ryan, about the curve of his spine, about his dark eyes, about how Shane’s fucked up. His mind’s stuck on him. He knows trying to sleep again won’t change anything.

He thinks about it forever. For so long that the light almost completely dies and he’s left with an imprint of the contrast of Ryan’s skin against his shirt, against his black hair, rather than an actual image of it.

And Shane thinks of how Ryan seems so caught up in touch and he only has to remember for it to send a wave of want straight through him. He wants to touch him, he wants to press into that lovely, crooked mouth with his fingers, his tongue, _oh Jesus_.

But he also wants to rediscover how his arm fits around Ryan’s waist, how he felt like he fit, every notch of his spine hard against Shane’s forearm. He wants to make him smile in a way that isn’t calculated like it has been most of today.

He want Ryan’s voice in his ear saying something other than _fuck you_.

But he wants that too.

He wants the words _I want to_.

 _Stop_. He thinks.

For right now, for this moment. He wants to reach out and not be pushed off. Or worse, be ignored.So he does. He reaches out with shaking fingers and touches the small of Ryan’s back, to one side of his spine. He drags his shirt lightly beneath his touch as he moves, shifts to slip his arm around him.

He waits for Ryan to tell him to stop. He had his chance. He blew it…  
  
~

He lies awake, counting his breaths, counting the shadows the fire paints. He’s trying not to think about the shape of Shane’s body, of it pressed into the sheets. His fingers over them like they’d been over Ryan. He tries not to listen to his breathing, how different it is from the panic. The way it’d rattled out of him after the zombies.

He tries not to think this is him now. This broken, shredded skeleton is _Ryan_. A physical manifestation of his broken leg. Because he’ll never have Jake again. He’ll never sit with him, and he keeps catching himself, thinking _where's Jake,_ or _has Jake eaten?_ And then—there is no Jake.  There isn’t a Jake anymore. There’s just Ryan. Shards of him.

The Ryan that snapped when Jake jumped on his shoulders and took his hat. The one who groaned when his mother paused his short films to ask “ _so what does this mean?_ ” after every scene. The one who drank Starbucks coffee and root beer floats and watched Lakers basketball games. Is fucking dead. He died with Jake. Maybe before that. And Ryan misses him like he misses Jake, wants to go back to any of those moments. Because they’re over. The world that gave Ryan all his colors—the one he soaked in like a sponge is over. And there’s just Ryan now, still soaking stuff in—because he doesn’t know how to stop—but it hurts. God, it _hurts_. Everything hurts so much.

It’s all just black.

There’s no horizon, no _it’ll get better_. No mother to hug him and tell him to keep going. No Jake to call him dramatic. No dad to remind him about everything good. There’s just Ryan, still existing, when everything that made it worth it—that made him matter—is done.

Except Shane. This one flash of color, of life. And that’s the worst part. Ryan is coming alive for Shane, pushing into him too hard, because it’s all Ryan’s got. Shane is solid and strong and _soft_. The world’s hitting Ryan like stones on a windshield, and Shane’s the rain, gentle, even after his thousand tragedies. He’s not broken. Not like Ryan. Because Ryan’s weak. Blown out like a fucking candle. And his life has shifted to revolve around this person. This person who stops and starts as often as Ryan’s sentences.

He’s the only thing left of the world Ryan loved so much.

But it’s more than that. It’s like Shane was this _vital_ piece of his world. And it should’ve been before. Shane should’ve been before so Ryan could think about his touches and that breath that passes his mouth when he’s exasperated and his laugh. Ryan could think about them and know he wanted them and know wanting them wouldn’t be quite so vicious. Because Ryan would be Ryan, with all his colors and ideas and feelings, and he could be _enough_. Fit over Shane like a glove and not crush him like a bolder.

Ryan could show this new part of him, this calmed, soothed part of him that Shane has molded under his hands to someone—anyone—else. Because it’s different—smaller, maybe, and he wants to show it to someone and beg them to explain it to him.  Because he can’t show it so Shane without saying: _Look what you’ve done_.

_But god, look what you’ve done._

He closes his eyes, feels Shane’s chest again, his hands… all that heat. He sees it again, feels it again, the way Shane’s skin bumps and sighs under Ryan’s fingers. But then there’s blood. This deep tear, wet and slimy and wrong. He almost gasps. His eyes flash open. The fire’s gone—and he’s in the dark. Frozen. He feels Shane behind him still, wants to turn around, to show himself it was a dream.

The bite was Jake’s, not Shane’s. Just a memory weaved over a dream. He’s paralyzed. Stuck between guilt and pain and fear and want (that’s the thing, want has no place here, and all he can do with Shane is want). He can’t tell if Shane’s awake, but if he turns now… he thinks that want will consume him and he’ll never stop touching Shane. And he can’t—can’t do that again.

He could turn, though, just look… make sure he’s not—

_What?_

The touch slams into him. Ryan’s brain kinda explodes. He actually feels the bits of it just splatter across the inside of his skull. It’s gentle, barely there, but it feels like a bullet. Ryan pants, feels the way his body stiffens and stutters under the touch. Shane’s asleep. He must be asleep. It’s an accident.

So Ryan should slide away, god, for his own sanity, he should slide away, but he doesn’t. He doesn’t know if Shane will ever touch him like this again, after today—after… ugh. Goosebumps spike up his back. Shane’s not asleep. His hand—it’s moving. With intent. He’s sliding it over Ryan’s shirt, pressing it into Ryan’s back in a lazy line.

 _What are you doing?_ Ryan doesn’t say it. Can’t say it. Can’t say anything.

He could pretend he’s asleep, no, he can’t. Sleeping people don’t get goosebumps. _Wait, do they?_ He doesn’t know, but he knows they don’t react to touch like a downed power line. And he already did that.

Shane shifts, and Ryan thinks he’s going to put his arm around him. _Take a breath, Ryan_. He does, kinda, a shallow one. It hitches. And god damn him, god _damn_ him all the way to fucking hell, he eases back. Because he can’t do anything else, even when its splitting his back like a box-cutter. Even when he knows it’ll hurt worse later, bleed him completely dry. Because he doesn’t know what Shane wants here, doesn’t think it’s what Ryan wants.

He unfurls his hands on the sheets, counts his fingers, even as they start to clench the sheets again. He slides back, into it, because Shane wants him to. He knows Shane wants him to, and that’s the only thing Ryan knows how to do anymore.

~  
  
There is relief in Shane’s exhale, even though he can feel in the way Ryan comes alive beneath his fingers, it’s not relief for him. He’s half-thinking he should pull back, apologize, feign sleep, but then Ryan leans back, and it takes Shane completely by surprise. And so for a second he’s still, but he knows — he knows he can’t keep doing that, not meeting Ryan halfway. As Ryan slides back, Shane moves, shifts. The mattress bows beneath them slightly as he pushes himself up enough to settle again with his chest flush against Ryan’s back, but he is so careful of the rest. He’s careful of his legs. Folds his awkwardly so they don’t touch Ryan’s, don’t hurt him by accident, and his hips because— because Shane doesn’t want to make this something it isn’t, doesn’t want to make Ryan feel like he _should_ because maybe Ryan just needs the touch, the comfort, and not the rest of it.  
  
And in the darkness, Shane feels like he knows how to do that.  
  
So okay, Shane will give him that. Whatever he wants, whatever he needs for Shane to do, Shane will give it, but he doesn’t want to force anything more onto him. He doesn’t want to find something in Ryan only because he was searching for it himself — in case it doesn’t really exist.  
  
So he presses against him, chest to back, and his nose brushes the side of Ryan’s neck, and behind his ear, as he tries to find a place to fit, but the bed is too small, really. His lips are centimeters from Ryan’s skin but he tries not to think about that. Instead he slides his arm around Ryan’s chest, presses his palm over his pounding heart and pulls him gently, tighter against him and thinks _Okay?_  
  
~  
   
He’s breathing too hard. Taking in slow, deep gulps. Shane’s body is shaping his, following an outline--an outline Ryan has never thought about. Not with any girl (or guy, because okay it’s the apocalypse and he can admit that) he’s ever been with. He’s so aware of the bends in his shoulder blades, the way they jut into Shane’s. Like they were sculpted to sit against his chest. Shane’s careful with his legs, his hips, giving Ryan space. And Ryan doesn’t know what it means. He doesn’t know what Shane’s trying to do to him, if he knows that he’s got a hand in Ryan’s chest and all he has to do is squeeze.  
   
   
A smile twitches at the corner of his lips and this little breath escapes, almost a laugh. But he doesn’t let himself laugh. Ryan’s doing everything he can to just _be still_. To not fuck this up. Whatever it is. Maybe it already is fucked up. Until Then Shane’s nose brushes along Ryan’s neck, and his shoulders curl and he arcs a little, because fuck if Shane doesn’t turn him into the world’s most reactive element. If he was a director, he’d tell himself to tone it the fuck down. Shane’s breath skips against his skin. Ryan hopes it will absorb into his bloodstream because it’s the only way he’s getting air.  
   
Then he wraps Ryan in his arms, and there’s a hand on his heart, and Ryan feels Shane in his pulse. The way it beats against him, for him.  
   
_Okay…_  
  
~  
  
He stays like that, tucks his face down a little more against Ryan’s neck. And maybe Ryan thinks he’s gross, he said as much today, but to Shane he just smells like skin and sweat and familiar somehow. Familiar already.

He takes a breath, his own heart pounding harder, pounding against Ryan’s back. Tentatively, because he’s afraid to speak, he shifts ever so slightly closer, so they are against one another _tight_ , and he slowly, slowly slides his fingers up to catch at Ryan’s collarbone. Brush his throat. If he wants this, okay. If he wants anything.

And Shane _wants_ to touch him, is desperate for it. He wants to be allowed to see every secret place of Ryan, and it fucking aches. Because what if he can’t? What if he _can_?  
  
~  
   
Shane leans into what Ryan gives. He presses tighter, further, so Ryan can’t tell his lines from Shane’s anymore. He doesn’t know where this is going. Has no idea what it means. But for once, he _doesn’t care_. He lets it go. Because it doesn’t matter, even if it ends with him broken, shattered in a way he can’t come back from. He doesn’t care. It’s worth it to feel the hum moving through Shane. The near-palpable pleasure pulsing from him. It’s worth it. Fuck whatever comes next.  
   
That’s worth it.  
  
Ryan doesn’t move. Shane does. He moves his hand, slowly, like a paintbrush over Ryan’s skin. And Ryan feels it change him, color him. Then Shane hand is up, up, on his throat, and it’s soft enough to draw a breathe—a sigh out of Ryan. He feels a snap run through him. Like Shane’s cut the cord to his control.  
   
_Jesus_.  
  
Shane’s hands. They pull Ryan apart so easily. He bends his neck, presses his head up. Exposes more of his throat. His fingers twitch against the sheets, like some part of him frantically trying to figure out what to do. But he just breathes.  
  
~  
  
His breath catches, almost a curse, but he’s trying to stay quiet. Be whoever, whatever Ryan wants, but God, it’s beautiful. Shane doesn’t need to see him to know that he is, like this.

He slides his hand up his throat, all the way to cup his jaw and he’s so caught up, in the pulse and breath beneath his fingers, in the shape of his Adam’s apple, the tendons, the warmth — his lips brush his neck, open, not quite a kiss, but a suggestion of one, a question.  
  
~  
  
Every breath he takes passes through Shane, beneath his fingers, like Shane’s the only thing allowing him to breathe. In a sense, he is. Shane could press down, hurt him. His swallow eases Shane’s hand up, then down. The touch burns through him. Then Shane’s lips murmur across him, like Shane’s at his ear. And he _is_ , Shane is fucking everywhere.  
  
Ryan brings his hand towards him, towards them. Because that’s what they are. Them. His fingers find Shane’s hand, skate over the back of Shane’s knuckles. He feels every blemish, every curve, the solid silk of Shane’s fingernails. He wraps his own hand around Shane’s, brings it up, moves like Shane did. All molten dark, like the air they’re breathing. The absence on his throat leaves him cold, hollow, but then he touches Shane’s fingers to his lips, so close to his tongue he tastes them.  
  
And he’s not cold. For the first time since he walked away from his parents. He’s warm. Really, truly, warm.  
  
~  
  
Shane stops breathing. He half feels like Ryan might be reading his mind, if that were possible. But it’s not, of course, it’s just— they’re connected in this, maybe, this want.

He touches Ryan’s lip gently, and he’s still not, still _not_ breathing. Careful, almost tentative, he slips two fingers into his mouth, into that slick heat, and the pads of his fingers scrape teeth, and Oh my god, Shane thinks. Because he’s so warm. And Shane has to trust him, that he’s not just going to bite down, hurt him.

Biting has taken in a whole new meaning, these days. He’s holding himself tense, a little, so that he can hide that he’s shaking again, already. What is this _need_? Where has it come from?

He wonders if it would be like this, the same, if the world wasn’t ending? And he had met Ryan out there in the normal world — if things would be like this or not. He wonders if Ryan would have even looked at him then. He wonders if he would have heard Ryan talking sports and just automatically turned away.  
  
~  
  
Shane fingers slide into his mouth, and it feels… intimate. More than intimate. It feels like it’s crossing a line, and Ryan is too tired, too stunned, to care. They aren’t talking, and that’s the beauty of it. They haven’t said a word. It doesn’t have to mean Ryan’s pathetic or desperate or falling face-first for this guy with his stupid pipe. It’s just warm. And Shane tastes like salt and blood and leather and nothing has ever tasted quite so perfect.  
  
His teeth skim the skin of Shane’s fingers, but he’s careful, delicate. He’s soft like dandelions, and Ryan wonders if those even exist anymore. He presses his lips over Shane’s fingers but doesn’t bite. He slowly eases them out with his hand, so the damp burn of his mouth coats every molecule, every inch of skin. Until it’s out, away from his mouth, and Ryan twines his fingers between Shane’s. Breathes heat over them. Before he tugs Shane’s fingers down, scraping across skin, Ryan’s skin, first his lips--they cling, hold on too long--then his chin, the hollows and bends of his neck, and finally he cradles it to his chest. He holds it. Clutches and cradles it over his heartbeat. Where Shane put it first. You have me.  
  
Then he lets go. Gives the reins back to Shane.  
  
_Please don’t hurt me._  
  
Because he could. Dear god, he could.  
  
~  
  
Shane’s breath hitches as Ryan closes his lips over his fingers, still braced against how hard he wants to be shivering. He feels every part of him as Ryan trails his fingers down, and Shane lets him.  
  
When Ryan’s fingers slide away from his he furrows his brow a little, but keeps his hand there, feeling the rhythm of Ryan’s heart, like maybe he’s going to commit it to memory. Or maybe he’s remembering that beat from somewhere else, somewhere fundamental, but lost. Found again.  
  
He holds him like that for a moment or two, then slides his hand down, down. His fingers drag over the centre of Ryan’s chest, the place where his rib rungs connect, down down down until he reaches the vulnerable place his ribs stop, and Ryan’s skin spreads taut and heated over his stomach. He’s moving so slowly, giving Ryan every chance to stop him if he wants to, down to the dip of his naval, palm pressed flat and open to the inside of his hip, and then he closes his fingers in the hem of Ryan’s shirt, and closes it into his fist, rucks it up a little, and hesitates, waits.  
  
Then he slips his fingers underneath the cloth to open his hand — fingertips, fingers, palm — spreading out over his abdomen, nothing to separate this skin on skin. Two fingers just barely brush the waistline of Ryan’s pants, but he slides his hand up, away from there, slipping his arm beneath Ryan’s shirt instead, and he’s so warm. He draws the edge of his thumb just below the arc of his ribcage, all the while breathing slow, slow, but even against Ryan’s shoulder  
  
It takes so much focus to keep his breath calm and easy, and as the seconds tick by, it shakes harder and harder, but he’s still keeping those tremors from his own body.  
~  
  
Ryan can’t catch his breath—he’s breathing too fast, and then he’s not breathing. It’s okay, manageable, when Shane’s over his shirt. He’s losing it, but he’s… okay. Shane holds onto his heartbeat, and somehow that helps it beat. Like he can feel Shane’s pulse too, murmuring beneath the pads of his fingers, and it’s working Ryan’s like jumper cables. Then Shane moves down. Ryan quivers, shudders, and his breathing flicks and flickers, breaks his lips like gunshots.

_Stop him before he breaks you, Ryan._

He holds his breath. He doesn’t breathe. Not when Shane brushes the inside of his hip, not when he grabs Ryan’s shirt. He doesn’t breathe. He doesn’t move. Feels Shane’s question. Doesn’t answer. He doesn’t move. Then Shane touches him. Skin to skin. Ryan lets out the breath. It’s quiet, but stark in the silence.

Shane nips at his waistband like he’s got teeth down there, not fingers. Like the breath curling over Ryan’s shoulders is at his thigh. And Ryan wants it to be. He tenses when Shane leaves it. It’s good. It’s necessary. Some logical part of him knows that. This is way too much. This is going a hundred miles an hour. Ryan can taste the fucking shadows. His head’s so fogged—he’s chained to reality solely through Shane’s touches. His breaths.

It’s too much.

But Shane keeps going. His fingers draw a heat-licked rod up Ryan’s front, ordering every piece of him to attention. And Ryan complies. Tension coils like binds along his shoulders, his stomach, lower, too low. Every touch spans an eternity, every inch of the liquid shadow Shane draws along Ryan locks him in a moment. Spans it around him so it consumes him. And that’s what it does, again and again, slams his head under the current. Narrows his mind to craving it, the burn in his lungs, the lick of Shane’s fingertips. He’s drowning. Splitting down the middle. And he wants it. Wants to.

_If I’m going to break, I want it to be him._

And that tension spreads, like an ichor, until he’s gone taut with it. Until Shane’s fingers split the start of sweat.  And Ryan just needs the other end of it, like a thread, tickling, tingling, dangling in front of him. He’s been still for so long. Ages, he thinks. It’s been fucking ages. He’s wound all the way up, twisted into a thousand knots. Then the edge of Shane’s thumb arcs across him and Ryan feels it crack open his skin. The sound he makes is somewhere between a moan and a whine. It spills into a gasp as he ruptures.

He moves so fast. It’s a lot of limbs because Shane still has his arm around Ryan. A crack of pain lights through his leg, but he ignores it.  He faces Shane, slides one arm under his side to wrap around as his knees curl up. He wraps himself around Shane’s torso, fingers digging into his back, and his mouth, his face, burrows into Shane’s chest. So close his breath settles damp on Shane’s shirt. He breathes, and it curbs almost to a cry—high-pitched and hurting.

His leg hurts. There’s pain. It’s far away from him, from the rest of it, but it’s shaping the way he breathes, weaving into the want so he’s shaking and shivering and needing. It’s pathetic because he needs so much. But it’s all there, right in front of him, in the marrow of Shane’s bones. If he could just get there.

He’s curled almost entirely into himself, into Shane. His legs bend as much as the pain will let him. Knee pressed into Shane’s thigh. He takes another breath, and it’s a gasp too. They’re all gasps. And he wants in every way a person can want. Wants Shane’s lips on his. Shane’s hands dug into his thighs. Shane’s teeth at his throat. Then, softer, he wants Shane’s hand in his hair. Shane’s arm around his shoulders. Shane’s voice in his ear saying, _you don’t have to be._

“Shane,” he gasps, and it’s whittled down to the quick, shrill at the end. He doesn’t know if Shane can hear it when he’s buried like this. His fingers dig into Shane’s back. He can’t get close enough. Not for the throbbing beneath his waist or the ache in his heart. “Shane,” he says again, softer, and he feels what might be tears caught in his eyelids as he closes them. And he curses this shirt, this fabric, between them, with every part of him.  
  
~

He’s startled by the movement, and then Ryan’s twisting, and it’s fast, and something in Shane’s stomach drops, but here’s there, after a moment, and he’s all huddled down, gasping like he’s broken and — Shane remembers — he is. He’s about to say something, about to back off, relent, but then Ryan gets something out that sounds like his name and Shane freezes.  
  
He takes a second to realize that Ryan’s _holding_ onto him, not pushing him away, and Shane’s eyes are wide in the dark.  
  
And then Ryan says his name again and something in Shane’s heart cracks right through the middle because he thought— he thought this was for someone else.  
  
_It still might be_ , this cynical little voice in his head says — the one that always sounds too much like his own. But Ryan’s clinging to him fucking tightly and it’s the way he says it, says _Shane_ , and Shane thinks again that it’s like he’s never heard his own name before, until it came shaped from Ryan’s mouth.  
  
He thinks about his broken leg, peripherally. He thinks it beneath the way his arm re-adjusts around Ryan’s shoulders, around his waist, and then “Shh,” he whispers, and it’s not to silence him — there’s something — this feeling. It crackles and flashes between them like static. He slides his hand down, skates it over Ryan’s hip to the outside of his thigh. It’s the wrong leg, but it’s the premise of the thing, and thinks he should say ‘ _Careful_ ,’ or ‘ _Are you okay?_ ’ but it sounds like too much, and last time he spoke like that, trying to get some kind of handle on things, on Ryan, trying to keep him safe in whatever calm Shane finds safety in, it all went wrong.  
  
Maybe Ryan doesn’t find solace in the same places Shane does. That’s all right.  
  
He drops his face into Ryan’s hair and his hand leaves Ryan’s leg and buries in the shadows and softness of his hair, molding his hand against the back of his skull. Shane thinks _I’ve got you_ , but he can’t say it out loud, because if Ryan pulls away now, if Shane says the wrong thing and loses this touch, he thinks he’ll crumble into ash.  
  
~  
  
Shane could pull away. There’s this split second of panic where Ryan thinks he will. But he doesn’t. He re-adjusts himself. Really, all things considered, he handles it pretty well. Ryan hears his heart through his shirt, and it’s the closest to words he’s going to get from Shane. He doesn’t know what he’d want Shane to say if he did speak. Maybe it’s good that he doesn’t.  
  
Shane talks in touches. That’s why he’s so careful with them, Ryan thinks. Because Shane’s careful with his words too. The opposite of Ryan. Touch is this whole different language he speaks. It’s tentative. Scary, to him. Shane doesn’t give himself over easily. Ryan knows because Shane leaves these moments, these exchanges, that feel like they’re becoming regular, breathless and uncertain. But he’s holding Ryan now, even after Ryan has bombarded him with touch.  
  
That feels like a big deal.  
  
They aren’t talking. That’s what’s happening. They’re existing in this silent space, where the most they’ve got is Ryan’s breathing and his saying Shane’s name. He shouldn’t say anything, but words tangle and trip along his tongue. He _wants_ to say something. Shane touches his hip, like he’s reminding Ryan about his leg. As if the pain that knocks across his ribcage isn’t. Shane is thinking about it. Ryan isn’t. That’s what happens. Shane makes him feel, see things about himself he usually ignores.  
  
Shane’s breath brushes against Ryan’s scalp, and god, all he wants to do is look up. To pull that breath down his throat and swallow. To catch Shane’s lips under his own. He wants those fire-dusted lines over his chest, his collarbone, his neck. He wants Shane to pin his wrists to the bed and _wreck_ him.  
  
God, it’s a lot. It’s too much. He’s halfway to crying, still wanting Shane to bite him so hard he bleeds. He doesn’t know what he’s asking for, but somehow Shane’s giving it to him. Somehow Shane moves like he knows the steps. Like he’s guiding Ryan to what he wants. And for the first time--not just since the apocalypse, since Ryan became _Ryan--_ Ryan sees it, sees himself, clearly.  
  
~  
  
He stays like that for a while, smoothing his thumb through Ryan’s hair, wants to press closer, but Ryan’s entwined in him in such a way that if Shane presses in, if he gets his thigh between Ryan’s legs the way he wants to, he’s scared he’ll hurt him.

Instead, he runs his fingers through his hair for long, long minutes, then lets his hand slip softly over the side of his face, so carefully. His index brushes the smooth edge of one eyebrow, curves over his temple, down over his cheek. He slides his knuckles over Ryan’s neck until it meets his shoulder, circles to his spine.

God he could stay like this forever, he thinks. He wishes they were sometime else. Thoughts like that never made sense before. Not like this.

He wishes he could know for certain he’s doing the right thing.  
  
He wonders, _where have you been all this time?_  
  
~  
  
  
   
Ryan’s stumbling towards sleep so his eyelids flutter when Shane’s fingers follow the line of his temple. His fingers curl a little, scale the blade of Shane’s shoulder. Shane’s nails brush through him. This impossibly soft, feather-light thing that cleaves through Ryan like a knife. So much and so little. Ryan bites his lip, imagines catching Shane’s finger in his mouth again. Again—because they’ve done that. Then Shane’s winding down to his neck.  
   
Ryan shivers at the chill it sparks up his back. Shane slowly moves over his shoulder, rests on his spine, and Ryan digs himself deeper into Shane’s chest. He smells good. It’s so funny—he shouldn’t be able to smell good. But he smells like woodsmoke and skin and Ryan’s sheets, from his old room. It’s impossible, a trick of his mind, but he doesn’t care.  
   
He slides into them like he did every day after work, lets them soak some of the exhaustion, the hurt, from his bones. He lets his hands loosen, drags them down, along the crooked notches in Shane’s spine, grazes his waistband and back up, and finally—finds Shane’s skin. It’s warm, soft in a way his shirt wasn’t.  
   
It’s like coming home.  
  
~  
  
Shane feels the shift in him, the relaxation, and he lets himself relax too, even though Ryan’s touch is burning into his back like a brand.

All the tension he’s holding comes out in one full bodied shudder, and for a second he tightens his hold on Ryan in case he misreads it.

He stays awake until Ryan sleeps, or he thinks he does. He slips in and out of it so often he hardly knows anymore.

But then it’s like he blinks and it’s morning. Light’s coming in through the unboarded window upstairs, and Ryan’s still wrapped in his arms, and they haven’t pulled away from one another in the night. But the light, like it always does, makes this vampire-like intimacy — only awake in the shadows — seem misplaced and too harsh. Or too bright somehow.

Shane takes a moment or two, tries to memorize this warmth, and all of Ryan’s softness and hard places against him, and then he works on extracting himself as carefully as he can from the warmest place he can remember in almost a year.  
  
~  
   
Ryan jerks as soon as Shane starts to pull away, on the edge of a dream that’s got his body hot and cold, all revved up like an engine. He’s not sure what it was, but he backfires. Snaps up so fast his head slams into Shane’s chin. Because Shane was trying to leave in a normal-person way, without the flailing.  
   
“Oh shit,” he says, and sleep has abandoned him like water down a drain. “I’m sorry.” The night crashes back into him, and it’s light now and it’s all so bright, so _embarrassing_ , and he cannot process it without his stomach twisting. His head pounds under it, or maybe that was the impact with Shane’s chin.  
   
Oh god, he hit Shane’s chin. He reaches out, catch the crook of Shane’s shoulder where it slides into his neck, like he can fix it. Take it back. “Are you okay? Fuck!” He can’t. He lets go and meets Shane’s eyes with teeth gritted and brows furrowed, apology written across his face.    
  
~  
  
Shane thinks he tastes blood, but he laughs because he has to, because it’s so ridiculous and Ryan’s looking at him like—

“Ow, _Jesus_.” Shane says, voice vibrating with his breath. He presses his fingers to his mouth, and that’s definitely blood. It feels like he bit his cheek or something. He drops dramatically into his back, one hand still over his mouth. He’s drawn a little away, but not completely.  
  
~  
   
Shane is kidding, he thinks, with the falling over thing, but Ryan catches a flash of red on his finger and it feels so huge. He spent so much of yesterday thinking about it, dreading that blood—and it’s just, it’s so minor. It’s nothing, but it’s running through him like a crisis. “Are you bleeding?”  
   
Ryan crawls, drags his broken leg so he’s hovering over Shane. He grabs Shane’s wrist, wraps his whole hand around it. “Stop—let me see.” He tugs Shane’s hand back so he can look at his mouth. There’s a smear of blood where Shane’s finger touched, and oh, okay.  
   
_Don’t go there, Ryan._  
   
His hand traces the outline of Shane’s face but doesn’t touch. Isn’t sure how to touch. Which is ridiculous after last night. “Did you bite your tongue? It’s not funny.” He’s talking too fast. “Are you okay?” He still has Shane’s wrist, squeezes it like it’ll give him his answer.  
  
~  
  
“My cheek I think.” He’s still half-laughing, and the pain is less sharp, and he takes in Ryan’s face and the way he has his wrist, tight. With his thumb he smears the blood from his fingertip. “It’s okay. Could you stop trying to—“ but he doesn’t want him to stop. He smiles at him instead, half exasperated, pupils dark with a vague, background kind of pain. “It’s all right.”  
  
~  
   
Ryan sighs. He just bit his cheek. Normal people bite their cheeks all the time. Or, well, they did. It’s normal. Or, well, it was. Nothing to be this freaked out about. But he doesn’t let go. He starts to, then he looks at the way Shane has gotten the blood on his thumb. Which is so stupid because blood attracts their attention. And yeah, they’re in a cabin now, but maybe they won’t be forever. And it’s a tiny insignificant speck, but it’s on Shane. And maybe Ryan is still reeling from losing Jake.  
   
“Don’t say _it’s alright_ like I’m a crazy person.” He deepens and exaggerates his voice when he says ‘it’s alright.’ It’s a pretty spot-on Shane impression, honestly. “I hit you and you started bleeding. I have a right to be concerned. Maybe I rattled your stupid brain loose.” He draws Shane’s hand up, leans over so their eyes are locked, across a distance. “And stop—” He shakes Shane’s hand between them. “—getting it everywhere, idiot.”  
  
~  
  
He’s still smiling, endeared by this somehow. Ryan’s so... diligent or something, in this completely bizarre way and for a second or two, Shane’s just staring.

But then their reality creeps in again, and he remembers. The smile fades. Blood.

“Oh, yeah,” he says, swallowing the faintest tang of blood and looking around like he might find a sink or something tucked into bed with them. He moves to sit up, do something about it.  
  
~  
  
Ryan sees the second reality clicks back into place for Shane and he almost feels bad for reminding him. The childish mischief in his eyes winks out. Ryan almost never sees that. It reminds him of Jake, a little, and he wonders if Shane had a brother.

He thinks it for a half second. About Shane's fingers in his mouth again, but no. Not here. Not now. Instead he pulls up his shirt and wets it with his tongue."

Here..." He wipes Shane's hand on his shirt, scrubs at it until he's satisfied and then slides it up and over his head.

"I'll wash it." A half cocked smirk slashes across his lips. "I have to carry my weight somehow. And it's kinda all I can do. Oh, and the rope. Can't forget the _super_ important rope.”  
  
~  
  
He drags his eyes up from Ryan’s chest, his collarbones, and meets his eyes. “Hey,” he says, a little too soft. “It is important. You’ll never know when you might need rope in the zombie apocalypse. Don’t insult my rope. Anyway, tell me about your radio.” He says it carefully, half dragging the words back even as he speaks them, but he’s been curious for days. He nods at it across the room. “Did the rain ruin it?”  
  
~  
   
Jake’s back in his head. In flashes. His stupid smiles, all but tackling Ryan when he swears— _swears_ he heard something. Someone. The deflated expression when after hours, days, all they found was static. The radio sits untouched, almost forgotten, in the corner of the room. Like Jake. Ryan’s been doing all this, getting lost in this _other person_ , and Jake’s just peripheral. Jake, who _died_ , barely a week ago, is reduced to background noise. He died because Ryan couldn’t stay focused. And now Ryan’s doing the exact same fucking thing.  
   
He closes his eyes. The answer doesn’t come. He knows he’s taking too long, knows Shane’s probably raking over all the words he said trying to find what he did wrong.  
   
Finally Ryan chokes out. “No… no, the rain didn’t ruin it.” The rain that took Jake from him. That rain. In a way it did ruin it. It ruined everything.  
   
“It’s, uh… Jake found it… a few weeks before…” Before. “We were trying to use it to find—we were hoping maybe there was somewhere to go to get away from all this. Jake said—” His voice cracks. “Jake heard someone on it, once, but we couldn’t get it back.” He smiles, laughs this weak, flimsy laugh. “He was so pissed.”  
   
And now Jake’s dead. Even if Ryan could get a voice on the radio it won’t matter. All those hours he spent trying to get it back, just to see Jake’s grin again. None of it’s going to matter now. Jake can’t get out. Jake doesn’t get to move past this.  
   
How can Ryan?  
   
“It’s…” He can’t bring himself to say it’s dumb, can’t bring himself to give up on this fragment of Jake. “…yeah.”  
  
~  
  
Shane tilts his head because that’s curious, but to interesting, too. Something solid. “He got a station?” This is such a delicate topic, Shane knows, but he can’t understand it the way Ryan can. He can’t understand Jake. He’s outside of it, these two.

“You mean someone was broadcasting from somewhere?” Ryan looks so troubled, so lost and Shane wonders if he can...

He reaches out and touches his knee, the edge of it, on his good leg, trying to ground him, pull him back from that painful place. It feels huge, monumental. But he does it anyway, because he wants to keep him here, happy.

Maybe it’s selfish.  
  
~  
   
Ryan blinks down at his knee. It screeches like brakes. He stares at Shane’s hand on his knee, and it sears the edges of his mind so everything crumbles to ash except this touch. This unexpected, impossible touch. He looks up, holds Shane’s eyes. It’s intimate, this deep, reaching gaze.  
   
Jake would like Shane.  
   
“Yeah,” Ryan answers, smiles. “I tried it yesterday, but couldn’t get anything.” He cuts his eyes away, then back. “He’d probably be pissed if I didn’t keep trying.”  
   
And beneath it, he means more than the radio. He means at this apocalypse thing. At life.  
   
At Shane.  
   
Shane’s eyes are soft, inquiring. Ryan likes their shape, likes his shape. All of him. And he takes a breath when he realizes how hard he must have been staring.    
  
~  
  
"Maybe it's your location," Shane says. It could be stupid. He draws back, draws his hand away, but his eyes are still on Ryan's. "It's a portable radio so it should... theoretically it should work, but... "Like, maybe it's here. Maybe you could find a place where it works. We could." Uncertainty flits across his face, and then he cuts his eyes away and shrugs one angular shoulder. "But yeah... I mean, if someone's broadcasting, shit... maybe there's safety, somewhere."  
  
~  
   
Ryan puts a hand to his chest, realizes he actually still isn’t wearing a shirt, but doesn’t stop. His eyebrows raise and he screws his face into the most over-exaggerated shocked face of all time. “What?” He looks around. “Is that—is that what it means, Shane? I thought it was ghosts trying to communicate with me.” He shakes his head, lowers his hand. “Wow… so…” He looks up at Shane through lowered eyelids. A smirk clawing at one side of his mouth. “People broadcasting means… there might be safety.”  
   
He blows air up so it catches in his hair until it flutters. “Wow. That’s crazy! I would’ve never guessed that!”  
  
~  
  
Shane holds back his smile, swipes his tongue along the sharp salty soreness of his cheek. That helps.

“All right,” he says, sounding dead serious. “You don’t have to go off the rails talking about ghosts and acting like ‘Oh, I’m so smart,’” he waves his hands by his face, emphasizing his sarcasm tenfold. “I was just _saying_.”

He doesn’t say that he’s given up on the idea of safety a long time ago. Everyone’s fucked. Everywhere. But if it makes Ryan happy, fine, he’ll give it to him.  
  
~  
  
Ryan narrows his eyes. “What? Off the rails? Because I mentioned ghosts?” He presses his lips together. “I don’t think that’s necessarily off the rails. I don’t think I’m going to pick up any ghosts with this, but ghosts aren’t crazy.” But then again, Shane didn’t want to believe in zombies when they were literally trying to eat him.  
  
“Let me guess, you don’t believe in ghosts or anything that requires even a tiny little bit of faith.” He glances at the radio. Shane’s right. Maybe it is the location. He doesn’t know when they’re going to leave. But if they do, at least he has something to hold onto. Something to try.  
  
“You seem like someone who gets off on being skeptical.”  
  
~  
  
"I don't _get off_ on anything," Shane says, pushing himself up so he's less leaning and more sitting. "Look, show me proof. I don't believe in ghosts because there is and never has been any scientific evidence of ghosts. You-- you believe in ghosts. Jesus-- fuck. Ghosts are crazy, Ryan. Ghosts aren't real."  
  
~  
  
"So I'm right. You are a professional skeptic." He stays away from zombies. Even though it's a good point. Shane didn't believe in them either. But nothing is worth the flash of pain that word brought Shane the first time.

"There's so many unexplainable things. So many. Shit moving on it's own. Voices. People getting scratched." He groans, falls back onto the bed and buries his face. "I was really starting to like you, and now you ruined it."  
  
~  
  
_I was really starting to like you..._

“Have you heard of _digital manipulation_? Those videos aren’t real. People tell stories. Oh my god. I knew you were a conspiracy theorist. You were too good, otherwise,” Shane says, tests. It clings to his throat, hotly. “Guess no one’s perfect.”  
  
~  
He’s glad he lied down because he’s pretty sure he would’ve collapsed if he’d still been upright. He’s trying to maintain some of the indignation that came from Shane’s disdain for ghosts, for conspiracies, honestly—because really, everything isn’t just what it is. It’s not. But, Ryan said he was starting to like Shane. It was small, smaller than he felt, and then Shane…

_You were too good._

Ryan has been nothing but useless. He’s made Shane’s life ten times harder, and he says that. Oh god, Ryan’s cheeks, Ryan’s face, Ryan’s entire body is on fire. And he’s not wearing a shirt so he’s so glad he’s not pale. Because he’s flushed. Really flushed.

But he has to answer, just take it, hold it to his chest, without pausing and making Shane think about it. Because Shane, this stupidly brilliant skeptic, should never be left alone with his thoughts. They’ll strangle him, like they strangle Ryan, but he doesn’t have the sense to let them run out of his mouth like a fountain. They’ll kill him.

“Too g—?” God, he said _no one’s that perfect._ He thought Ryan was close to perfect. He giggles, tries to reel it in. Maybe it was a joke. He didn't _mean_ that. No way.  
  
“What’s wrong with being a conspiracy theorist? You can’t possibly think everything just… is exactly what people say it is. C’mon.” He sits up, meets Shane’s eyes then looks away because his heart is just going. And eye contact pushes it up against his chest, like it might break free and jump into Shane’s. He ducks his head and laughs harder. It's bright and scattered, like glitter.

He needs something, anything, and his head can’t wrap around a conspiracy conversation so he says, “Wait—wait, hold up, did you say you don’t get off on _anything_?”  
  
And he doesn't mean to say it like, _challenge accepted_. But he does.  
  
~  
  
He’s been all caught up in Ryan’s laughter, sitting there grinning like an idiot at him, but then the question comes out and Shane makes a noise in his throat that’s some kind of version of a wordless _what?_ and then he says, “Yeah, maybe.”  
  
And sometimes he feels like he doesn’t. Sure, sometimes he feels normal. He feels most of the emotions in most of the right situations, and he _enjoys_ things, but never to that all-consuming point that everyone around him seems to reach — where they just love something so much. Shane’s always… he’s always just felt separate from that and…  
  
And he knows what Ryan’s really pushing at, what he’s really trying to draw out of Shane’s chest, out past his teeth and Shane almost wants to give it, but then he thinks that maybe he shouldn’t. It’s scared a few half-trusted souls off before, and so Shane just closed it down tighter and tighter until it was just Something He Didn’t Talk About. But he looks at Ryan now, and considers.  
  
“Maybe I don’t.”  
~  
  
Ryan’s eyes widen, but it’s not really in shock—it’s in this semi-surprised, uncertain way. Because Shane is sticking to this, seems almost serious. Or maybe the shock is because Shane’s letting him see it. Ryan knows this shit can be weird for people. It’s always been pretty straightforward for him, but he knows. He’s jittery now, doesn’t want to push Shane. It’s worked for him so far, the backing-off. Letting Shane come to him.

The smile is still there, quieter, but one corner is turned up. He tilts his head down and back, shrugs his shoulder with it. “Just when I think you can’t get any more intriguing…” His eyes slash up. “You say shit like that.” He skims his gaze over all these pieces of Shane. And maybe he gets it. Shane’s so closed off. Maybe it makes sense.

Then because he feels good, because he’s talkative and its morning and he slept and Shane called him good, he says, “It kinda makes sense. Sometimes you seem like you’re just window shopping with your thoughts or emotions or whatever.” But he knows what it’s like, not this, not the emotional thing, but he knows what it’s like to feel like too much or not enough or wrong. “It’s okay, though. Like, you’re allowed to be like that. However you are.”  
  
He laughs again. “In case you needed my permission.” He looks away because it all sounds ridiculous now and he's thinking about last night and still sans a shirt. He rubs at his nose and shuffles like he needs to do something.  
  
But he doesn't quite stop smiling.  
  
~  
  
He _wants_ it, _Oh God_ , he wants it. But he’s been here, he’s done this before, and he doesn’t know if he can do it over with Ryan. But…  
  
He smiles at him, it’s genuine, but he’s already dousing all that hope with the coldest cynicism he can find. “Thanks,” he says, and he means it, he does. People — people like Ryan — they have good intentions.  
  
But… yeah. _Window shopping_. His whole fucking life feels like that sometimes. Like he’s watching it from the other side of the glass.  
  
And the thing is, Ryan needs touch so much. Ryan needs… he needs love, open and unguarded and Shane doesn’t have that. Doesn’t even know if he has the capacity for that. And even if he did, Ryan… would Ryan…?  
  
Would Ryan want him in literally any other situation? Would Ryan still turn to him like he had last night and hold on?  
  
Shane pulls himself back a little, presses his shoulder blades into the headboard. “But you’d change your mind if it came down to it.” He says this down to the blanket over his legs, down to his fingers, picking at stray lint, and the places where it’s pilling.  
  
He knows this because that’s what happens.  
  
~  
   
Ryan has busied himself so intently in the lines of his own palms that he has to rewind and replay what Shane just said. This is a pattern. Shane, saying these things, these things that aren’t normal. That have a thousand jagged edges and meanings. He pulls up and adjust the binds on his leg. He hasn’t been wearing his brace at night. It makes it even harder to sleep. So he’s wrapped Jake’s old hoodie around the injury to keep it from bending.  
   
“What are we talking about here?” It oscillates with a mix of broken break and strained laugh.  
   
He turns to look at Shane. “Change my mind about what?” He thinks he knows. But he’s so nervous, so shaky in translating Shane. He has to ask this time. Except then more is just gushing out of him. Like always. “About you? About being okay with…” He rolls his eyes. “No, it wouldn’t.” Wouldn’t comes out too smashed together. It infuriates him but he keeps going. “This is the problem with people like you. They’re so sure they’re the smartest person in the room. You think you just… know everything, but you don’t.” He’s heated, but it’s not sharp. Just a little hot. “There’s a lot you don’t know about me, Shane.” He says his name like it drives the point home. “I’m not just some bro who drinks out of red solo cups and interrupts intellectual conversations at restaurants, and for your information, you are _exactly_ …” He yanks the reins on his body, physically pulls back, snaps the back of his teeth together. He was going to say _what I need._  
   
“If anyone is going to change their mind about… anything, anyone, it’s going to be you.” He’s seen in it, in these exhausted glances, those breathless not-really-laughs, the look of utter confusion. Ryan exhausts Shane. “I’m, like, your worst nightmare. Let’s be honest.”  
  
~  
  
“Okay,” Shane says, and then hesitates. Maybe Ryan’s right. Maybe he isn’t the smartest person in the room.

“Why— if I didn’t want you here,” he says, weighing the words carefully in his mouth, his eyes on Ryan, “I wouldn’t have asked you to stay. I wasn’t that lonely,” he tells him, “that I wouldn’t choose that — being here alone — over... most people. So. Yeah, Ryan, I mean, you talk forever about crazy shit, you’re like this— like those lightbulbs that buzz constantly because the wattage is too high for anything you can twist them into or whatever. You fill up all these spaces...”

All these spaces he didn’t even know existed.

“Like in more than just this... this room. You’re like a... you’re not my... you’re more like... just some really confusing dream.”

He’s said a lot more than he meant to. Or maybe he did mean to, but it’s just a lot more than he normally admits.

“But it’s not a bad one. If we’re being honest.”

~  
  
Ryan believes it. Believes Shane would choose being alone. It's what's got him so worried about screwing up. He sighs and shrugs. He isn't sure how to feel. So pulled in so many directions.

"Okay," he says. "Then I'm not going to expect..." He scoffs because what is he supposed to say? "Just don't make yourself uncomfortable for me, alright?"  
  
~  
  
Shane considers this, and says, “Then you don’t, either. Don’t be someone else. And also, _before_ I agree to any of your crazy little schemes, tell me what I am, exactly. You said I was exactly...”

And then he’d stopped. But Shane’s stuck on it. Has been, since it slipped from Ryan’s mouth.

It’s not fair, maybe, but he’s pushing, curious to see just how far this openness between them will go, today.  
  
~  
   
Ryan’s thinking about it. About _don’t be someone else_. And about how that’s kind of how he lives his life. He always becomes—or, well, became—what he had to be. He was good at fitting in. At meshing with any group of people. So good at it that now that he’s alone, now that the world is dying around him, he isn’t sure what’s him and what’s someone else. Shane pushes the conversation further. He pushes a lot for someone who window shops emotions, Ryan thinks. Did he push everyone? Is Ryan any different? And, if he’s not, then how is the whole world not paralyzed by Shane Madej? Enchanted by him?  
   
But Shane pushes, he brings them back to what Ryan almost said. What he can’t possibly say.  
   
Because he can’t put that on Shane. He can’t say _you’re exactly what I need_. Because Shane has been, in every feasible way, he’s been what Ryan needed. But Ryan can’t push that on him, change all the expectations so Shane’s just teetering, waiting to fail.  
   
Ryan drums his fingers on his good knee. Jerks them away. Scratches the back of his neck. He’s fidgeting because his mind is flying five thousand miles an hour trying to come up with something that sits well enough between his truth and the lie.  
   
Shane always does this. Catches onto the things that most people never see. The things most people let slide through them like a breeze.  
   
“Oh, uh… I don’t know.” _Liar_. “I just meant, like… you’re—good. You just… you’re exactly someone I would’ve hung out with, before, you know… the fucking apocalypse. It’s not like I didn’t have friends like you, or whatever. That’s all I was saying.”  
   
Would they have been, or would Ryan have run when he had the chance? Run—panicked—the second all his searching and running and trying ended with Shane’s firefly laughter and Ryan’s heartbeat whispered: _oh, shit._  
  
~  
  
“I am not,” Shane says, and it comes out all bright with laughter. “I really don’t think you would have. Look— hey,” his eyes soften a little because he thinks he sees something wrong starting in Ryan’s eyes. “That’s one reason, the _only_ reason I’m... that makes this whole... apocalypse thing worth it.”

Wow it’s too much. He thinks he needs to quit while he’s ahead, before he says too much.  
  
~  
   
Ryan’s brain just fizzles. He must have missed the explosion, because now it’s just a dead car battery and won’t fucking start. He stares at Shane for so long. At the fact that he’s saying the apocalypse, the fucking end of the world, is worth the two of them meeting. He can’t think of anything to say to that. Anything that won’t spiral him into saying too many others things.  
   
“I…”  
   
He ducks his head. He feels heat streak up his neck, into his ears, all along his collarbone. Even his laugh comes out like water off a splash.  
   
“Dude, I… I would’ve been your friend.” He needs to dilute this. It’s so intense. His veins are coiled around his bones so tight he’s worried they’ll snap in half. “It wouldn’t have taken the apocalypse for me to befriend you. I would have gotten a ladder, climbed up twenty stories to where you could hear me, and been like ‘Hi I’m Ryan. Are you on stilts?’”  
   
He sucks in a breath. “But if I was going to meet a stranger, if I was going to try to survive the apocalypse with someone, I’m glad it’s you.”  
  
~  
  
Shane laughs, and it’s all cracks and flickers. He has to suck in a breath that clips at his throat like a fucking paper cut it’s so sharp. “I— okay.”

He’s taking these glances at Ryan like he can’t look at him full on, like Ryan’s the sun, like he’s too much for Shane’s eyes. “Then— okay. Hi Ryan, I’m Shane, and no, you’re just... like, you’re hobbit-sized. I could put you in my pocket. And you’d better fucking survive.”

He exhales shakily. He thinks, _how’d I end up here, on the same side of the glass as you?_ And it’s so, so terrifying, but he’s clinging onto it with everything he has. Like it’s all he’s ever known how to do.  
  
~  
   
“I’m not hobbit-sized!” He laughs—not out of nervousness, but because it’s ridiculous. And wrong. “Put me in your pocket? Maybe. Since you’re a giant! That’s on you, not me…” And then Shane’s last words come back: _you better fucking survive_ , and Ryan lets the laugh fade. Then he’s plowing into it. Just moving, and he doesn’t want it—hates it. But he holds Shane’s gaze, almost physically pins it, because he keeps looking away. “Can I ask you something?” Ryan inhales hard. He doesn’t know if he should ask, if he can ask this, but it’s something he never said to Jake. It’s something he didn’t know. And he just wants Shane to _know_.  
  
~  
  
“Hit me,” Shane says, and it almost sounds casual. Almost. He’s very still under Ryan’s gaze, just cocks his head a little, squints slightly like he’s still half-trying to escape everything Ryan drags up from the depths inside himself.  
  
~  
   
“If I, uh… if I do end up…” He scratches at his lip with his teeth, swallows. Touches the back of his head, his hair, his face—everything. Because this is awkward as fuck and as he’s opening his mouth to say it, he’s talking himself back, through all the reasons he shouldn’t say it.  
   
_He doesn’t need to be told._  
  
_It’s obvious._  
  
_Why would you even say shit like that?_  
   
“If I get bitten, just… can you—just kill me, okay? I don’t want…” He cringes at himself, at this whole thing. “I know that just makes sense, like you’re not going to… hang out with me after or anything, but…” He’s talking so fast now and not looking at Shane. “Me and Jake never talked about it. I don’t—I mean, I’m sure some people don’t want to die. They want to stay around and hope for a cure, and I don’t know if Jake wanted that. And I tried to stop you from killing him and maybe it’s what he wanted. Or maybe it wasn’t. I don’t know.” He takes a breath. “I just need you to know I’m okay with it. I want to be dead before it ever… I just don’t want to be one.”  
   
_God, what the hell?_  
   
“I’m sorry. That just… sorry. I didn’t mean to… fuck.”  
  
~  
  
Cold washes over him so fast it’s like the next breath he takes is ice water. “Jesus Christ,” he whispers, wrenched away from this curious, cautious moment with what it means to... what it _might_ mean to feel... something for—

And then this.

“I—“ he clears his throat. It’s the worst future, the worst possibility he can think of, but, “I... I hate to say yeah, but yeah,” Shane says.

Because there’s no cure. There won’t be one. He knows it, somehow.

He draws his knees up to his chest, one hand coming up to tangle in his hair until he’s all folded into himself at angles.

“I’m— I’m really sorry about Jake, Ryan.”

Because he hasn’t said it, has he? Not the right way. And he should have, but apologizing means admitting it, and Jake was barely changed. It was like killing someone. A person.

And if he has to... do it to Ryan before he turns.

He takes a breath that doesn’t even come close to filling his lungs.

And he doesn’t ask Ryan to do the same because he can’t— he won’t put that on him. Not on someone like him.  
  
He’ll just… he’ll have to do it himself.  
  
~  
   
Ryan looks away. He feels like he did something wrong. It’s cold, icy, even. He’s pissed he can’t draw his knees up to his chest. Instead, he slides over so he’s sitting over the edge of the bed, facing away from Shane. Because he just… he doesn’t know where this comes from. He’s asked something else of Shane, and he hates it. Hates every bit of himself for a second. Wishes he could bash his skull open with Shane’s stupid pipe right now— _jesus, where did that come from?_  
   
Shane’s apologizing for Jake, and it takes a lot out of Ryan just to say:  
   
“Jake wasn’t your fault.” _It was mine._  
   
He can’t be here anymore, so close to Shane—so close to this palpable dependency and this light cast on who Ryan is, who he isn’t. He can’t deal with the wisps of maybes and what if’s and almost’s. He _can’t_. He feels like someone’s drawing a barbed whip across his back. Blow after blow after blow. And all his emotions have clattered to the floor, broken at his feet, like his stupid broken leg.  
   
“I should wash this shirt,” he says and balls it in his hands.  
   
He doesn’t want to die. He didn’t bring up dying because he wants to die. Ryan likes being alive. Jake wouldn’t want him to give up. His parents, his… god, how is so much of his life wrapped around other people? Dead people.  
   
Ryan doesn’t want to die.  
   
Does he?  
  
~  
  
“Ryan...” Shane says, soft, half-startled, then stronger, “Ryan.”

He folds one leg down so he can lean over, lean across the bed until he’s practically reclining on it sideways. He reaches out and attempts to tug the shirt away from him.

How does he make him happy? He doesn’t know. “Come— let’s... we should eat something first. I’ve got to bring some water in anyway.”  
  
~  
   
Something mean, biting, claws at his throat. He swallows it, clenches the shirt until Shane tugs it.

His hands loosen and he lets Shane have it, him, a bit. His exhale is weak and quivering. Shane wants him, needs him to be okay. So why can’t Ryan just do this? Why is _now_ when Ryan stops knowing how to be what other people need him to be?  
   
“I’m okay, Shane,” he says, tries to brighten. “Really.”  
   
Then he thinks of himself, curled into Shane, sobbing like a fucking infant. _Yeah, wow, bet he’s absolutely convinced, you fucking idiot._ His chest physically hurts, because there’s Jake and the radio and Shane.  
   
_Do this for him._  
   
He lightens his tone, pulls a half-smile. “I’m fine with eating first if you’re fine with zombies finding this _massive_ bloodstain you’ve left on my shirt and devouring us both.”  
  
~  
  
He doesn't believe him. Not for a second, but he goes along with it, plays along. "Oh, oh, okay," he says. "Maybe if you hadn't been _flailing_ around violently," he sits up enough to wave his limbs around ridiculously before he does something he probably shouldn't.

He reaches out and catches Ryan around the waist, tugs him back, somehow gently, but tight enough so that he can't escape. Shane doesn't let Ryan fall into him, he pushes him down into the mattress instead. They're facing opposite directions, Ryan's head near Shane's knees, and Shane twists up to sitting, to pin a hand to the centre of Ryan's chest, keeping him in place. "Ha," he says, ridiculously. Like he's five years old.  
  
~  
   
Ryan’s midway through explaining how he was not flailing, and how he had every right to be concerned when Shane grabs him. All of him. His _waist_. It flutters through him like a startled flock of birds. All wingbeats and panic. Shane’s arms are so solid, god they’re solid. They feel like so much more—absurdly warm—than they have before. And he’s grounded in it, locked in this safehaven. His emotions scattered, just like the birds.  
   
Then he’s on the bed with Shane’s hand on his chest, and his heart’s back to its overzealous drummer solo. He tries to collect some of the shit, the worry, from before, but like it does, like it always does, Shane’s touch has unraveled him.  
   
His laugh is a bark, a burst of breath across his lips. Startled. Because it’s genuine, and he didn’t think he could laugh, even barely, in this state. He grabs Shane’s hand, the one over his chest, but he doesn’t pull off it. He just furrows his brow and purses his lips as a few bristles of hair brush across his forehead.  
   
“Very mature, Madej.”  
  
~  
  
  
  
"That's my middle name," he says. "Shane-- uh, Douchebag Mature Madej." He considers him, considers how fast Ryan's heart is pounding beneath his hand, and he smiles, a little crookedly. "You're not so tough." He mimes a punch to Ryan's mouth, lets his knuckles, held in a semi-loose fist rest against Ryan's lips for a moment, then pulls away, and the smile is softer, less mischievous.  
  
~  
   
Ryan schools his face into pithy indifference. Shane touches his lips, pretends to punch him like a five year old _child_ , and Ryan has to close his eyes, let his lids flutter, to keep himself together. God, Shane’s so wrong. Ryan could so easily push back, tangle his fingers in the hair behind Shane’s head, and… Ryan’s eyes dip to his lips, bob up, then back. But he keeps his face neutral, sucks in his cheeks a little, and raises his eyebrows. Blinks slowly, in this pointed, over-it way.  
   
“You enjoying yourself?”  
  
~  
  
He swallows, watches Ryan’s eyes, but he’s holding it together. Fairly well actually.

“You just can’t admit it. Can’t admit I’m better at roughhousing than you. Ryan Tentacles Bergara, wait no that wasn’t it—”

He puts a finger to his chin, raises his eyes, mimes thinking hard. “Oh right,” he says, “ _I_ remember.” He points at him, raises his eyebrows. “Butt stuff.”  
  
~  
   
Ryan presses his tongue into his cheek. “You little.” He scoffs. “Okay, you know what?” He reaches, catches Shane hooks his arms through Shane’s armpits and hoists him down over Ryan’s chest. Ryan pushes himself back with his operational foot until he slides under Shane.  He sits up, and he’s between Shane’s legs. His broken leg is still tangled under Shane’s, but he launches himself forward and catches one of Shane’s hands—not both, because he’s nice—and pins it against the small of his back.  
   
He’s panting, completely out of breath from the series of motions, but he’s smirking when he says, “Shut up.”  
  
~  
  
Shane makes a muffled sound into the mattress, and then he’s laughing, gasping a little. He doesn’t shut up. “Holy— are you in police training or something?” he asks. But his heart’s pounding perhaps a little faster than it should be. He turns his head, cheek resting against the mattress, flexes his fingers a little. “Are you into this?” he asks, aiming desperately to keep the upper hand. Maybe he’s being unfair. Or maybe not. He thinks he might be. Into it.  
  
But then he _had_ just told Ryan that he didn’t get off on anything.  
  
~  
  
Ryan laughs. It’s a reaction he uses too much with Shane. He’s always laughed a lot, but it happens too often with Shane. Too easily. He wheezes. “Am I—you started it, you jackass!” They’re all tangled limbs right now. His leg still wedged up under Shane, and he’s tipped himself so far forward onto Shane he’s nearly falling into him. His grip loosens on Shane’s hand, but he doesn’t let go completely.“So what if I am?” It’s easier like this. When he’s in control. He’s less vulnerable. And he can challenge, test, and not think about the fact that some part of him wants Shane to win. To push him back down. “You’re awfully interested in what I’m into.”

~  
  
“Well yeah,” he says, wriggling a little, but yeah. He’s pretty pinned. Maybe it’s just for show. “I’m interested in you,” he says, and realizes a moment later that he really didn’t mean to say it like that. At least not now, like this. “I— wh—” he makes a few more soft half-question sounds _what? wait. what?_ and then says “What I meant was… all I know is sports and— Colonel Bryan or whoever—. And popcorn.” He feels like he’s mentally flailing. His face feels hot.  
  
  
~  
  
Ryan has to let go and slide back. His skin is too hot, way way too hot. It's bigger than it should be. _I'm interested in you._ It's so small, next to the way they touch. But it's verbal. Shane back pedals hard and Ryan desperately shoves it away from him, the hope, the rush, and then--

"Colonel Bry--its _Kobe Bryant_ , you dick!" He scoots back further. "I refuse to share a bed with someone who doesn't--how do you not know who Kobe Bryant is?" He scoffs. "This sheltered, sad life is what leads you to thinking asking about my sexual interests is a normal part of _getting to know me_."  
  
~  
  
He’s laughing softly. “I truly— I _truly_ could not care less about sports,” Shane says, pulling his freed arm beneath his head to rest his cheek against it. “And you’re the one who started it.” He affects this cartoonish voice that’s clearly supposed to be Ryan: “ ‘Ohh, you’re awfully interested in what I’m into’ .” He switches back. “You made this— you twisted this around.”  
  
He’s actually not even sure if it’s true. He can feel his heartbeat pulsing into the mattress, and he doesn’t make any move to get up, even though his lower back is starting to want to pop or crack or something, even though he doesn’t have much mobility at all. He’s scared of hurting Ryan’s leg, which is sort of tangled beneath him. So he doesn’t move, he just lets his eyes flutter closed for a moment, and doesn’t realize, maybe, how much trust is there in that simple gesture.  
  
~  
  
Ryan wriggles his broken leg free, sorta has to fight with Shane’s legs so he isn’t trapped between them anymore. “I didn’t start anything! You started it by asking if I was into…” His hand flails, overwhelmed by what it is. By what it means that he _is_ into it, a little, into it with Shane. Ryan’s never shied away from sex, but he’s never felt a desire swallow him so wholly. So the hunger sizzles like sweat on his skin. He’s never dangled so close to the edge, never come so close to letting go. But they’re stopping now, and everything else is coming back, and some part of him wants to pin Shane again so he can keep it away from him. All this shit. All this _after_.  
  
“I didn’t twist anything! You attacked me, and I responded. Both physically and verbally.” He focuses on Shane, lying on the bed, eyes closed. Is he just going to go back to sleep? Probably not, but he looks soft, softer than usual, like this.  
  
It’s more than being into this. Into being helpless beneath Shane’s hands. He wishes he was close enough to touch Shane, but he isn’t, he’s on the very corner of the bed.  
  
_It’s you I’m into._  
  
~  
  
He doesn’t open his eyes, just lets Ryan pull further away. He feels cold, more than just physically. “You still haven’t told me, though. Must be some kinky shit,” he murmurs. He tenses his shoulders, digs his fingers into the sheets and pulls upwards until his back cracks. Every part of his body that had been touching Ryan’s — had been touched by Ryan — he can feel it now. It’s like something’s being pulled from him. The heat in his skin, the electricity in his thoughts, the way words bubble to the surface, more than he ever knew he had in him… Everything sort of fades. He sighs softly.  
  
He knows that in a couple seconds they’ll get up, start the day. He’ll go outside and deal with bits of zombie that they crushed in the door. Hopefully there’s not just one hanging around out there. There will be water and packaged food and Ryan’s chatter and…  
  
God, he feels like he’s living for all these dark moments. All these moments reaching for one another, touching, where they can barely see themselves. Where they don’t have to be held accountable for their actions, or the thoughts in their heads.  
  
Ryan he thinks. Just his name.  
  
And he doesn’t know why.  
  
  
~  
   
Ryan’s eyes widen at all the noise Shane’s back manages to make as he sits up. It makes sense, he’s probably got like twelve extra vertebrate, but it’s still a lot. Ryan giggles and draws lines in the sheets with his fingers. This is so not okay. He is not going to tell Shane what he’s into sexually. Especially after Shane saying he just _doesn’t get off_ , which feels more stoic than vulnerable. To Shane it probably was vulnerable, admitting that, but it’s not giving Ryan anything to work with. Not that he needs to give Shane something to work with. This isn’t going anywhere between them. Shane’s disconnected—it’s more than just getting off. Shane thinks it’s too much effort, and Ryan, god, Ryan is the epitome of effort. He talks all the time, and his leg’s broken, and he can’t use a razor.    
   
Besides, Ryan’s got so many emotions running through him he’s trying to sort through what’s a result of everything he’s lost, of Shane plugging these holes, and what’s genuine.  
   
Shane makes things better, and Ryan doesn’t know if that’s why he likes Shane so much. Why there’s all this heat and static along his spine. But he doesn’t think anyone else could make him feel better. Even Jake couldn’t pull him up like this, because Ryan isn’t so stupid he doesn’t realize that he’s got some major PTSD shit. He had it before Jake. It’s worse now.  
   
And Shane’s the first time it’s felt staunched, halted. Even briefly.  
   
God, it’s been so long. Shane probably thinks he’s never going to answer, and his face feels hot, so it’s probably even weirder when he blurts out, “I don’t know!” As if he’s never had sex in his life. “I don’t—I mean, I’m not going to tell you. I abstain from answering this question!”  
  
~  
  
“Okay,” he says, and the awkwardness is starting to fall in on him — it’s like he’s being buried in salt or something. All that rain-soaked mud and sludge sliding into a grave. He shifts until he’s sitting crosslegged, running his hand over the back of his hair. It’s too much. He shouldn’t be asking these things. For a moment, maybe, he’d forgotten his place.  
  
“Yeah. that’s fair,” he says. “I’ll get the water. Um. Jesus, I hope they didn’t stick around,” he says, rolling to get up. The cold air hits him, goosebumps rising up and down his arms. He hates winter. He used to like it, but that was back in the days of proper heating.  
  
“What do you want to eat?” he asks, like this is all normal. And he doesn’t know what’s weirder, that he’s asking the guy that slept in his bed, in his _arms_ , what he wants to eat for breakfast, or if he’s asking it after he talked about the bits of zombie on the front porch.  
  
~  
   
He tries not to let the gnawing sense of whatever it is in Shane’s voice deflate him. He wanted Shane to push, to… he doesn’t know. Maybe he wanted to tell Shane. Maybe he wanted to scream in his face, it’s you, you fucking idiot.  
   
And yeah, okay, Ryan likes the out-of-control way Shane’s hands make him feel. That’s a kink. Fine. But it would be absurd to offer it now.  
   
He’s trying to hold back, hide the brokenness he showed Shane earlier. When he asked him to fucking kill him. Shane didn’t say it back, and Ryan _knows_ it’s because Shane wouldn’t want to put that decision on him. Because Shane’s too practical to want to keep living after that. And Ryan just fucking blurted it out and now he wants to take that back too.  
   
He can’t stop messing up.  
   
Ryan needs to do better, be better. He looks up at Shane. “I can just eat the Vienna sausages again.” He valiantly, physically, holds back vomit at the thought of eating even one more nibble of those things. But there’s zombies outside and Shane’s going to be running around all day. “I still have a few cans left.” Three, maybe.  
   
“Does that count as a kink? Vienna sausages? It sounds sexual, right?”  
  
~  
  
Shane laughs, and it’s quiet and only half-there, but real. “Sure,” he says, as he picks up his hoodie from the floor. Where he left it yesterday, after…  
  
He hesitates a second, before pulling it on again. It feels like it’s still holding onto all that fear. “Don’t— those are awful. Let’s make… fucking soup or something. At least it’s hot.” The pipe scrapes the wall, rattles softly against the wood floor as he picks it up. “God. I miss coffee. I miss hot drinks.”  
  
He doesn’t often let himself talk about what he misses. You can’t move forward that way, but it spills out now in a rush of… something. And god, he wants he wants he _wants_. He wants coffee, he wants to not have to kick pieces of dead things away from the front door. He wants to not be terrified every time he steps outside. He wants to not be cold, he wants to eat something — a vegetable, anything, that came from the ground, a tree, a bush, he doesn’t care, as long as it doesn’t come in tin or cardboard. He wants Netflix and electric heat. He wants his parents, his friends, his annoying fucking neighbour who did calisthenics or something, loudly, above his apartment at ungodly hours. He wants to get back into bed with Ryan. He wants to meet his eyes with Ryan’s hands around his wrists. He wants the way Ryan’s breath flutters in his throat. He just wants to see him laugh again, the way he does when he’s not trying too hard.  
  
Shane twists his fingers tighter around the pipe and smiles over at Ryan faintly and says “See you in a sec,” then heads for the door.  
  
~  
  
Coffee. Wow, Ryan misses coffee too. But that feels so insignificant in the face of Shane missing it, of the shadows that cross Shane’s face so Ryan can see all the things from his before. That he hasn’t mentioned. Hasn’t told Ryan about. Might never tell Ryan about. And Ryan wishes so much that he could give it to him. Hot drinks and late-night movies and—jesus, there will never be another movie. He will never sit in another theater and watch trailers, decide what’s good, what’s garbage. He’ll never think what he would’ve done differently, or be annoyed that his science-degree friends can’t see what was wrong with that scene.  
   
Ryan wishes he’d kept it. Bottled it. So he could give it all to Shane now. He just wants to give Shane anything, anything at all. Everything. But he can’t.  
   
And he’s slightly annoyed that Shane insisted he eat first before _washing a shirt_ , and he’s grabbing a pipe to go kill zombies. Ryan doesn’t say anything, though. He just nods. Because he needs to let Shane just be, maybe. Be in his weird headspace that Ryan can’t see into. And says under his breath, where Shane probably can’t hear:  
   
“I miss coffee too.”  
  
~  
  
Shane pulls the bandana out of his pocket, and ties it up around his neck, pulling it over his mouth before he unbolts the door, listening, waiting, but hears nothing, then steps slowly outside.  
  
It’s very quiet. It would be peaceful if it hadn’t been equally as quiet yesterday. There _are_ zombie bits out front. He kicks vaguely at them. It snowed, a little, and it’s cold enough that it crunches underfoot, and each step sends a little shock of anxiety up his arms and down his back. The zombie tracks, and his own from yesterday are almost covered. He can see the places they staggered off — this long, meandering line that’s somehow deeply disturbing in the pristine snow. The sunlight’s glinting off of it so strong he has to squint and he goes quickly to the back of the house to get the water. It’s sort of frozen to the ground, and he spends some time digging and scraping at the snow and wishing desperately he had gloves, but at least the snow adds to the water they collect. It’s half-frozen, and a thin sheet of ice clinks around as he lifts it.  
  
It’s on his way back that he notices… something else. At first he thinks they must be his own prints, but—  
  
For a moment it’s like one of those weird science fiction films where you think you see yourself, or something in your house is a little bit off. He thinks _I didn’t make those, did I?_  
  
But no, the treadmark is different. It’s little rounded crosses, where his are just those weird closely-zagging lines. Dread floods into him real fast as his eyes cut along the trail of these prints, fresh — way newer than last night. They came straight from the woods in the direction of the houses. These aren’t meandering zombie prints. These are from a person.  
  
His throat’s so tight he has to drag the bandana down again, and his breath mists in front of him as he gasps softly. He sets the water down, knows Ryan’s probably wondering why he’s taking so fucking long, but he has to check.  
  
The prints go right around to the back of the cabin, linger around the edge, sort of kitty-corner to the door. Someone was here last night. Shane feels sort of sick, violated. He wonders how long they stood out there. He wonders what he and Ryan were doing, while they thought they were safe.  
  
The prints don’t go back to the houses. They look like they go into the woods, towards the road. Maybe it was just… someone. Maybe they were too scared to ask for help at the cabin. Shane thinks he might have been, too. He doesn’t know whether to hope the person’s alive or dead, but he can’t shake the feeling, now, that he’s being watched from the trees.  
  
He grabs the water and takes it back inside, shaken, bolting the door with conviction behind him, like that’s really gonna keep out anyone who wants in. Maybe zombies aren’t smart enough, but all a person needs is an axe and some determination.  
  
“Uh…” he clears his throat. How does he say this? Should he say it? It doesn’t seem fair to keep it from him, but there goes any hope he had of Ryan cheering up today. “There’s tracks outside. From a person. An alive one,” he clarifies.  
  
~  
   
Ryan busies himself with washing and with the rope, and tries not to notice when Shane takes a long time. Some crazed part of him thinks Shane is just over it. Like he’s done with Ryan, too exhausted to come back because Ryan keeps tripping and falling on his face. Right into Shane. He knows it’s absurd, but it’s got his thoughts circling. Staring at the shovel on the floor like it’s a weapon instead of a crutch.  
   
He tries a little bit with his leg, but it’s tense from all the moving he did last night, this morning, it’s all crusted in Shane. He knows how it feels. Instead, he plays with the radio, listens to static and static and static.  He makes the bed, for no reason other than it’s something to do. He tries so fucking hard not to get anxious. Not to count the seconds that Shane’s gone.  
   
But he still lets out a long breath when Shane comes back in, relieved, and then Shane starts talking and Ryan brightens. “Oh, wait—then, you think they’re okay? Where’d they go? Should we—” Shane definitely looks disturbed and Ryan isn’t sure why. “Should we go try to find them? I wonder if they have anywhere to sleep…” He tilts his head. “Why do you look like you’re gonna puke?”  
  
~  
  
Shane _feels_ kind of like he wants to puke, and for a second, he just looks at Ryan like he’s never seen anything so fucking good in his life, and then something surges over him, this overwhelming rush of affection, but it’s so co-mingled with the need to protect Ryan — protect him for anything and everything bad, ever, that he can’t even answer for a second. He straightens up, he’s forgotten how cold his hands are. He even forgets his fear, a little bit.  
  
“I think they might have followed me here,” he says, finally. “I heard someone at the houses—” It’s the first time he’s mentioned where he goes, how he gets it. Stealing, danger… Ryan will hate it.  
  
“When I was getting food, yesterday, I heard people… I dunno, Ryan,” he says. He hates saying it, he doesn’t want to, and there’s a difference between protecting Ryan from things Shane has no right to think are too much for him — Ryan’s not a child — and protecting him from anything that might try to break him and Shane’s trying to find the line, right now, in this very second, and he’s not sure he can.  
  
He wants to give it to him — that maybe people can be good. Maybe they are, because Ryan believes it, but Shane thinks it’s too variable. There’s no way to know if this stranger’s good or not. People are different now. Twisted. And trusting in the inherent goodness of humans could get them both killed.  
  
But then, Shane thinks, finding out that people aren’t inherently good might just kill Ryan. And he hates that. He hates people that ruin it for everyone else. He hates people that chip away at people who are sweet and gentle and good until they make them just as cynical and bitter as themselves.  
  
Shane’s not letting that happen to Ryan. Not if he can fucking help it.  
  
“I dunno…” he says again. “I think we should just hope that they don’t come back.” _And that they don’t have a gun, or something,_ his brain adds, spiking more panic straight into his stomach.  
  
~  
   
Shane’s clearly afraid of these people, and okay, it’s not crazy to be afraid. That shop owner did nearly take his head off with a shotgun. And the few houses they did go to promptly shut the door in their face, back, when he was with Jake. But it makes sense that they would. Food is short. Shane’s a miracle. He took Ryan in when he shouldn’t have, but that doesn’t mean Ryan begrudges the people who told him to fuck off.  
   
Okay, he mildly begrudges the one with the shotgun, and also the one who stole his food a while back. Fuck that guy. But Shane’s admitting he goes somewhere, to this place, where he gets food. And there are other people, but he doesn’t talk to them. Ryan doesn’t understand it, but he doesn’t want to push Shane. He’s the one who’s been here, he knows what he’s doing.  
   
Still, he asks, “Why would we not want them to come back?” He doesn’t understand why Shane looks so stricken. “I guess food might be an issue…”  
   
Ryan thinks he has an idea—thinks it’s more than food. Maybe. But he refuses to believe that, refuses to believe that every person would be out to kill everyone else. Shane isn’t. Ryan’s not. There are other people out there, good ones, and Ryan’s not going to shut himself off from the idea of it. Ryan’s not going to kill another person because the world’s gone crazy.  
  
~  
  
Shane drags the water closer to the fire and sets it down, eyes flickering to the door as if to make sure he locked it. “I… look, don’t— let’s just make sure we know what we’re doing or… you know… before we just go trusting people.” He’s already thinking about whether or not they should leave. He doesn’t want to. He has no idea where they could go The cabin’s been a safe-haven for a long time. “Just— they could make a mistake, they could, I dunno, shoot one of us.”  
  
~  
   
Ryan frowns. He doesn't understand why. Why Shane is so paranoid of this. Of humans. "I... I mean okay, you aren't subtle. You're scared. And I get it. A guy tried to blow my head off. But what if someone needs our help? You helped me. I get being careful but..." He sighs.  
   
He wants so badly to take away whatever has Shane so tightly wound. "What if they’re alone, and… and we could save them or something…” He thinks he owes it to someone, owes back what Shane did for him. “But it’s… I’ll do whatever you want. If you’re not comfortable—do you, are you thinking we should go?”  
  
~  
  
Shane’s quiet, thinking about this. “I don’t want to go,” he says slowly. He really doesn’t think they’d survive out there, especially not with Ryan’s leg, but he’s not about to tell him that. He thinks Ryan would probably just break it more just by trying to prove it was fine. “I think… we’ll just have to keep an eye on it for now.”  
  
The rest of the day passes quietly. Shane’s wound up, tense. He keeps zoning out on Ryan, while he’s talking. He doesn’t mean to, but he’s trying to figure out what the fuck to do. He should have been more careful about tracks, about the smoke from the chimney, about leading the people from the houses _right_ back here to safety.  
  
God _damn_ it.  
  
They go to bed before the sun even sets fully. Or, at least, Shane does. Because it’s warm there, or it could be. Because the inside of the cabin is dark, save where orange light bleeds in through the cracks around the window boards. Shane sits on the bed, silhouetted by shards of dying light outside and tries not to think about the future because it’s suddenly terrifying all over again.  
  
They’ve got the fire burning low to minimize the chimney smoke, and it’s colder than usual. The bedsheets are cold, but Ryan’s skin isn’t, and Shane thinks _Come here_ , but can’t get the words off of his tongue.  
  
~  
   
Shane is not okay. Ryan is so acutely aware of the way his eyes glaze, the way he barely responds to anything. Ryan tries everything to coax him back, to get him to come to him. But he doesn’t—he’s gone. And Ryan isn’t upset. He isn’t even lonely. He’s just worried. Worried one of these times Shane will shut him off completely and he will be truly, completely alone.  
   
Shane even goes to bed early. There’s an itch beneath Shane’s skin—Ryan sees it—that’s got Ryan sliding his radio and Jake’s hat and a few other things into his half-ruined backpack. Shane might want to leave, and even if Ryan doesn’t get it—doesn’t think people are _bad_ —he wants Shane to feel safe. He wants him to feel okay. And he doesn’t, not right now.  
   
It hangs in the air like smog, curling it’s fingers around Ryan’s throat, squeezing to a scrape at the back of his mouth. Shane’s unhappiness. It drowns out the rest of Shane. The rest of Ryan. Ryan isn’t sure when they became so tightly intertwined.  
   
He slides into the bed a little while later and lies on his back. Shane’s got the fire burned really low, so the warmth isn’t quite reaching them. He glances at Shane, unsteady, unsure, whether it would be okay. Last night flickers like the dying flames from the fire. A memory. A dream. It may have been a fluke. Probably was. Shane reaching out in the only way he knew how. Because Ryan looked sad—pathetic. It might not mean intimacy.  
   
But it’s cold. So Ryan slides close to Shane, skates the tips of his fingers down Shane’s forearm beneath the blanket and squeezes Shane’s hand. It’s cold to Ryan’s touch.  He shifts so he’s huddled against Shane’s arm, curled around it. It’s a compromise in the almost-dead light outside. Almost dark. Shane can slide his arm away easier than he could slide himself away, but Ryan is still touching him.  
   
Just in case he wants it.  
   
Like Ryan does.  
  
~  
  
Something in Shane’s heart squeezes in the same way that Ryan squeezes his hand and he doesn’t twist his up to take Ryan’s fingers, not even when Ryan curls up a little, around him, around this part of him, but he does shift closer, and Ryan’s name’s flitting through his mind, smoothing over the fear like a balm and he pulls his arm away just enough to get it around Ryan’s waist and only then does Shane exhale softly, all relief.  
  
So he lets himself relax, settles into Ryan, into his warmth, slides his knuckles gently over Ryan’s spine in little hypnotic almost-circles. He’s halfway to closing his eyes when something… goes wrong.  
  
He tenses, eyes on the wall where the sunlight colours it orange. And there, the light cuts out — someone passed the window. But he can’t hear anything. Shane catches his breath sharply and sits up fast. Maybe he’s seeing things. Maybe it was a bird, some kind of… but no, he knows it’s not.  
  
He hasn’t noticed, but his fingers have curled tightly in the sleeve of Ryan’s shirt, just at his shoulderblade. “Get up,” he whispers. “Get— get your stuff. Quietly.” He clamours off the bed, and drops to his knees, hauling his pack out from under it.  
  
~  
   
Ryan tenses in time with Shane’s body. It rockets through him, and he’s panting before he fully understands what Shane’s said. He’s so aware when Shane yanks himself from the bed. He truly, legitimately yanks himself. And the absence, the coldness, cuts through Ryan like a frost-kissed knife. He hisses. Doesn’t realize he’s already sit up.  
   
“Shane…” Still, he’s listening. He’s on the edge of the bed, eyeing the pack he’d half-packed earlier. “What’s going on? What’s wrong?” He glances around the cabin, and things seem fine. Things clearly aren’t fine because Shane is capital f freaking out. Ryan almost goes over to him, but he thinks Shane might snap in half if he touches him—if he gets too close.  
   
He’s so panicked.  
   
His eyes flit across the windows, find nothing. “Shane, calm down.”  
  
~  
  
“Ryan,” Shane says, and it’s this low panicked thing — so determinedly not shaking that it’s almost worse than if it was. His eyes are on him for one quick second as he drags his sweater on and zips it up. He finds Ryan’s and tosses it at him. “I’m not trying to boss you around, but do as I say.”  
  
And then he’s tearing the map from the wall, heedless of the places it’s nailed in. They lose the southeast corner of the state. Shane leaves it. He half folds, have crumples it into his bag, grabs the razor from the kitchen table, grabs the red rope from the bedside, then turns, pack in hand, towards the kitchen to start grabbing food.  
  
~  
   
Okay, well, there really isn’t any other way to respond to that. He tugs on the sweater and limps over to the bag he’s started packing. He gathers the rest of what he already had. None of it ever drifted far from the backpack. He’s a little shaky as he does it, because, well, Shane is scaring the shit out of him.  
   
But it doesn’t really compare to the stone-solid fear that smashes through him when he hears the crash outside the door. He freezes, just for a second, and then throws in what he’s got left and zips his bag. It’s nothing. Or zombies. Just…  
   
_Shit_.  
   
He hears the door crack and crash open. He digs his fingers into the backpack, tugs it back, because his first thought is hide it. Footsteps cut through his heartbeat, pulverize it until it’s splattered across the cabin walls. He’s dizzy. Dizzy thinking this can’t possibly be happening. That he’s dreaming. The world shades too dark along the edges as he sees the person.  
   
They’ve got their face all wrapped up in a bandana so only the eyes are visible. But they find Ryan fast, so fast. Because he’s in the middle of the fucking floor like a goddamn idiot. And there’s—fuck. There’s not just one person, there’s two. One’s tall, in front with a rifle. It’s long, and it finds Ryan way too fast.  
   
His brain hazes the colors of everything, fogs them, so he only half panics, only half chokes, when the barrel of the gun aims at the middle of his chest. The second person, the other one slides out from behind the first. This one’s shorter, more slender, still in the black makeshift mask, but this one’s got a more feminine frame. She’s got a handgun, a pistol. Her eyes find him, then dip low, to his leg, still in a brace.  
   
_Weak._  
  
_Easy._  
   
The voice is high, crisp, when the one with the pistol says, “There’s two of them. I saw two of them.” But Ryan doesn’t hear it. His brain is shutting down. He falls back onto his hands, pulls one knee like he can crawl all the way out of the back of the cabin.  
   
He works very hard to keep his eyes straight, to not look back for Shane, because he knows he’s in the kitchen. He saw him go in there. He just sorta hopes Shane has the good sense not to come out here and announce himself.  
   
It all happens too fast for Ryan to think about weapons, think about the fact that there’s nothing in his backpack. Think about the fact that Shane may have been right. Because the one with the pistol takes quick steps until she catches Ryan by the front of his sweater and draws him up. The barrel of the gun bites into the skin beneath his chin. It takes him a couple seconds to drop the backpack.  
   
“Where’s your friend?” he hears that one, barely. She glances to the other person. The one with the bigger gun. “Check that bag.” She’s holding him off the ground like he weighs about eight pounds.  
   
Ryan raises his hands because that’s the only thing he can do right now. “I—I don’t… it’s just…” His feet slide along the floor, trying to find footing where she’s put him at this weird incline, with his torso tugged up by her hand in his sweater and his feet still on the ground. Her foot comes down on his broken leg. His eyes water.  
   
She shoves the gun into his cheek, and it knocks hard against his jaw. He flinches. “Lie to me and see how fast I blow your fucking brains out.”  
   
“I’m not—” He doesn’t get it. Why it has to fucking be like this. Why they couldn’t have just—talked or something. Fuck. “Please.”  
   
He read once that you’re supposed to tell people facts about yourself—that it makes them less likely to murder you, but for the life of him, he can’t think of a single thing about himself right now, in this fuzzed over dream world. Instead, he thinks maybe he’ll close his eyes and open them in his bed, next to Shane.  
  
~  
  
Shane’s in the kitchen panicking, panicking, panicking. He’s not— he doesn’t know what to do. He might have been out here for all these months, almost a year, fending for himself but that was against zombies, not people.  
  
Shane doesn’t know what to do about people. He just knows he can’t leave Ryan out there alone. He left the pipe— the fucking pipe is still in the other room, beside the bed, useless to him now. He’s clutching the strap of his pack because he thinks… if he needs to… find a weapon. He needs to somehow surprise them maybe. Or maybe not. Maybe they’d just shoot him out of fear, then.  
  
But all this is taking too long. He can’t just stand here and try to figure out what to do, he needs to get the fuck out there to Ryan.  
  
So he does.  
  
But he doesn’t expect this scene, somehow. Doesn’t expect to see the muzzle of a gun pressed to Ryan’s cheek where Shane’s hands have been, where he slid that razor so carefully just a few days before. Fear surges up in him like vomit, flashes through his blood and sparks through every nerve and synapse in his body. His bones feel like they’re brittle enough to shatter, because that’s how helpless he feels in this moment.  
  
He can’t even imagine what she might do to Ryan, what it would be like if she just squeezes that trigger. All Shane can see is Ryan. He doesn’t even see the man near the doorway, even though he’d heard him. He just moves forward, just has to go to Ryan, automatic, desperate.  
It’s so stupid, but he can’t do anything else. His mind’s fucking screaming.  
  
~  
   
Ryan doesn’t notice Shane. He’s so honed in on this lady in front of him. Then the guy, who’s taken a few steps towards his bag, shouts, “Hey! Stop!” And the woman glances up to Shane. Then Ryan’s looking at Shane too, and wow, this is worse.  
   
Somehow, things have gotten worse. All that fog vanishes when he sees Shane, everything is in blaring, screaming color, and Ryan can’t catch his breath. Because the guy with the rifle has it trained on Shane, and there isn’t anything either of them can do. The guy doesn’t shoot, though—he doesn’t shoot. Maybe they aren’t bad—maybe this is what the world has reduced them to, but he wants to hug this guy for not shooting.  
   
The woman slides the pistol back down to Ryan’s chin, sorta unconsciously. Her eyes stay locked on Shane, even as she holds Ryan. “Stop.” Her voice cracks—this isn’t what it’s supposed to be. It’s not. “Put your hands where I can see them or we will kill both of you.” She slams the gun against his chin again like that makes her point clearer.  
   
Ryan can’t quite get words off his tongue, because he’s concerned if he does, they’ll end up smeared along the walls.  
  
~  
  
Shane drops his pack and puts his hands up immediately. His chest is rising and falling fast and he can’t look at Ryan because if he meets his eyes, he’s going to fall to pieces. He just opens his mouth, gasps a little, then says softly, “Please—”  
  
The guy Shane hadn’t noticed takes a step towards him, rifle still trained on his chest. He sort of kicks the bag away from Ryan and, eyes flickering up again and again to Shane, who isn’t moving, starts to go through Ryan’s things.  
  
Shane’s stomach clenches hard, watching it peripherally, but his eyes are on the woman. “Listen,” he says, “Just— you want the place? You can have it. Just— can you put the gun down?”  
  
The gun. Not guns. He’s shaking under the one pointed at him, but it’s not worse than the one aimed at Ryan.  
  
The guy holds up the radio. “This work?” he asks no one in particular. He can’t work it with one hand on the rifle.  
  
~  
   
Air rakes through Ryan’s chest and throat with every breath. Shane’s asking the woman to put down the gun, but she doesn’t, and the guy is going through Ryan’s things and he hates it. On top of everything—he feels like someone’s violating him. The guy grabs the radio. Asks about it.  
   
“It’s…” He needs to drag this out, get this guy to stop pointing the gun at Shane. This lady has an iron grip on him. He doesn’t think she’s going to release. But the guy. “Not really. It doesn’t pick anything up. Or—I-I can’t get it to.”  
   
The woman’s is still looking at Shane like she’s catching onto something. The veins in her neck tense and relax. She doesn’t lower the gun. “What do you have here? Guns? Weapons? Food?” Her teeth grit. “You know what, better idea—we kill both of you and find out for ourselves.”  
   
Ryan is half-lowering his hand, thinking about trying to grab the gun. He needs to do _something_. He can’t just sit here, trembling under a thousand fears. Not when that motherfucker has a gun pointed at Shane. He is so tired of losing people, and losing Shane feels so big—too big.  
   
“You don’t have to do this.” His voice wobbles when her eyes snap back to him. “My name is Ryan. His is Shane.” The gun pushes harder against him, and he feels it shake. He holds her gaze, shivering so hard it hurts. “Just… tell us what you need.”  
   
The gun falters, lowers. He almost takes a breath, but then she slams the muzzle back into his chin his teeth clack together and slice along his tongue. Copper cuts across the top of his mouth. “Shut up. Just… shut up.” She is so loud when she speaks next, it hurts Ryan’s ears. “Tell me what’s in the _cabin_ , that’s what I need!”  
  
~  
  
_Ryan you idiot_ , he thinks, and then takes a step forward and the guy drops the radio onto Ryan’s pack and stands up fast. Something in the gun clicks and Shane tenses violently, like he’s been hit, and shuts his eyes tight, but there’s no shot.  
  
“Jesus _Christ_ ,” Shane grits out between clenched teeth, and then he’s talking fast. “There’s food. You can have it. There’s enough here for a couple of weeks at least. Just… let us take our bags, we’ll go right now. If you shoot us, those things are going to hear the sound and come running. Just let us go. Let him go. Please.” He’s holding the woman’s eyes because he thinks, at least, there might be something human in her. “Please,” he says again, whispers it.  
  
~  
  
Ryan has to swallow the shout that rises in him when Shane steps, when the gun clicks. _Shane, you fucking idiot._ Why does he keep moving forward? What does he think that’s going to accomplish? The guy didn’t fire, but now Ryan’s shaking worse, and Shane’s appealing to the woman again.  
   
“A few weeks…” She’s thinking about it. Avoiding Shane’s eyes. They bounce from the wall, to Ryan, to her friend. And, inevitably, always, end back on Shane. “Stop trying to—you think I can’t find something quiet to rip out both of your organs with? I can.”  
   
“Renee,” the guy mutters from across the room like a curse.  
   
“How do I know if we drop the guns, if I let him go…” Her gun settles against his throat so Ryan has to swallow beneath it. “You won’t try and come back? A few days, weeks—you show back up and kill us in our sleep? Is that how you think this is gonna go?”  
   
“Renee,” Ryan says. The gun is instantly way too hard against his jaw again. But eventually, she meets his eyes. “We don’t have any guns. And we were… we were leaving anyway. That’s why the bags are packed. We’re trying to… to get to the west coast. I have family there… I need to make it there, for them. I don’t have time to come back here.”  
   
It’s not quite a lie. That’s what Jake wanted—where they were going. Disneyland. That’s where Jake wanted to go. It’s ridiculous—beyond absurd. But Ryan had humored him because it was somewhere to go, and now, maybe—he could still make it there, for Jake.  
   
She pulls him closer. He has no idea how she’s been supporting his weight for this long. God, who fucking knows what she’s been through? This close—he can see mud stains across the bridge of her nose. This cracked panic in her eyes.  
   
She hisses and throws him to the ground. He twists, so does his leg—it’s nearly as bad as when he broke it. Pops of light spark across his vision, then red and black and green dots. He sucks in air and looks up to see the gun still pointed at him.  
   
But she’s looking at Shane now: “Get your fucking bags, and your fucking boyfriend, and get out of my sight.”  
  
~  
  
Shane doesn’t waste any time at all. He picks up his bag, swings it onto his shoulders and then eyes the pipe. He steps to it, one hand still up in submission, shaking — fucking shaking. He says something ridiculous like “I’m just—“ then very slowly, carefully, slides it through the straps of his bag where he’s not using it. His eyes are on them both. He’s almost crouched, making himself small, and then he goes to Ryan.  
  
It’s such a _relief_ when he touches him. He can feel how tense he is — under pain and fear and it guts Shane, but he pulls his arm over his shoulders, “Come on, Ryan.” He picks up the radio, tosses it into Ryan’s pack, and then lifts Ryan’s bag with his other hand.  
  
“Okay?” he asks him. It’s like the other two aren’t even in the room, but Shane is so aware of them. He’s so fucking aware of them it’s like he’s not even in his own body. It’s a completely surreal experience and his heart is racing so fast he feels like he might fucking throw up.  
  
_We don’t have any guns._  
  
He glances up again, moves towards the cabin door. The guy keeps his gun trained on them because he’s a fucking asshole, and Shane just wants to scream. Cold air washes over them as Shane pushes the door all the way open, and it’s awkward with the packs, with Ryan. And then they’re out there, in the dying light and the snow, and the cabin door and all it signifies: home, safety, food, warmth — falls shut behind them and Shane feels like they’re standing at the throat of something awful and monstrous and he has no idea — no fucking clue how they’re going to survive out here.  
  
He takes a deep breath and readjusts his arm around Ryan’s waist, holding him tighter. “Well,” he says, like they just stepped out of an awful movie or something and there’s no refunds.  
  
~  
   
Ryan doesn’t say anything as Shane moves, helps him up. As they walk out of the cabin. Even though he’s so trained on these two—staring at them like they’re staring at him. He barely feels Shane’s hand on his waist. Then they’re outside and the cold cleaves through him. Because he hasn’t been outside in ages, and he knows how long they’re going to be out here. Knows this means not-really-sleeping on the ground or in dumpsters, waiting for one of those fucking things to come by and kill them. All the warmth that he’d built up, that he’d held in him, feels wasted. Like he didn’t do enough with it.  
   
He’s got his arm around Shane, breathing unevenly, fighting with his teeth to keep them from chattering. And Shane’s saying well in the most blasé, nonchalant way. Ryan almost laughs, sorta does, but it’s hollow.  
   
“Definitely taking the Yelp review down to one star after that shit.”  
  
~  
  
Shane laughs, just a ghost of air. “Okay,” he says. He just wants to get the fuck away from there, from those people. “Let’s go before they change their minds,” Shane says, and pulls him closer, trying to keep him warm. Yeah. Yup. It’s fucking cold. It’s only going to get colder. He wants to get to the road before night comes. He really— really doesn’t want to be in those woods in the dark. He’s fucking panicking, trying not to.  
  
He takes long, gulping breaths like the cold will clear his head. It does, a little. He sets off, tugs Ryan gently, trying his best to support him. He’s still got Ryan’s pack in his other hand he he sort of tries to get it over his shoulder, but there’s not enough space with his own bag. The snow crunches underfoot like it did that morning. Shane feels sick, almost lightheaded. He _cannot_ pass out now.  
  
They start walking. They just set out across the field and towards the trees. “Let’s— let’s get to the road.”  
  
~  
   
He is about to agree—though fuck if he remembers where the road is. But he can’t. It hits him hard. Sudden. Colder and hotter than the bite of that gun barrel than the tear of the winter. He stares across the field, staggers so it’s this awkward, cluttered thing because Shane’s still moving and Ryan’s not.  
   
His breath curls in front of him in little wisps of frost. His fingers clench into fists. “Jake,” he whispers. “I can’t leave Jake.”  
  
~  
  
“Oh, no, Ryan,” Shane says, and desperation claws all the way up his throat, “No, Ryan, don’t, we can’t—”  
  
But he can’t just pull Ryan away and he knows it. He’s trying anyway. “We’ve got to go, man, it’s getting dark.”  
  
~  
   
His lip quivers. Shane’s right. Fuck—he’s right. It’s dark. It’s freezing. He can’t feel his fingers, but he can’t get enough willpower to tug the sleeves of his hoodie over them, not now. Not when Jake is… He shoves, abruptly away from Shane. Doesn’t quite get out of his grip. He doesn’t know why. It’s stupid. Absolutely absurd, still near enough to the cabin to see the smoke in the chimney. He grits his teeth, presses his face into his fists. Breath comes in choppy and serrated. It burns the back of his mouth, down his throat. It wraps around his heart and freezes, freezes, freezes until he can’t feel it beating anymore.  
   
It’s in his head, then, his little brother. The last time he saw him—all pale and glassy eyed. The gore in the back of his head, all that black, oozing blood—bits of bone, bits of… and now he’s under all this freezing cold earth. He’s been out here for days, just _freezing_ , and Ryan hasn’t—he hasn’t even taken two seconds to mark the grave.  
   
And now Jake is just a body. And Ryan thinks about the dirt seeping into him, his body. He thinks about corpses he dressed up for his films—the bloated, bluish way skin turns to meat. How it wrinkles and twists like leather over bones before it falls off—like it does with those things. It falls off, and there’s just skeleton and eye sockets—and god, his eyes. Jake’s eyes were so soft, so warm and open. Now they’re—just sockets and worms in a skull with this wrong, horrible smile. _Jake_.  
   
“I didn’t mark his grave. God damn it—god damn it, I forgot. I just… how did I forget? How did I fucking forget _my brother?_ ”  
   
Now he knows why he shoved away from Shane. He retches once, twice, and then throws up the food he’s had today and it’s gray in the fading light. Jake is going to get eaten by fucking earthworms and Ryan didn’t mark his grave.  
   
The ice around his heart, from the wind, cracks and shatters.  
  
~  
  
Shane turns away a little. God he wants to— cry or something. He wants to just sit down and put his head in his hands and fucking cry. Instead, he scans the treeline. He looks at the last of the sun and its still bright enough to give him sunspots. He jams his fists into his eyes, trying to clear them, and his fingers come away wet. The wind is cold against the dampness and he wipes his hands on his jeans. “Let’s mark it, then,” he says, softly. He moves closer to Ryan. Maybe to support him, maybe to just reach out and touch him. He does, his shoulder, squeezes it. He wants to say _I think he’d understand_ but he doesn’t know that. He didn’t know Jake.  
  
~  
  
Shane's trying to help and Ryan is shaking with anger. Furious. At himself. Because this is just one mistake after another after another. Now he's going to put Shane in danger, keep him from what he wanted to do, where he wanted to go. The road. He's going to get Shane _killed_.

Ryan breathes hard and wipes his mouth. It's gross. And he has to spit to get bits out of his mouth. It tastes like rotten Vienna sausage. He didn't even have them today.

He's already dragged Shane through burying Jake. And then they had a cabin to go to. And suddenly it feels like someone picked up the Earth and dropped it on Ryan. He almost collapses, but even that seems like it needs energy and he's got none. He's filled with this dark, impossible sadness. It's in his lungs and his chest and his mouth.

He misses Jake and the cabin and coffee. He needs to be logical, but his voice is soaked in the tears he's holding back.

"No. It's fine. It's--he's-he's..." It sticks in his mouth. "He's dead it doesn't matter."  
  
~  
  
But it _does_ matter. It does, and Shane knows it. “Come here,” he says. The words he couldn’t say to him earlier, when they were still safe. He pulls him away from the vomit melting the snow, he’s careful with him, taking both his shoulders to keep him steady — make _sure_ he is. “Hey. No, you’re right, it matters.” And maybe it does. Maybe fucking humanity is what matters. He ducks a little to try and meet Ryan’s eyes. “What do you want? Hey, Ry, look at me. Let’s find something.”  
  
He doesn’t know what they’re going to find. He doesn’t know what could possibly be out here except half-dead trees and shrubs frozen to breaking. He’s still holding his shoulders as he looks away, hoping desperately for something. There’s those red berries that birds eat — a bush of them, but most of the berries are gone. Still, it’s a shock of colour against the grey twilight. He doesn’t know what he expects to find. A handy stone, a wooden cross or something. He doesn’t even know if Ryan’s family was religious. If Ryan is, and now doesn’t seem like the time to discuss it.  
  
~  
  
"I don't know, Shane, I just..." He's bubbling, fighting with everything not to cry again. Shane is going to think he has a disorder. "It's not a big deal."

Ry. Shane called him Ry. No one's called him that in a long time.

They'd need something to dig into the ground. Something they don't have. "I just... It's too much." He finally meets Shane's eyes. "I don't want you to have..." Ryan snarls this frustrated keening sound and shakes his head. "I want to make this easier for you like you have for me. I want to stop making this hard."  
  
~  
  
“You are _not_ making it _hard_ ,” Shane says. “Let’s at least…” he lets him go and takes an uncertain step towards the woods like something’s going to materialize. A bouquet of fucking flowers or something. Of course, it doesn’t. He drags his fingers through his hair. He looks back towards the cabin. He can’t see anyone. The door’s been pushed shut, he thinks, but it’s getting harder to see as the light dies.  
  
~  
  
Ryan sighs and tugs his bag off Shane. He tries to crouch but ends up in the snow. On his ass. Which is now freezing and wet, but he's too numb to care. It's going to make it harder, colder, for hours. And it's below freezing. But he just can't care.

He pulls Jake's hat free. Extends it up.

"We can put the bill in the ground or fill it with rocks or something. This was his." He chews his lip as a couple tears steal their way down his cheek. "He liked hats. We both did."  
  
~  
  
God this guy is going to break his fucking heart.  
  
There’s blood on the hat, Jesus…  
  
He comes to crouch in front of Ryan and reaches out to touch the hat, but doesn’t take it from him yet. “Don’t you want to keep it?” he asks softly, because he doesn’t know what else to say.  
  
~  
  
Ryan takes in a gasp of breath. The kindness, all these gentle tones and tender looks... It's giving the tears something. A crack in the shield. A foothold. He can't look at Shane. He just shivers.

"It's not mine."  
  
~  
  
He swallows, and wonders if Ryan should be the one to do this, but he honestly looks like he can barely keep moving and they still have to get to the road. So Shane takes it from him. He pulls away and goes to scrape at the snow with his free hand, tries to dig into the frozen ground enough to get the hat to stay. In the end there’s nothing left to use but the pipe to work the hardened ground up, and it feels so wrong, because that’s the thing that killed Jake and God, Shane’s just hit with this awful wave of self-loathing, but he pushes it down. This isn’t his place, or his grief.  
  
He gets the hat to stay. He tries to make it so that the first gust of wind’s not going to blow it away. His hands are so cold they hurt, but he just pulls them into his sleeves a little and turns back to Ryan, prays that’ll be enough, but he knows it isn’t. It won’t be.  
  
But nothing’s bringing Jake back. Shane’ll be goddamned if he lets this fucking apocalypse take Ryan too, though. “Ryan…” he begins. He hates to be this person. The one who always has to push and push and push. But they have to go. They have to get moving.  
  
~  
  
Ryan barely watches. He’s just thinking about Jake, about what he’d say about this. About the fact that he’d probably yell about the hat being there, staying there. But Ryan can’t leave it unmarked, and they don’t have time to look for something. At least this is something. Proof that he didn’t just forget Jake.  
  
_But you did, didn’t you?_  
  
He draws in a breath when Shane turns around. God, his hands are burned red with cold. He had to do it again. Ryan doesn’t have the energy to say fight, to think, not even to apologize. So all he manages is, “Yeah,” and then, “Thanks.”  
  
He slams his hands into the slush beneath him and tries to stand up. God, it’s so cold, and Shane’s just digging around in it. And, for the thousandth time, Ryan wishes he’s the one that had gotten bitten.  
  
~  
  
Shane’s there in front of him again, and he’s not helping, because he knows how Ryan gets. He wants to reach down and get his arms around him and pull him to his feet. Or maybe just hold on, but he doesn’t. “Here,” he says, and holds out a hand to him. He can’t even feel his fucking fingers and his shoulders are so tight against the cold that his back has started to ache.  
  
He can’t see too far into the trees anymore, and his stomach is all churned and coiled into knots. He tries not to think _We’re not going to make it._  



	5. Part 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We try to get this up on Monday mornings, but failed yesterday (sorry), because I (thewindupbird) can't stop playing the sims, seriously, send help.

Part 5

Shane’s standing there, waiting, until he holds out his hand—it’s bright red, glowing with cold, from the snow he’s been digging through. Ryan grabs hold of it, and his hands are cold too, but they are almost warm next to Shane’s.  
   
This is what life is going to be now. Cold and danger and pain. There isn’t any cabin, any shelter, and a zombie could burst from the trees with its groaning and half-detached limbs at any time. So Ryan grabs Shane’s hand with both of his and hoists himself up. But instead of letting go once he’s up, or going to lean on Shane because he still can’t put much weight on his leg, he brings Shane’s hand to his lips and breathes on them. This brief beat of warmth stemming from inside him.  
   
Ryan’s body feels like black ice, but it’s not.  There’s warmth in him, and he can do this one thing for Shane. He holds on tighter and glances up at Shane. “Okay, let’s go.”  
  
~  
  
For that second, he forgets the cold, forgets the pain in his back. He exhales softly, his eyes on Ryan. He can’t know it, just feels startled, thinks _Oh_ , but his gaze goes soft, softer. For a second it’s just them and maybe the weather, but he doesn’t rush this moment, doesn’t want to. But then Ryan says _Let’s go_ , and Shane’s snapped back to present. His hand is so warm. Shane can tell it’s cold, but it feels warm against his, and damp from the snow and Shane tries not to hate this — hate losing the cabin and the warmth and… and the bed they’d been sharing — because he has to focus.  
  
Still, he leaves his hand in Ryan’s and says, “Okay,” shifting so that he can get his arm over Ryan’s head without much difficulty; shifting, maneuvering. Their hands twist, lose grip for a moment, but Shane doesn’t let go. He gets on the side of Ryan’s injured leg and holds onto him. Holds onto his hand.  
  
_I’m sorry_ , Shane thinks to Jake, to the ground where his body lies. _You deserved better than all of this._  
  
And they go.  
  
The trees start getting closer together, and that takes care of some of the snow. They’re a little quieter, or they could be, but it’s hard with the packs, with Ryan not able to maneuver over things easily the way Shane can. They take a long, winding path. Shane worries. He’s quiet. His breath comes in little hitches and gasps every time he thinks he sees something move, or thinks he hears something. He’s gripping the pipe in his free hand, even though his fingers feel like they’re about to fucking fall off. He’s pressed Ryan’s fingers against Ryan’s own body, his own interlocked, his palm against the back of Ryan’s hand, trying to keep it warm. Keep him warm. He tries not to think about frostbite and what kind of cold or flu they could get from being out here, cold and wet.  
  
His boots are soaking through, his feet are cold. It makes all the rest of him even colder. “We’re about halfway,” he whispers eventually. It feels like it’s been an hour. It’s probably been longer.  
  
~  
   
   
It starts out okay. His pants cling to his thighs where the snow soaked them. But he’s okay. He’s moving, and his hand’s under Shane. He distracts himself with the clouds in front of his face. They make it a little ways, and the cold starts to dig through his shoes, into his fingers, to take root like slices of ice in the center of his chest. The wet of his pants squeezes into the back of him. And he develops a bone-deep shiver that he can’t stop.  
   
Then the weight on his good leg makes his calf sting. His control goes, like a puppet snapping free, one string at a time. His bad leg nicks across the ground, once, and it’s okay. Pain snaps through him in a flash, but he works to keep it from happening again. But then it does. His shoulders slump, his feet sorta fall limp except for the points of contact walking explicitly requires. His bad foot scraps and slams along the ground. This time, the pain does more than snap. He gasps. Breath skips out of him like waves against a cliff face.  
   
It pulses and burns and bleeds into all his muscles so everything is hurting. He’s having to put so much effort into keeping his spine straight. All these little things that normally don’t take energy or thought, they’re wearing on him. He takes in breath too sharp and it bangs along his teeth, ricochets down his throat like thumb tacks. It fucking hurts.  
   
   
He’s regulating his breathing because Shane’s freaked out enough as it is. He’s jumping at noises, and Ryan is too, or he was, before he had to give up hearing for coaxing breath from his mouth and seeing for holding his eyelids open. God, Shane must be even worse. Ryan’s trying so hard not to put extra weight on him, but his body is about to buckle.  
   
It starts as a raw, slicing pain twisting in the center of his chest. But it spreads outwards like an infection and draws spider veins across his abdomen, along his arms, down his legs. And they throb and leak like an oil spill.  
   
And then Shane says, _we’re about halfway_ , and Ryan is just doing everything he can not to scream, not to cry. Jesus Christ, how are they only halfway? He feels like he’s been walking since before he was born. Every step feels like he’s beating at death’s door. But he can’t stop—he has to keep going. For Shane. For Jake.  
   
He doesn’t respond. If he did, he’d scream, or, god, he doesn’t even know what he’d do. But it would absolutely have Shane thinking he was going full zombie on him.    
  
~  
  
He can feel it. He’s trying not to feel it, Ryan faltering beside him. He just pulls him closer, maneuvers himself so that Ryan’s arm doesn’t have to be so tense across Shane’s own shoulders and, god, their height difference is painfully noticeable like this. His knees hurt, his back, but he knows it’s nothing compared to Ryan. He desperately wants to stop, just take a breath or several, but he fears that he wouldn’t be able to start again. That they’d just freeze to death out here, if the zombies didn’t get them first. He doesn’t tell Ryan that halfway only means halfway to the road, because he genuinely doesn’t know what to do once they get there. Which direction to go. Obviously away from the city. He’ll just keep going the way he was walking after— after he left his father.  
  
“I… I went back for the car,” Shane says. Speaks just loud enough to be heard over their footsteps. He’s speaking almost like he’s recalling memories from some hidden place. Like he can’t really remember them, or like he’s piecing them back together after a long, long time. He feels so much older than he is. He wonders how old Ryan is, how old Jake was. He wonders how many people have only ever known the world like this.  
  
“I went back for the car… later, after I had the pipe… I guess I thought… I don’t know, that I couldn’t leave him there. That maybe I could use the car. But the car was gone. I never… well, someone must have done it, right?” Left unsaid: _Is my dad still walking around out there or did they break his skull in?_  
  
He doesn’t know if he’s trying to distract Ryan or himself anymore. Ryan’s so much heavier. Heavy enough that Shane does finally have to stop, steady them both, and shift, drag Ryan’s arm higher around his shoulders. They’re both breathing hard, but Ryan’s is more ragged than his. Shane tries not to notice. He doesn’t know how to get out of this already. He can’t absorb any more.  
  
~  
   
Shane starts talking, which is weird. Shane never talks. Which means he’s probably noticing Ryan’s falling apart. Because Ryan is. He draws in breath. God, he doesn’t know if he can pull his voice up, over the ridges of his throat, and answer. But he has to. He can’t leave Shane to fill this space all by himself, not when he’s talking about this. When he’s talking about himself, alone and broken, wandering back to a car because he couldn’t leave his father. Doing what he had to do, like he always does.  
   
“Yeah…” His teeth chatter. “Yeah, I’m… maybe…” He doesn’t know. Neither answer is good. Either Shane’s dad is walking around as a monster or his skull’s bashed in like Jake’s, or crushed like his Mom’s, or torn off like his Dad’s. He shouldn’t have so many reference points. He wonders again what happens after, if they’re able to pass peacefully, without knowing, or if they’re trapped in there.  
   
He doesn’t say that to Shane, though, to Shane, he says, “Either way, you would’ve died if you’d stayed, so…” He chokes like he’s inhaled a spray of icicles, because it feels like he has. “I’m sure he… I’m sure someone did it.” He swallows. His arm burns like fucking hell hooked over Shane’s neck. Soreness hums along his bones, turning them slowly to stone waiting to shatter, but it’s the only thing he can feel at all. His toes and fingers are numb with frost. And he thinks if he could see his lips, they’d be blue. They quiver so words shake as they come out.  
   
“People were really aggressive with cars before—so I’m sure they… I’m sure it’s…” He lets the conversation die, then picks it back up because the silence is bringing too much attention to the rest of him. “I… I took my dad’s car when we first left. We made it a little ways… but it was—well, the streets were just flooded with traffic. So I guess this guy got bit and tried to drive. He totaled both of our cars. It was fucking…” The talking helps. “The crash cut him in half…” He almost says _fortunately_ , but doesn’t. Feels bad for thinking it. “I guess it’s lucky it didn’t do more to us.”  
   
He thinks about standing over the man—no, not a man anymore—watching him flail and reach for them. Nothing more than a torso. Ryan wanted to leave him, couldn’t quite bring himself to finish it, but Jake had stomped his head in with a foot.  
   
Maybe that was his answer, then. About wanting to die or stay alive.  
  
~  
  
“Where were you? Where did you come from?” Shane asks, like Ryan’s some seventh son from lore or something. Because talking is better, he wants to keep talking because he can kind of forget how much everything hurts. His fingers, toes, his ears. He re-adjusts his fingers over Ryan’s, un-entwines them, sort of folds Ryan’s hand in his own.  
  
And it hits him that he still doesn’t know. He doesn’t really know anything about Ryan, or he knows too many things, but none of them are normal.  
  
~  
   
Ryan draws up this half-frozen smile. “See, Shane, these are the questions you ask when getting to know someone, not ‘so how do you feel about bondage?’” It’s risky, but they’re both half out of their minds with pain and he just wants to do something to make this seem less bleak.  
   
He doesn’t let Shane dwell on it too long. His leg clips the ground again. He hisses, and then uses it to propel the next words out of him. “We’re—I’m from LA. Honestly, we were just trying to get away from the West Coast. We were kinda useless once the satellites went down… so I have no idea how we ended up here—I have no idea where here is. I think it’s Illinois? That was the last sign I remember seeing. Wow, that’s weird. We were trying to follow signs… like, at first, they said cold weather would kill them—that it was safer?”  
  
He shakes his head. “Which was bullshit. I knew it was bullshit, but that being said, I didn’t have any better ideas unless you count swimming to Hawaii. And we couldn’t—they’d done this airstrike on the harbor because, they were afraid of it spreading if…” He clenches his teeth. He doesn’t know if Hawaii’s safe still. Doesn’t know if the rest of the world is. “Anyway, so we just went east—eastish… whatever.” A beat. “What about you? Are you from here?”  
  
~  
  
“Yeah, I’m— it’s Illinois. I’m from Illinois. Oh my God, you’re from California.” He laughs as he says it, but God, he bets Ryan’s never fucking felt cold before. But it makes sense. “Jesus,” he says softly, voice uneven with his breath, breath uneven with laughter. “Now I know why it’s like you just _exude_ sunlight. There’s way too much of it in your tiny little body.”  
  
He wishes he could pull it back, maybe. Or maybe he doesn’t. His brain feels frozen, blame it on that. “When’s your birthday?” he asks, like birthdays still matter. Maybe, to Ryan, they do. “What year?” Maybe normal people ask ‘how old are you?’ Maybe Shane feels like doing some math. Maybe he wants to think about anything, Christ, _anything_ other than how cold he is.  
  
~  
   
Ryan’s warmer—after that. He’s definitely warmer. Thinking about his birthday, and Shane saying he gives off sunlight. That’s good, right? Sunlight is good. Ryan wouldn’t mind being sunlight. But looking into the sun is bad for you. Okay, he’s way overanalyzing. At least his mind is functioning.  
   
“I’m—I’m not tiny! You’re just freakishly tall! How am I tiny? I’m average height!” Sometimes. He’s always barely hitting the 5’10” mark. But whatever, that’s irrelevant. Shane’s not gonna measure. “And it’s…” Oh, right, he hasn’t even thought about how old Shane is. He seems… ancient, hiding away like Luke Skywalker in The Last Jedi. But sometimes, he seems like Jake. Young. It’s a paradox. Shane is a paradox. With everything. In every way.  
   
“It’s—uh, it’s November twenty-sixth.” It might have already passed. He isn’t sure. He’s lost track of time. It’s been months—months out here with Jake. It was mid-march when they left—the day his parents… fuck, okay. “Nineteen ninety.” He could give his age. He’s sure that’s what Shane’s going for, but instead he asks, “When’s yours?”  
   
~  
  
“Shh,” he whispers as Ryan gets all worked up. About his height for godssake.  
  
And then Shane feels a sharp tug at something in his stomach. What day is it? He knows it’s November, he’s been careful about counting the months, because it feels like it matters. It still feels like it does, and he’s scared to get to a place where it doesn’t matter, because he doesn’t know what that will mean. Months have always mattered. Maybe he doesn’t give a fuck about the day of the week anymore, but he can’t start ignoring the passage of months.  
  
“That’s—…” his mind’s running. Twenty-seven. Ryan’s twenty-seven. “That’s soon.” He doesn’t think it’s passed, yet, that date. “Right?” He has no idea. He sets it aside to think about later. In safety. God… they’ve got to get to safety.  
  
“I’m… It’s May 16th.” He’d spent his thirty-first birthday by himself. At least he’d been in the cabin by then. At least — he’d thought back then — it wasn’t his thirtieth birthday which felt more meaningful somehow. On his thirtieth birthday he’d been drinking coffee at three in the morning in a Denny’s or somewhere, with friends who might not even still be…  
  
_Stop_ , Shane thinks.  
  
“Nineteen eighty-six. Can you do that math, California-boy? I’m going to pretend you were blazing it and surfing or whatever it is they do up there. Eat salads, or whatever.”  
  
 ~  
  
He giggles, it’s hard coming up—like its chipping at the ice blocks that have formed in his throat. But it gets out. Wisps in the air where he can see it. “Eat sal—” He likes it. He likes that Shane keeps giving him these names. He feels important, special, somehow. Yeah, he’s the only thing Shane’s got, but he doesn’t have to wrap this familiarity around them. He doesn’t have to. It makes Ryan think maybe he still means something to someone. And if he does, if he means something to Shane, it’s a reason to keep going.  
  
“Contrary to what your back country living may led you to believe, California is actually a regular state. With normal people. It’s not just—what do you think it is? Just a bunch of people—we’re all just walking around with the little sunshines on our heads smoking weed?” It’s given him an opportunity to do the math, and okay, Shane’s thirty-one—but more importantly, his birthday happened… probably while he was alone. Ryan wishes he had something. Anything. He could give him to make up for it. “And yeah,” he says, and it wavers a little with his laugh and the cold. “I can do math, old man.”  
  
He doesn’t think about his birthday, about missing it. He doesn’t think about the fact that Jake isn’t going to be here for it. That no one is.  
  
~  
  
“I think probably just you had the sunshine thing,” he says, sort of pants it out in a rush of breath, and then pulls up short, straightens a little too much because he definitely heard something, and his eyes are wide, trying to see through the darkness. Silence falls around them again, without the uneven rhythm of their footsteps. He swallows. “Okay, let’s… let’s try to make this a little faster.”  
  
~  
   
Faster. A high-pitched laugh almost makes its way out of Ryan’s throat. But he holds it back. But Jesus Christ, faster. Faster. His leg’s already in so much pain he’s about a breath from blacking out.  
   
“Okay…” His eyes wander the length of the trees, or as far as they can wander. It’s just darkness and fucking nothing for miles. He tries to push his feet faster, but one catches on something, some stupid debris in the forest, a branch or a twig or fuck. It wrenches him so far that he lurches forward and his knee hits the ground, still have held-up by Shane. “God fucking damn it.”  
  
~  
  
“Okay,” Shane says, trying to pull him up and not hurt him more at the same time. It’s difficult. This isn’t going to work. They’re moving way too slowly. Not safe-slowly the way he does, when he’s trying not to make noise in the woods, they’re moving way more slowly and noisily than that. He doesn’t know if zombies can spot weaknesses or if they just go for whoever’s closest, but it’s making fear explode over his nerves like fucking firecrackers.  
  
“Okay, this— give me your bag. Give it,” he says, and pulls it off Ryan’s back. He’s bossing him around again, but he doesn’t care. It takes some maneuvering, but there’s really not a lot in the pack, so he somehow gets it in underneath his own, and then says, “Put your arm around my neck.”  
  
He’s not looking at Ryan anymore, he’s still watching the trees. He’s gone his fingertips pressed to the place between Ryan’s shoulder blades.  
  
   
~  
   
“I don’t—” But he’s the problem here, Shane’s handling all of this. And Ryan’s tripping on air. And he’s just got to listen. He has to. But god, no. What’s Shane going to do? Carry him? “You can’t carry me. I’ll just… I can walk faster. It’s fine.” He shifts a little to try and get Shane’s fingers off his back. “I’m too heavy. This isn’t going to work.” He’s whispering, trying to be quiet. Because he knows they need to. “You’re going to hurt yourself.”  
  
~  
  
“Are you commenting on my lack of— uh, a gym membership?” he asks, and he doesn’t wait, his fingers tighten as he pulls Ryan closer to him, or maybe Shane steps closer. Whatever. He’s caught Ryan’s hand, his wrist, and he’s pulling it around his neck, and they are close close close. His chest brushes Ryan’s briefly. “Come on, I don’t want to stay here.” He stoops a little — how’s he going to do this? Can he? It doesn’t matter, he’ll have to, because they’re wasting time. Ryan’s going to fight him, fine. Shane ducks and gets his arm behind Ryan’s legs, pulls him up into his arms and god, yes, he’s heavy. He’s little, but he’s fucking — compact muscle, and the brace makes it more awkward than it should be, and Shane hasn’t eaten properly in days. He stumbles a little, hoists him further up with a soft grunt and his vision whites out for a second, a little alarmingly because he doesn’t have the energy for this. He blinks it back. Prays to someone, anyone, for the ability to just— just get to the road.  
  
~  
   
“It’s not about your gym-” Movement cuts him off. It disorients him. All the closeness. Chest brushing, faces close enough he can make out each of Shane’s individual eyelashes—the freckle on his right cheek. The straight slant of his nose. All of it’s right there. Shane’s tugged him to him like they’re about to waltz and looped Ryan’s arm around his neck. Shane’s spine presses into his forearm, and then Shane’s arm hooks under Ryan’s knee and he swings him up—up. So Ryan slams into his chest. He fits there better than he should. Since Shane’s just bones and skin and Ryan’s—well, Ryan doesn’t know what he is.  
   
“Shane… dude, you can’t do this. You’re exhausted. You’ll—it’s way too far.” He braces one hand against Shane’s chest, feels his heartbeat going too fast. Too fast and they haven’t even started moving. “You’ll collapse—this is so stupid. Put me down.” He doesn’t resist, because that’ll just hurt Shane worse if they fall. “You can’t do this on your own.”  
  
~  
  
“Shut up, Ryan,” Shane says, all breathless and maybe too harsh. He doesn’t mean to be. He takes deep breaths of cold air and it wakes him up, keeps him on his feet. He can feel Ryan slipping a little already and he hoists him up again. It’s sort of— it’s a lot. He doesn’t like not holding the pipe, it’s pressing hard against his lower back where it’s wedged there, cold bleeding through the cloth and into his spine.  
  
But Ryan’s warm — it’s warmer having him close and he’s so solid, so present in Shane’s arms and it’s a stupid thing to think, but he thinks it anyway. Focusses on that as he takes his first step, then another. Okay. Okay, this is okay, he can do this. He starts walking, stumbling a little, but walking. And it’s an okay pace. The panic calms a little. He can’t look at him, because they’re fucking— they’re really close. He can feel Ryan’s breath on his jaw, on his neck, and it’s so warm compared to the bite of the air. “This is okay,” he says, gentler this time, because somewhere he knows that he feels bad for snapping at him.  
  
~  
   
Ryan’s jaw is clenched. Shane tells him to shut up. It’s mean—and it’s like Ryan has no room to talk. Like if he’s going to be useless with his stupid, broken leg. And he’s right. Ryan can’t even be mad. Because Shane’s right.  Ryan is useless, and he can’t say anything. Because if Shane put him down he would slow them down.  
   
And Shane’s so close to him. His jaw is in Ryan’s face, and it’s turning the anger to something electric and traitorous. Shane’s just walking, pretending Ryan is just a fucking stack of logs. At least he could set those on fire and get use out of them.    
   
Shane says “this is okay,” and Ryan doesn’t answer. Because it’s not okay. It’s really fucking not. He’s stuck being carried by a guy with half his muscle back and he’s so scared Shane’s just going to collapse. Shane’s going to collapse and it’s going to be his fault. He fists Shane’s shirt in his hand to work out some of the anger, the frustration. He lowers his eyes and stares at his own knees.  
   
_At least talk to him, Ryan. Stop feeling sorry for yourself and do fucking something._  
   
“What’d you do—when you turned thirty?” he asks. “Was it weird? Thirty seems monumental for some reason.”  
  
~  
  
Shane readjusts his grip again, pulls Ryan a little closer to him. “Yeah… I…” he’s having trouble talking and breathing at the same time. He tries to regulate at least one of them. “I was never really a drink-and-party kind of… but my friends all bought this really— like this really nice bottle of scotch and we—” he laughs, just once. “It was awful, like _truly_ the worst scotch I’ve ever had and so we all— we went back out and got another one, like— just, you know, just this mediocre scotch and we drank that and watched… I think it was _Stagecoach_ , you know, the one from the thirties? Anyway, it’s dynamite, and…oop—” He slips a little, rights himself. “And then we drank the shitty scotch, because none of us cared anymore about how it tasted, and we made dinner so— so drunk.”  
  
His eyes are very far away. “And I think it started raining, like this ridiculous spring rain, right? And we decided that we should go out in that for some stupid reason, and then we eventually... ended up in Denny’s at three in the morning. And then I spent the next week with a head-cold so… yeah. It was pretty good.” He glances down at him. “What about you? Your last important birthday was, what? Twenty-one? God, I bet that was wild.”  
  
~  
   
Ryan just loses himself in this story, in the way Shane tells it. He’s walking and struggling to breathe, and it’s awful. It’s so awful. But he’s just telling this story like he’s living in it, and Ryan can see the scotch, can see Shane drunkenly trying to make some overcomplicated meal. And it’s almost… nostalgic. Like he was there. Like he can crawl back into that moment, in all its soft yellows and oranges… like a dream Ryan’s had again and again. And only just now remembers.  
   
His hand loosens on Shane’s shirt. Because he wants to touch Shane’s face, touch him, in some human, real way—for whatever reason. He ignores the urge, except his hand slides down Shane’s front. Still on his chest, but lower. He’s smiling. He doesn’t know when he started smiling, but it’s just… nice. In the worst possible way. As nice as something can be with the threat of zombies. Of frostbite. Of the brilliant, thousand-year-old soul holding him collapsing under Ryan’s weight.  
   
Ryan thinks back to it. His twenty-first. And it hurts. Like tearing open an old wound. “It was… it was cool. I didn’t drink back then, actually. I just started engaging in red solo cups and running laps until I puke a few years ago, actually.” He thinks back to it. Back to the music thrumming through him. Leaving the bar and going to another one because that DJ fucking sucked. “We, uh… we did go out. We went to a few clubs, just to… you know, hang out. Most of my friends _did_ like drinking. So we stayed out for a few hours, but I wasn’t super into dancing. And eventually, we just ended up getting taco bell and going home. Then we stayed up all night playing Madden—that’s a sports video game. Try to keep your head from exploding.”  
   
He remembers the controller in his hands. Remembers laughing hysterically at the rage, just bloody, violent rage, when someone lost. He remembers soaking further into his dorm bed. His dorm room. All small and heated. He remembered the Kobe Bryant jersey he was wearing.  
   
“But we stayed up so fucking late. It was Saturday, so none of us had to be anywhere. And, at like, five am, one of my friends goes, let’s go to Disneyland.” He laughs again, because it was so stupid. Half of them were drunk and the other half were hung over, either from being around drunk people, or being drunk. “So we stayed up playing these fucking games and went to Disneyland at 8 in the fucking morning. Rode one ride, Space Mountain, and someone threw up. So we went home and crashed. I slept for like fourteen hours.”  
   
His head falls against Shane’s shoulder. He doesn’t realize it—it may have fallen in the middle of the story, but now he doesn’t want to move it. Because he’s tired, and he knows he has every obligation not to pass out because Shane’s doing every bit of the work. But this is warmer, nicer.  
   
“So yeah, it was certainly… wild.”  
   
~  
  
His laugh comes out in these broken, fragmented breaths, and he’s half-praying in the back of his mind that he can keep going, and the other half is just fucking haywire, and he’s holding onto Ryan like he’s a kid— and he feels like one — with the way his head is on Shane’s shoulder, with that story. He was in _college_ , he was so… and Shane has never, _never_ wanted to protect someone so fiercely.  
  
He’s had friends, of course, friends he was protective of, friends he would put behind him when they got picked on at bars or whatever, all the while hoping that his imposing height would be enough because God knew he couldn’t fight… and usually, it was. Like ninety-nine times out of one hundred, and the other time, they could laugh about it later, while Shane washed the blood out of his mouth in a bus station bathroom and, later, wrapped up his sprained wrist, but that was years ago, now.  
  
And it was different, somehow. Maybe because their lives really do hang in the balance here and now, and it’s so much more awful than he ever could have imagined.  
  
“Why didn’t you drink?” he asked, breathless. God, he thinks, maybe, the trees are thinning. “Man, for some reason, I cannot picture you in college.”  
  
~  
  
Ryan takes a breath. “Remember how I said I had strict parents?” He closes his eyes and tries to think about them as they were, not how they ended. “They just kinda beat into my head that shit like that wasn’t okay… so I just… didn’t. I held myself to very high standards, I guess?” He lifts his head and a few of his hairs brush across Shane’s chin. “Why can’t you picture me in college? I almost joined a fraternity, once. I got yanked out of my room in the middle of the night and blindfolded and everything.” Shane’s wavering. Ryan can feel it in his grip. And of course he is. He’s been carrying Ryan. For god knows how long.  
   
All Ryan can do is keep talking. That’s literally all he can offer, and he’s sure, later, this is going to eat at him, probably tear him in half. But right now, in this moment, Shane is more important that his issues. “I didn’t join, though—again, because my parents. They had a hand in a lot of the shit I did and didn’t do.”  
  
~  
  
“I don’t know,” Shane says. “You— I thought you’d be different. I thought you were, before I…” he stops for a second, panting looking around. He feels lost. Everything looks unfamiliar, with the snowfall, and his heart is beating hard and insistent against his ribs. “Before I um… knew you, I guess.”  
  
He wishes he hadn’t stopped. He feels sort of stuck, like he doesn’t know how to keep going. His arms are shaking, and he takes a step, but can’t make his other foot follow. “Okay…” He can’t hold him up. Ryan’s slipping and Shane uses everything he has left to keep from just dropping him down too hard on his leg. He can’t even— he goes down, too, as soon as Ryan’s half-steady, drops down onto one knee in the snow and lets one hand sink into it up to his elbow and it is so cold. It cuts into his already-cold skin.  
  
~  
   
Ryan tries not to panic. He tries to keep it together, because if Shane’s going to collapse, then Ryan’s got to finish getting them to the road. Somehow. Shane needs him to not freak out. Shane’s fallen forward, hand down. He risks the weight on his bad leg, and it holds. “No, hey—don’t put it in the snow. Here.” He grabs Shane’s hand out of the snow so Shane kinda sags against Ryan’s chest. Ryan holds. And oh _boy_ , does his leg scream. But it’s holding. And he’s too busy being happy about that to give a shit right now.  
   
“Let’s just… let’s take five, okay? It’s fine.” He clutches Shane’s hand and presses it against his shoulder. He’s not warm, but at least it’s not snow.  
   
He tugs the bags off Shane and lets them fall into the snow. Then he catches Shane’s other arm to kind of hold him up. To keep as much of him out of the snow as possible. God, what are they going to do? If Shane needs to lie down. It’s just snow. And Shane can’t lie down in the snow. It’s too cold. Wait, there’s Jake’s shirt in the bag.  
   
He keeps checking to make sure Shane’s breathing. Fear is tearing a path through him like a sickle in a cornfield. But he keeps his voice even. “Do you need to sit down? I can get a shirt out of the bag.”  
  
~  
  
“No,” Shane says, “Don’t do that. ‘Cause then I’ll never get up again.” It almost comes out on a laugh. He squeezes his eyes shut for a second. “I’m okay,” he says, which is a lie, but he’s trying. He’s trying hard. “Can you see anything?” he asks, and he’s just shuddering, God, and he doesn’t know if it’s cold or exhaustion or something else. He tugs a hand away from Ryan’s because he has to. He presses his palm into the snow again, then presses his palm, cold, damp, against his forehead. He feels nauseous for a second but the coolness helps. He touches the snow again, presses his hand to the back of his neck, and it’s keeping him awake. “I think we’re almost… somewhere.”  
  
~  
   
He holds back his complaints as Shane puts his hands in the snow like twelve times. And then splashes himself with it like it’s pool water in July. Ryan whirls once, twice. The trees are thinning maybe. But everything’s dark, and he doesn’t know what he’s supposed to be looking for. Maybe, in the distance, there’s something. But he can’t make out what it is, or whether it’s just a change in the formation of the trees.  
   
“Uh, y-yeah. Yeah, I think so. I think I see the road.” He’s potentially telling an enormous lie, but Shane looks like he might faint. Maybe having a flicker of good news will keep him awake, or at least, if he does pass out. He’ll feel better. “You’re right. We’re almost there.”  
   
He doesn’t tug, though—doesn’t push. Shane doesn’t want to sit down for fear he won’t get back up. That doesn’t mean Ryan’s okay pushing him past his breaking point. Cold cuts through him. He shivers. But he doesn’t get to be cold right now. He doesn’t get to be anything but _focused_.  
   
Something snaps in the trees behind them. Ryan goes taut with it. His eyes wide for just a moment before he looks back at Shane. Looks at the pipe hung in the backpack. He swallows. Keeps his voice even.  
   
“Do you wanna try to go?”  
  
~  
  
“I definitely do,” he says, because he heard it, too, and he’s squinting into the darkness, but his vision’s swimming a little. He reaches for Ryan, for help, but he’s already struggling to his feet, reaching back for the pipe. He has to drag it out fast, jam it into the ground, but he cling to it, keeps himself up right. The metal is so cold. He curls his fingers in Ryan’s sweater, reaches around his waist, and he barely knows which of them is supporting which anymore.  
  
~  
   
Ryan has given his leg a giant middle finger. Shane’s leaning hard into him. So now it’s supporting him and half of Shane. And he just lets Shane think he’s supporting Ryan, or at least hope so. He jams his shoulder into Shane so he’s pushing up through the arm that’s wrapped around him. And instead of his neck, Ryan keeps his arm around Shane’s waist too. It’s easier anyway. All the reaching has left a stain of white hot fire along his bicep. He pulls one of the bags over his right shoulder and holds the other in the same hand.  
   
His leg quivers and wails at the first step. Colors spot across his vision, bend and shape the trees like a funhouse mirror. Oh, it hurts. Oh man, it hurts. Like a fucking gunshot. But adrenaline backhands it into submission like the cold hard bitch she is. He kinda wants to take the pipe, thinks he may be a better contender at this stage. But he doesn’t. Shane’s clinging to it like a safety net and Ryan can’t take it away from him.  
   
“I would drink the shit out of some whiskey right now, that’s for sure.” He stumbles a little. Keeps moving forward. Shane’s not limp against him. He’s helping. But he’s feeble as fuck. He’s used everything he’s got. It’s taking everything to keep his hand around the pipe. Ryan can see it.  
  
~  
  
He lets out this breath that’s not a laugh, but kind of more panic because the situation’s starting to really sink in now, now that he’s up and moving again, and he’s awake and frightened. He wants to look back over his shoulder, but he thinks he’ll fall. He’s scared to look back. They keep pushing forward and Shane just keeps his eyes on the ground a few feet ahead and they keep going. “Yeah… that would be…” he doesn’t finish. His chest hurts. He doesn’t know anymore if his heart’s beating this fast because he’s fucking dying or because he’s scared.  
  
He squeezes his eyes shut for a moment to clear the spots away and stumbles a little, goes down again, _damn_ , but it’s because they’ve reached an incline. The fucking road, thank God, but he’s down again, pulling Ryan down with him by accident.  
  
~  
   
The road is there—it’s the fucking road. Then Shane falls. He falls hard, and he drags Ryan down. It drags him—drags his bone, and he can almost feel the fracture falter where they’d pulled it straight. A gasp comes out of him in this spray of saliva, like a scream locked behind the bars of his teeth. He sucks it back in all jagged and wrong.  
   
“Oh,” he says, but it’s not really oh, it’s frayed at the end. With pain. With disbelief. He’s somehow still upright, and Shane’s on his knees. He almost drops too, then he hears it—the groan. He doesn’t think. Doesn’t wait. He yanks the pipe out of Shane’s hand and untangles himself.  
   
He turns, swings. The first swing hits air, nothing. Then he sees it. He catches it in the mouth. Then arcs it, up and down. Its skull crunches and squelches beneath the pipe. He doesn’t stop. Swings again. And again. Until the blood paints and soaks the snow in arcs of oozing black.  
   
“Fuck,” he pants, eyes wide as he peers back into the trees.  
   
There aren’t anymore. Not yet. They aren’t usually alone, or well, that hasn’t been his luck. But there’s nothing. Nothing but the fizz and crackle of his brain as it twists silence into storms. He’s holding the pipe so hard it hurts, staring down at this body. He doesn’t know if he’s brutalized one like this before. But he’s just hyped up on this wild, insane adrenaline that hits him punch after punch in the chest.  
  
~  
  
He’s gasping, and it’s full on fear, enough to make him twist in the snow onto his back, push away from the sound, from the groan. And Ryan just—  
  
“Fuck—” he whispers. “Let’s go. Let’s _go_.” He’s up, somehow. Thanks, adrenaline. He’s reaching for Ryan, and he doesn’t even think about the fact that Ryan’s freaked, has a pipe, just beat something to death. He takes his shoulder. “Ryan.”  
  
~  
   
Shane grabs his shoulder and Ryan almost swings it at him. Gets it under control. Doesn’t. They need to go. There will be more. “Yep,” he says. “Okay.” He grabs Shane by the arm and full on runs up the incline, to the road. And wow, it’s nice to have something solid and firm against the soles of his feet.  
   
He stops, totally lost. “Wait, okay, where are we going?” They’ve reached the road. And it’s still cold. Still dark. And nothing has magically been fixed. There aren’t any cars, any people. It’s just silence.  
  
~  
  
Shane follows him up, panting. Vaguely, he feels sick, but mostly he just feels the need to run with every rapid-fire beat of his heart. “West,” he says, and when Ryan doesn’t look enlightened, Shane says “That way,” and point right, down the road. “The other direction’s the city so… I dunno. I don’t know where we’re going.”  
  
Dread’s starting to settle in fast. He has no idea if there’s shelter that way. Or hoards or what. He has no idea. There might be nothing, ever again, for miles. But that’s better than zombies, right? He thinks it would probably be better to starve to death.  
  
And fuck, he’s pissed about the food. About losing it. And the fucking soap and everything else. “Okay,” he says, before he can dwell too long. “You ready? Let’s go.” He reaches out and takes one of the bags back from Ryan. It’s Ryan’s. He pulls it onto his back anyway.  
  
~  
   
Ryan teeters with the loss of weight. He shakes his head when it swims and starts in the direction Shane indicated. West, he said. Like Ryan knows what west fucking is. He doesn’t know what right is half the time. He’s kind of skipping along at this point, trying to stop the pain from completely overtaking his leg. He hopes he hasn’t set it back. He thinks it’s fine. The only time it hurts is when waits on it. But he misses the shovel they left at the cabin. He misses everything they left at the cabin.  
   
The bed, with Shane’s hand on his spine, on his collarbone, his neck. That spikes a bolt of warmth through him. He limps along, but quickly. Glancing back at Shane. He doesn’t stop moving as he extends the pipe. It’s Shane’s. It’s his thing. Ryan can tell it makes him feel better.  
   
“Here,” he says.  
  
  
~  
  
Shane takes the pipe, murmurs thanks, and it’s with relief. He lets Ryan do this on his own for a handful of seconds, then gets his arm around his waist again. It’s slower, a little, but it’s so much easier to walk on the road, and he’s so scared Ryan’s going to break the bone in his leg again, and it’s nice… it’s nice to have him like this. Close.  
  
And they walk. And walk.  
  
Eventually, Shane has lost all concept of time. The sky is still endlessly dark and it is so, so cold, but then Ryan’s voice slides into his thoughts. It’s so far away, he feels like he’s been fucking sleepwalking for miles. Maybe he has, and he startles a little, “What?” he asks, looking over at him. The world floods back in and he shivers. “What did you say?”  
  
But Ryan’s looking at something else, something half-off the road. It’s a… it’s a fucking bus. Like a school bus and Shane’s stomach lurches, because if there’s anything in there, he can’t imagine it’s going to be nice.  
  
Still, it’s the best they’ve got right now. The road is just road forever — stretching on and on and on and fucking on into darkness. So they go check out the fucking bus.  
  
A few of the windows are busted, but not by much. It’s a bitch to climb up the steps, and Shane’s gripping the pipe so hard. It takes an agonizingly long time to make it down to the back because there are so many places for something to hide behind in the darkness. But there’s nothing. There’s nothing at all. Not even crumpled paper or a 2B pencil or anything. And the doors still work. That’s the miracle. They figure out the mechanism and the doors just swing shut. It’s shelter at least. It’s a relief to be mostly out of the wind, but Shane’s still so cold. He sits down hard on one of the seats, opposite the driver’s. “Think it runs?” he asks, but he’s too tired to check.  
  
~  
   
Ryan’s happy with the bus. It’s something. He was starting to think they were going to be roughing it on the ground. He’s been shivering, so violently that he can’t do basic tasks. He’ll turn his eyes to look right, and they’ll leap left. His teeth clack together constantly. It’s awful. The pain is this background noise. Like the set of a scene. Important, very present, but not what’s got his attention.  
   
He slept in the snow a couple times with Jake, or, well, they tried to sleep in the snow. Mostly they just complained about how cold it was. Jake tried to sleep in a tree once. He fell out. It sucked. So Ryan’s glad for the bus. Shane’s so beat, though. He’s not excited. Ryan probably should be beat too. But he’s just going, amped up like a Drake concert. (Drake’s probably dead, he thinks. Or, maybe rich people have a secret yacht in the sky—maybe he’ll ask Shane if he thinks that’s possible, later, when he’s not fading into the ether.) Ryan’s checking the seats as Shane does. There’s nothing. He doesn’t know what he expected, but he didn’t except this much nothing.  
   
It’s probably been looted. Even though he isn’t sure that any looters would have much use for lunch boxes and seventh grade science textbooks. He certainly doesn’t. Oh, maybe it would have something about survival. Some kind of chemical reactions that makes fire or heat. Man, now he wishes he had a seventh grade science textbook.  
   
Then Shane settles into one of the seats of the bus. Is wondering if the bus runs. Ryan swings himself on the seats like a kid, down the aisle, until he’s in front of the driver’s seat. This feels a bit like mania, maybe. There’s no key in the ignition. He’s shivering still. Even out of the wind. He checks the floorboards. No keys. He has no idea how to hotwire a car. He’s pretty sure Shane doesn’t either. He looks back.  
   
“I dunno. I’m not sure how to hotwire it. There’s no keys.”  
   
He’s on one leg, rifling through the bags to pull out the extra clothes they have. It isn’t much. Jake’s shirt. A few things Shane remembered to bring. “You should sleep.” He doesn’t say we because Ryan isn’t sure he’ll ever sleep again. He’s sky high. Like he’s snorted fucking cocaine or something. He assumes this is what cocaine feels like. He’s never actually tried it.  
   
“You want me to make a bed? Should we sleep on the seats or in the aisle? The seats might be more comfortable but you have such long legs—you probably couldn’t… yeah you’d have to like, be a contortionist… is the aisle okay?”  
  
~  
  
“Yeah.” he says, hands pressed over his face. He doesn’t care. And god, now the cold’s starting to settle in as he starts to basically thaw out. His skin burns with it. “Yeah, it’s fine.” He leans forward, clinging to the back of the seat in front of him, forehead against it. “How are you so fine?” he asks. God, he feels sick. His head is pounding. “Is there… is there anything to eat?” he asks, because he thinks, vaguely, that that’s it. That maybe if he just eats something, some of this awfulness will go away. “Even those vienna sausages, I don’t care.”  
  
~  
   
Ryan’s worried. But he’s having trouble expressing it. His body is overcompensating for everything. Shivering twice as hard. Jerking every movement. Raising his voice. Speeding it up. “Yeah, yeah, there’s…” He digs through his backpack. It takes _so_ long with the shivering. All they have is a three more cans of Vienna sausages and three bags of Doritos. There’s also a bottle of water he refilled with the supply back at the cabin. He misses the cabin. He takes one of each, including the bottle, over to Shane. He can barely hold everything he’s shaking so hard.  
   
“You should drink something.” His teeth chatter between his words, and they quiver. Too much. “You’re probably dehydrated or something.” He puts the bottle next to Shane, then slides the bag of chips and the can of sausages into the seat beside him. His hands are shaking too hard to pop open the Vienna sausages so he leaves it to Shane. He has to keep moving.  
   
He grabs the shirts from the aisle, everything they’ve got, and lays them across the floor. It’s not much. He doesn’t worry about thickness. Tries to make it long enough so all of Shane will fit on it. But there’s no pillow. So little padding. He dumps the rest of his bag out near the back of the bus and bunches it into a ball to use as one.  
   
“I don’t know,” he says. It’s possible he’s going into shock. Already in shock. But he wouldn’t be able to think that if he was, right? He’s going with no. “You carried me for like a thousand miles, that’s probably why.”  
  
~  
  
He’s shivering too, as he shoves a handful of chips into his mouth because he couldn’t get the fucking can open either. His fingers are numb. And he’s watching Ryan, watching him work and, god, he’s shaking so much, and way worse than Shane is. Still he does what he’s told. He drinks some water, but not much.  
  
And then, somehow, Shane gets down there, kneels on the makeshift bed. He pulls the pipe across the metal floor after him and, winces at the sound. Then he reaches out for him. “Ryan, here, come here,” he says. “Come on.” He looks up at him, and there’s something vulnerable there, and desperate and _god_ , wanting. He feels half-starved and it’s nothing to do with food.  
  
~  
   
Ryan doesn’t look up for a long time. He’s afraid to look up, because he hears it in Shane’s voice, this swirling kind of smoke. One that will knock him straight out of the sky. He knows it. And he doesn’t know if he’s ready. To accept what he’s done to his leg—the pain gurgling beneath his surface, waiting to erupt.  To accept no more cabin. No more warmth. To see all of it without this filter of bright lights and butterflies.  
   
“Shane…” He looks up to say he doesn’t want to sleep. Can’t sleep. But there it is. That look. Ryan doesn’t stop shivering, doesn’t stop thinking, but it all screeches to a halt and turns. Like a tilt-o-whirl. Turned on Shane’s whims. Because Shane wants this and Ryan is compelled to do anything, _everything_ Shane wants—needs.  
   
His answer is weak, still high-pitched and shaking. “You don’t think someone should keep watch?” He chatters through the words. But he’s already moved a little. Already moved on Shane’s command.  
   
Because he knows, as soon as Shane touches him, he will splinter.  
  
~  
  
Ryan says his name like that and he pulls in his breath through his teeth painfully in this sharp little gasp. “We don’t have to sleep, I just want to be warm,” he says, and it comes out quivering, almost laughter, but mostly desperate, and it’s so vulnerable, but he doesn’t care. In this moment, he really Does Not Care. He’s still half reaching, but he has to draw his arm back into his chest a little because his muscles are quivering with exhaustion.  
  
Ryan is all dark-eyed and hurt and Shane can’t keep his eyes away from his chattering teeth. He wants to press his hand over Ryan’s mouth, breathe warmth into him, but he thinks he’s too cold to do it.  
  
~  
   
“Okay,” Ryan says because he has no choice. He has no say in this. It’s not that he doesn’t want it. Maybe it’s that he wants it too much. He slides towards Shane, slow, tentative. He moves so he’s sitting in front of Shane, on the shirts and blankets he’s laid out for them. The mania starts to seep out of him, and oh god, oh god his leg. It’s wrenching and ripping at pieces of him, pieces of his bone—his ribs, his chest, his skull. “Okay.” This time it’s soft, slowed, and it’s still too quiet as he continues, faster again, “We can use the backpack as a pillow—do you want me to move some of the shirts? We don’t have anything to cover us. I just wanted to make sure you didn’t have to just… lay on the aisle.”  
   
He looks up at Shane, still on his knees, over Ryan. His eyes are so wide. He can see everything. All Shane’s fear and cold and worry. Ryan takes it in, but he can’t touch first. He can’t do it. Not this time.  
  
~  
  
“Shh, I know, I know,” he says, because Ryan’s just going, just rambling, and Shane undoes his sweater, then reaches out and unzips Ryan’s, and it’s a struggle, it takes forever, and it’s all he’s looking at, as they both just shake and shake. Ryan’s teeth chattering rattles into Shane’s head and he finally gets it undone, sort of shakes it loose at the bottom, and then takes Ryan by both wrists and shifts, so that he’s sitting half between Ryan’s legs, one of his bent between Ryan’s thighs, and Ryan’s good leg between Shane’s, the broken leg on the outside, and he pulls Ryans arms around his waist, beneath his sweater. He wants to put them beneath his shirt, against his skin, but he doesn’t know if his heart can take that shock of cold yet.  
  
He does the same to Ryan, sliding one hand up Ryan’s spine, the other pulling him forward by the back of his head into Shane’s shoulder, before he get it up beneath Ryan’s sweater to join the first. He’s effectively embracing him. Maybe that’s what this is. He’s careful, even as he feels his knee — his damned too-long legs — press against Ryan through his pants. Shane pulls their chests together and it is warmer. His blood’s rushing through him, and there’s this ache, and he doesn’t know where it comes from. He lets out a sound, relief, too much, then presses his face into Ryan’s hair where he smells like winter and cold. “Oh, God.”  
  
~  
   
Ryan’s paralyzed, or at least, he isn’t moving. He’s just going with whatever Shane’s plan is. Shane’s hand up Ryan’s back skips through him, fluttering and uncertain. It matches his shiver, in this odd, impossible way. A sound skips out of Ryan’s throat—it sounds like _mmf_ wrapped in this subdued plea for something, something from Shane.  
   
His forehead presses into Shane’s shoulder, and he feels, hears the cracks—whispering through him. He feels his heart rate drop too fast. His eyelids flutter. Feels everything, all of it, all at once. Remembers that zombie under the pipe. Remembers the way his leg wobbled with his step. He comes apart, and there’s Shane—just holding him, holding him together like paper and string.  
   
His fingers press and dig into Shane’s waist, where Shane put them. They stay there. He doesn’t breathe. Shane’s all tangled in him. They’re tangled in each other. Shane’s knee presses against his pants, and Ryan feels it—god, it pounds like an earthquake in his core. He’s still shivering, but warmth trickles into him. Ryan squeezes Shane closer to him, pushes his arms further around him so Ryan’s forearms press into Shane’s spine and his hands trade places—finding the opposite side of Shane from where they started. Shane’s breath whispers over his scalp again, and Ryan can’t tell the difference between the cabin and this bus and his heated fucking house.  
   
It’s just Shane. Cocooned around him. Silvering the world to shadows.    
  
~  
  
He really doesn’t know how long they stay like that. It’s a while. He thinks he half-sleeps. He’s trying not to. He’s trying to stay awake, keep watch, because he can’t do that to Ryan, can’t have him wake up to zombies again, but it’s so hard. It’s so hard to stay awake.  
  
Eventually he stirs himself, sits up straighter because his hip, his legs are aching. He draws away from Ryan just a tiny, tiny amount, enough to detangle them a little, and he lies down on his side, and the floor is so hard even beneath the clothes. He pulls Ryan with him, because he can’t imagine doing anything else, can’t imagine losing this warmth now.  
  
Stay awake, he thinks, pulling Ryan even closer to his chest. He keeps his eyes open, staring at the sky that he can see through the bus windows. _Stay awake. Stay…_  
  
~  
   
Ryan’s in and out. The side of his face is pressed against Shane. And it’s been such a long, awful day. He comes down in this loud, shuddering crash, and then he’s just… drained. He hasn’t eaten. Hasn’t had anything to drink. Hunger pangs in his stomach. But he can’t imagine moving, so he doesn’t. He stays like that. Half-there. Until Shane starts to move again.  
   
Shane pulls him, and Ryan lets him. They’re on the floor. And it’s digging into Ryan’s shoulder so he’s a little more awake. His legs bend out, unravel, so it’s almost comfortable. As comfortable as bus aisles can be. He’s on his side, facing Shane. But Shane’s staring out the window like he’s looking for something to hold onto. Ryan moves his topmost hand, fingers never losing contact with Shane, up his back, his shoulder, skimming his neck, before he rests them on Shane’s cheek.  
   
He scoots up so his lips are at the hollow of Shane’s throat, head against his chin. He takes a quivering breath, exhales, feels it move through Shane, before he whispers, “Go to sleep, Shane.” And that vibrates too, against Shane. He closes his eyes, and his lips touch Shane’s skin, almost like a kiss. “It’s okay.”  
  
~  
  
Shane exhales shakily, and he presses his hands a little harder into Ryan’s back, like they could possibly get closer. But the words are like a light switch. Ryan’s given him permission and Shane shouldn’t let Ryan take all of this onto his own shoulders, but he can’t stop it. The world just fades out, and he’s gone.  
  
~  
   
Ryan doesn’t sleep. He _can’t_ sleep. Not in a bus. It’s just—it’s not smart. He kinda fades, a little bit, and he doesn’t move. Because Shane needs the warmth. Hell, Ryan needs the warmth. Ryan needs Shane. So he holds on. Runs his finger along Shane’s cheek, his back, as he sleeps. Shane’s trembling, and Ryan is cold, and eventually, he slides a hand down to grab his sweater—the closer one and pulls it over them. Mostly over Shane.  
   
He tenses at shadows, at noise, the wind rocking along the side of the bus. It’s not like the cabin. It’s not quiet. It’s not safe. A couple times he almost tries to get Shane up, feels the trip of his name on his tongue. But he doesn’t. Or, at least, not loud enough to wake Shane. The noise passes every time. No zombies. No women with guns at his jaw.  
   
Ryan waits for the light to shift, for morning to break. He measures it in the way his pulse throbs blasts of pain through his leg. It does, eventually. The sky turns from black to indigo to purple to pink. He doesn’t see all of it. He’s hoping he slept some. But this feels longer than the nights at the cabin. He’s not sure he did.  
   
His eyes blur and fizzle like carbonated water. Nothing happened. No one’s dead. That’s good. And Shane slept, more soundly than usual. But Ryan probably would have too if he’d carried a guy for god knows how many miles. He’s sore from the position, so he kinda works his way over onto his back. Still kinda wrapped in Shane’s arms.  
   
Sun starts to peak through the windows. Beating back the softness of dawn and giving way to too-bright white off the snow outside. Ryan rubs his eyes, stares at the bus ceiling. So many little aches flare along his joints, dipped in frost. He draws a game of tic tac toe above him, plays until he ties himself seven times, because it’s impossible to lose or win at tic tac toe when you’re playing smart people. Or if you’re playing yourself.  
   
He drops his head to the side. Shane’s still sleeping, and Ryan does not have the heart to wake him up. But he’s lonely—down to his fucking marrow—it’s so stupid because he’s lonely and it’s only been a few hours. Six, max. But there’s something about lying awake, next to someone there, but gone, that makes loneliness permeate.  
   
And maybe it’s not just that. Maybe it’s not just someone he wants to come back to him, to talk to him, maybe it’s Shane.  
  
~  
  
Shane sleeps without dreaming, but then he comes awake so, so slowly. At first. The dream slides into reality, and there’s Ryan beside him, and the cold bus floor, but then things start getting twisted and he’s colder than he was, and shit, he was supposed to stay awake.  
  
He wasn’t supposed to just leave Ryan like that. And there’s a memory of Ryan’s lips, his breath against Shane’s throat, and then a memory of that woman with the gun. The zombie in the woods. There’s the sick wet crack of the pipe on a skull, Ryan’s mouth against his throat, _Wake up_ , someone says, or he thinks they say it, and it sounds like maybe… maybe his mother, telling him to get up for school or… no. That’s not right. Maybe it’s that girl he knew, the one who was always in the library at two a.m. all semester who, one night, asked him if he wanted to split a pizza. He did.  
  
And then it’s her dorm room, and the cactus on the desk that she’d named, and he remembers how she’d struck him as very lonely and he’s in that space again, only it’s Ryan’s mouth and Ryan’s eyes and— he thinks he’s going to open his eyes to the foot of water in Jake’s grave, staring up at the sky.  
  
He’s cold.  
  
There’s a sound, maybe in the dream or maybe outside of it and Shane jolts awake, taking in a breath like he’s been held underwater.  
  
~  
   
Ryan had glanced back up at the bus ceiling when it ratchets through him—the sound. Ryan jumps. He clatters up, swings his hands back like he’s going to hit something. God damn it. It’s Shane. Waking up. He grits his teeth, grabs onto his chest, feels the way his heart beats. His teeth are still pressed together as he scoops in air like cups of water. Ryan wonders if the wind woke Shane up. It’s not exactly quiet, but it wasn’t necessarily loud enough to prompt the panic.  
   
He’s glad he’s up, either way, because he’s still shivering and kind of miserable with the loneliness that’s latched onto him. He blinks. It feels like he’s blinking over cracked glass. He touches Shane’s shoulder, tentatively.  
   
“Hey, it’s okay. You’re okay.”  
   
~  
  
Shane sort of grabs at him, half sitting up, and his eyes find Ryan’s and then he registers the words and something floods strange and hot through him, almost guilty, because what was that dream?  
  
“Sorry,” he says, catches his breath. “Sorry—” his breath feels like it’s bouncing around his chest like a pinball. It’s horrible. He drops back, eyes the bus ceiling, breathing fast. “Wow, fuck, sorry. Did I wake you up?” He meets his eyes.  
  
He feels all gross, all twisted inside. He’s freezing. His skin is crawling because he feels like there was something just at the edge of that dream. Jake, the back of his head broken open, or maybe just the danger outside, the danger all around them right now. The wind is kind of wailing around the bus in this unnerving way. His breath shakes as he draws it in. That gross feeling mixes with something hotter, closer. His eyes flicker to Ryan’s mouth and he wonders if he imagined that last night, if he dreamt it. Jesus, he’s half-hard now, what the hell. It mixes badly with the fear, the panic. He tastes salt and something bitter and his lips are very dry.  
  
~  
   
Shane looks like he just woke up from a god awful dream. Ryan’s eyes crinkle like aluminum foil when he smiles because he’s so damn tired. “No,” he says, and doesn’t go any further than that. Because it’s already hoarse and cracked. God, why does Shane look like this? Like they just got away from that stupid zombie all over again.  
   
Ryan doesn’t have the energy to figure it out. To slot into the right places to make this easier. To fix this. “You okay? You look like you just had one fucked up nightmare…” He sits up, because Shane’s up now, so he doesn’t have to lie there anymore. Oh, god, his back. His back fucking hurts.  
   
He leans over to see where they’ve left the food, the water. It’s not that far away. But he’s got to reteach his muscles how to move. He thinks moving away from Shane and the sweater is going to make him even colder. Some part of him thinks about lying back down.  
  
~  
  
“I did,” he says, squinting at him, rolling over a little to face him, drawing his legs up.  
  
He doesn’t ask _How long have you been up?_ because he knows the answer, and he doesn’t want to fight about it. He follows Ryan’s gaze. “Yeah—… okay,” he says, because they should eat. He thinks he can probably reach that, and so he tries, because he’s taller. His arms scream in protest and he makes a little grunt of pain. “Should’ve— maybe I should’ve taken that gym membership. I think it was thirty percent off, too. Damn.” He gets the corner of the chip bag, pulls it closer. He hardly ate any last night, but the water’s a centimetre too far away.  
  
Ridiculous. He moves to get up and cracks his shoulder off one of the seats. “Ow, jesus. Ow.”  
  
~  
   
Ryan laughs, but it’s hoarse like the rest of him. And it’s not real. He can’t quite work out a real laugh yet. He means it, but it isn’t real—maybe isn’t as genuine as it usually is. He sits up and gets up on his good leg to grab the water and the chip bag Shane’s moved. He offers the water to Shane. He’s thirsty, but he knows how sleeping makes thirst worse. “They always get you with the discounts. Then they jack it up when you’re least expecting it.” He’s really gentle. Because he feels like he needs to be. Or maybe he’s just too tired to be anything else. “Take it easy, here.”  
  
~  
  
“I had some of this already,” he says, and pushes the water back at him. He eats a chip. It’s cold. It tastes and feels like sandpaper in his mouth. He sits up, carefully, so he doesn’t choke to death. He’s not really looking at him, still caught up in that dream, still elsewhere. But that’s not fair. He’s already left Ryan along for how long. He reaches up and scrubs at his eyes, trying to bring himself back to this place. “If you want to sleep now, you should try. I can stay up.”  
  
~  
  
Ryan rolls his eyes. "You had some forever ago. There's like inches of water out there, frozen. You can have more." He drinks though. Because he feels them inching towards a fight, and god, he just wants to curl up in Shane like before. Not fight. Anything but fight. He doesn't get why why Shane is so prickly now. Maybe his dreams. "I'm okay. I slept some." This is so awkward. He tugs at a stay fabric on his jeans, gnaws on his lip. He keeps sneaking glances at Shane like he's a velociraptor. He tries for playful again. "Someone's grouchy."  
  
~  
  
“Grouch—” he laughs and it’s startled out of him, this genuine thing that bubbles up from inside him. That’s something of a relief. He holds out the chip bag to him. “Yeah,” he agrees. “Maybe.” He meets his eyes properly, finally and smiles at him a little. “Here, finish these, I’m feeling like I could really go for something we haven’t had in a while. Like vienna sausages. Yum yum.”  
  
He reaches out, a little more careful and coordinated this time, and pulls the tin towards him.  
  
~  
  
Ryan wrinkles his nose at the sausages. There's something about them that just does not work for repeated usage. He eats the chips slowly. Still watching Shane. Drawing nerves into his stomach like a lightning rod. Shane laughed. But he admitted feeling grouchy and Ryan is so scared because he doesn't know how to fix it. "I'm really excited to check sleep on floor of bus off my bucket list. It was definitely in the top five."The chips sit odd on his stomach. He's kinda nauseated. But he eats them because that's what Shane told him to do. And he is critical levels of hungry.  
  
~  
  
He eats the sausages as quickly as he can because he’s so sick of them. He reaches for the water to wash them down and uses a significant amount of energy not to gag. He blinks literal tears of disgust away and then pushes his fingers through his hair.  
  
“Yeah,” he says, playing along. He looks around them. “I would have preferred a greyhound bus, I think,” he says. “Or maybe like a… just a nice hippie wagon, but this will do.” He looks back at him, subconsciously brushes his thumb against the hollow of his own throat, but his hands are cold, so it just makes him shiver. “Hey, how…— Aren’t you cold?” he asks, changing the question halfway through, but the pause is obvious. Maybe everything he’s going to say is obvious. He wonders if it’s obvious to Ryan what he was dreaming about, and settles on probably not.  
  
~  
  
He laughs softly. “Jeez, well, okay, I’m sorry this bus isn’t up to your _standards_. Next time I’ll try to find us a limo.”  
  
Ryan’s insides buzz with energy. He scrapes his fingers against his jeans. He watches as Shane touches the hollow of his throat, the same place Ryan… oh, fuck. Oh fuck oh fuck oh fuck. Is that why Shane’s pissed off? The buzz grows to hive. Too loud. It’s like the mania from yesterday, but focused. He’s staring at Shane, wanting something, needing it. And afraid to reach for it. Because he’s afraid of what happens if it’s not there. It’s like the second in the middle of a joke, where he knows no one is listening and it sucks.  
  
He doesn’t get Shane is the thing. Shane’s all touches one second and shadows the next. But Ryan is always touches and maybe lips on his throat is where Shane draws the line. And who wouldn’t? _Fuck_. Shane starts to say something, to ask _how_ , but he changes it. He changes it to ask about the cold and Ryan shivers hard enough it rocks his shoulders. He’s been cold. It’s taken root in him like a second heartbeat.  
  
He scoots a little closer, even under the possibility of the mistake. “I’ve decided to stop thinking of cold as a physical phenomena and started thinking of it as a character trait.” He half-smiles. It’s crooked around his teeth. “So, yes.”  
  
~  
  
He laughs, and it sounds almost mischievous somehow, wicked in his delight. “Yeah,” he says, “ _Apocalypse_. Fuck _you_. ‘Cold as a character trait’,” he says, working the words over slowly in his mouth. “I love it,” he tells him, and he’s not joking anymore, really. He’s all caught up in how much he thinks that’s brilliant. It sweeps through him, warm and overwhelming, and he’s just smiling at Ryan so hard, so unguarded, before he quickly glances away and chuckles softly. “Nice, that’s good,” he says, softer, and it’s just all this praise he’s not used to giving because he doesn’t know what to do with this other feeling inside him, the one he felt last night — all fierce protection — only now it’s softer and calmer but still filling every inch of him, and he doesn’t know what to call it when it’s like that, so he calls it protection, still.  
  
“C’mere,” he says, and reaches out. He finds the sweater Ryan had put over them — over _him_ , and thinks maybe they can kind of use it as a really tiny blanket, and he’s not looking at Ryan when his fingers brush the outside of his wrist. He doesn’t pull him, though, not like last night. He doesn’t really have excuses anymore. Reasons, he corrects. Last night they probably would have frozen to death or something. Now… now cold is just a discomfort, a character trait, at least until they set out again, or the weather shifts or…  
  
They’ll have to find a new shelter today, he thinks, then blinks and he’s back to here and now, and his fingers are still on Ryan’s wrist because he hasn’t drawn away.  
  
~  
   
Ryan’s skin hums and he says, “thanks,” so it shimmers into a smile, and it’s lit up like a thousand Christmas lights. It’s not just the smile. It’s all of him. Burned bright with an almost intoxicated triumph. Because his stupid bullshit worked. At least for now. Shane doesn’t look like he’s about to fall apart. His fingers brush Ryan’s wrist. It’s not a grab. He’s not pulling, but he’s asking. Maybe. Ryan realizes, he’s been working towards this. Everything he’s done has been this race to get this Shane back—this one that’s okay with intimacy and touching. He’s almost panting with the effort. Breathless.  
   
Shane says _c’mere_ , and it flutters through Ryan like Shane’s hand on his back last night. Ryan slides against Shane so their thighs press into each other. The closeness and the contact twinkle through the lights Shane’s blinked on inside of him. He bites one side of his lip and glances at the sweater.  
   
His eyes jump to Shane’s hands, then up to his face. He’s nervous in this weird, unapocalyptic way. Like him and Shane just got home from a movie and he’s trying to figure out where to go from here. What’s okay. What isn’t.  
   
_So, a date?_  
   
No. No, not like a date—just a… first time friendship thing. Or maybe a date. He doesn’t even care. His brain is still exhausted from not sleeping. Insomnia stings his throat like a bad after taste. And he thinks the only way to stop it would be to put his mouth on Shane’s, and _god damn it, Ryan._  
   
“Speaking of character traits, I’m starting to think you’re naturally bossy.”  
  
~  
  
Shane’s lowers his eyes to all the places they’re touching, and he’s tensed, can’t help it, doesn’t know if he knows how not to, when they’re surrounded by daylight like this. His tongue flicks out against the dry, peeling skin of his lips and he feels… gross and tired and pale, and his hair is hanging, unwashed, into his eyes.  
  
He inhales through his nose and pushes his hair back again and half-wants to find that position they had last night, but that is so intimate now, and it twists and twists in his stomach until his breath shakes free from his lungs and out into the air between them.  
  
_I’m starting to think you’re naturally bossy._  
  
“I think that might be true,” Shane admits, still not looking at him, but his fingers catch hold of the zipper, chill against his palm, of Ryan’s sweater, and he sort of closes it in his fist. He thinks Ryan would be warmer if he zipped it up, but then last night… “I should have said ‘Please, come here?’ is that what you want?” he asks, and tugs Ryan’s sweater. There’s one quick glance up at Ryan’s face. Is this something they can do? He doesn’t want to lie down again. The floor is hard, and the cold seeps through the clothes they’ve laid out.  
  
Shane shifts, folding his legs so they’re sort of tangled in one another again, still both sitting up, and in the darkness, in his desperation and fear, it was easy to slide his hands beneath the cloth and slide them up Ryan’s back, but now it feels impossible, but he wants it, he thinks.  
  
“Here, are we doing this thing?” he asks.  
  
~  
   
Ryan isn’t sure what _this thing_ is. Shane’s tugging on him, on his sweater. He wonders if maybe they should get into one of the bus seats if they’re going to… huddle for warmth, cuddle? Is that what this is? Jesus, he’s steering his mind away from that. But no—Shane’s too much for a bus seat. There would be too much leg. But god, the little ridges in the bus floor at hurt like hell.  
   
“No,” he says. “Don’t say please.”  
   
It’s deliberate, hissed sharp like it’s grated through his teeth. He shifts into Shane’s pull, lets one hand drop to Shane’s hip. The feeling bounces and whips through him like an electric shock. He has no clue what he’s doing, really. He just kinda falls against Shane’s chest and glances up, but Shane’s looking down and their mouths and faces and everything are way too close.    
  
He slips a hand under, under Shane’s sweater, but it nips his skin where his shirt’s ridden. It’s a bite of warmth, but he knows Shane’s getting the opposite. “Shit, sorry.”  
   
~  
  
He hissed softly when Ryan touched his hip, but, ah, God, then he’s right there and there’s a shock of cold against his back and he gasps again, and he needs to exhale, probably, at some point. “You son of a bitch,” he says, and the words come out slightly choked, and he gets both hands beneath Ryan’s sweater, beneath his shirt and slides them up his back, merciless, cold — but nowhere near as cold as last night. And he’s got him now, and he doesn’t give him room to pull back because fuck, his skin is warm. It feels hot against Shane’s hands, and he can feel the flutter and shift of muscles beneath his palms and it’s—  
  
He pants softly, can’t seem to catch his breath right.  
  
~  
   
Ryan gasps, groans—Shane’s hand are fucking ice. It’s like knives in his back. And he can’t even bring himself to hate it, but he also can’t bring himself to like it—and he definitely can’t bring himself to pull away from it. He arcs into it, away from it, just this whole oscillation of movement until he ends back where he was. Shane’s got him at a kind of awkward angle where he’s half leaned one way, and his legs are sprawled out in another.  
   
He squirms and wraps his hand around Shane’s back. This time, it’s intentional when he slides under his shirt and slams his palms into Shane’s skin. Shane’s skin feels maybe hotter than before, and Ryan’s so aware of how close the bone is to the surface of his skin. The shape of him.  
   
“You’re a douche,” he says, and it’s muffled against Shane’s chest, and when he laughs, that’s against his chest too.  
  
~  
  
“Ah!” He muffles the next sound against Ryan’s shoulder, because they’re not exactly safe out here, and he has to remember that. Can’t forget it, really.  
  
But just for a second…  
  
He laughs softly, goosebumps rising all over him, and his lips are against Ryan’s sweater, and he can feel the soft scrape of it. And he just takes a second, breathing there against him, then lifts his head, and it’s so cold on his face, against his mouth so he turns it into Ryan’s hair. “Why can’t I say please?” he asks, breath sliding against Ryan’s jaw and back against his own lips, and there are so many more words, jokes, teasing things bubbling up in his chest, but he holds them back, because he wants to know. He wants to feel the vibrations of Ryan’s voice against his own ribs again.  
  
~  
   
Ryan shudders when Shane’s voice curls into his hair, along his jaw. It’s so different from the way he shivers from the cold. It’s alive like a charged circuit. This thrum of life. He pulls Shane closer, because he doesn’t want to have to like him. Buries his forehead even as he pulls his mouth away in a gasp.  
   
“Because it’s easier,” and shit, he did not mean for that to sound so honest. Even as the gasp, the words, batter against Shane’s chest. It’s way too open, and now it’s just hanging in the air like blaze of fire about to burn out. All he can do is keep going. “When I don’t have to think about it.”  
   
Shane’s heartbeat claps through him. He cannot look at Shane right now. If he does, he’s going to explode, from embarrassment, from the heat in his face, the strain below his waist, from everything he’s ever done. He laughs, and it’s hard and hot and breathy so he has to turn his head, press his cheek into Shane for a second before he digs his face into Shane’s shirt again.  
  
~  
  
Oh, Shane thinks, and maybe he says it, too. “Oh.”

So Ryan doesn’t want to think about it. Something sharp just cuts straight through him, but he’s not so sure it’s a good kind of heat but he thinks, maybe, things — pieces — things he didn’t understand, they’re starting to fall into place. It hurts, a little. Maybe more than it should. But he knew this might happen. He’d tried to be prepared for it.  
  
But, “Okay,” he says, because he’s been quiet too long. But he thinks, maybe, he knows what to do now. Knows it better. He gets one hand out from beneath Ryan’s shirt and runs it over his dark hair. “Then don’t think about it.”  
  
~

Shane's moving. There's hesitation that Ryan does think about. He hopes Shane doesn't think he means about him. About Shane. Because he can't stop thinking about Shane."Shane," he says and he pulls back looks up. He slips his hand around and up Shane's front, still on his doin. He isn't sure where to go next. What to say. His hand skates long Shane's jaw. Meets his eyes despite every cell in his body bucking against it.

"Tell me what you want."  
  
~  
  
He meets Ryan’s eyes and somehow he’s so still, despite everything in him fighting, _pleading_ , that he surge forward, get Ryan’s mouth pressed beneath his, and he thinks _kiss me, kiss me, I need you to_ but he can’t say it, because he thinks Ryan will balk. He thinks Ryan is somewhere between denial and understanding, and it’s all tangled in his own fucking chest, and in his fast-beating heart, and Shane can see it pounding and pounding beneath Ryan’s skin, just at his throat, just beneath his jaw, there...

And he makes this soft uncertain sound and shrugs one shoulder, then half smiles, thinks _sorry, Ryan, sorry_ , because he can’t say what he wants, and he doesn’t even know how to make it into words, and so he leans down, and slides his mouth, warm and open, over Ryan’s skin, and touches his tongue to that rapid-flutter beat. Kisses him there instead. Breathes him in.  
  
~  
  
Shane doesn't answer. He shrugs and it's so enchanting. It draws Ryan in so he's still looking, thinking, thinking about it when Shane's mouth hits his neck. A gasp shakes loose. Ryan draws in so much air. It detonates through him. His hand yanks free and finds Shane's hair, his head. God, his hair is soft.

_God help me._

Ryan's hand twists in Shane's hair. He whimpers. Shane's lips, his tongue, are all heat and damp. All warm breath tearing into Ryan, through him. His tongue is slick and soft and sweet. "Fu--" He whines, begs maybe. "Oh." He's out of breath. " _Oh._ "

His hand glides so he's gripping Shane's neck. The other clenches hard again his hip as Ryan pushes forward with his thighs so he's against Shane. Squeezing. It's warm. Fuck, it's warm.  
  
~  
  
He opens his mouth again, feels Ryan’s voice vibrate against his lips, and then Ryan presses forward, and it’s so instinctive and so inappropriate when Shane reaches down and catches hold of Ryan’s hip, the back of his thigh, and tugs him closer, almost into his lap. He knows he shouldn’t.

He’s careful of his leg, he’s always careful of it, always so aware. And usually he’s careful with Ryan, too, with how close he is to this precipice, all the time, the one that Shane doesn’t quite understand.

And so he always pulls back. He pulls back so that Ryan can, but this definitely isn’t that. Now, Shane pulls him close and gets one arm wound around his back, and his breath shudders out of him on this shaking, desperate note, and he hisses softly against Ryan’s throat, because fuck— it’s a mistake, it has to be a mistake—  
  
~  
  
Ryan thinks he hears himself groan again. It's weird, but he feels this uncertainty in Shane. This thing that changes their trajectory. And Ryan doesn't want it to change. He'll do this on his own if he has to. Even if it means the liquid honey rolling through his throat, his chest, has to stop. Its flutters of wings and hums in a beehive. It's ruining him.

He fists his hands in Shane's hair and yanks, just enough, so he can bend his neck and bite. His teeth sink, quiet and fierce, into the crook where Shane's neck meets his shoulder. He kisses it, lips violent and careful, all at once. His tongue slides over the ridges, wet and hungry.

_Don't leave. Not this time. I will do anything. Just don't leave yet._

~  
  
He makes this sharp little sound that’s half shock and half fear, and his hands flutter, stop touching, then grip Ryan’s hips, hold him tight. He’s tense against how badly he wants to tug him against his own hips as heat floods him, pooling in his lower stomach, between his thighs.

“R—,” he starts to say his name but cuts himself off, squeezes his eyes shut, just gasps. _Jesus_ , he thinks, _oh_.  
  
~

Ryan likes it. Kinda. The way Shane reacts. The way he can't pull away. It's working. In this weird way. He trails his lips around, down to Shane's collarbone. Soft, slick, all broken pants on smooth collarbone. His tongue pulls back so its just the wet touch of his lips along the deep jut of Shane's bones. The velvet of his skin. All frail and stretched thin. Breath breaks Ryan's lips and licks along  Shane's skin. His fingers twitch and writhe in Shane's hair, on his hip.

He whispers against Shane. His fingers scale the length of his spine. Ryan's lost himself and he doesn't even care. He just breathes.

_Stop me, I dare you._

~  
  
He’s shuddering, hard enough that his teeth rattle, and so he clenches them together. His knees, his shins are painful against the floor of the bus and the shirts and things are all bunched and awkward beneath him, but he hardly cares.He slides his hands from Ryan’s hips, down the outsides of his thighs, and back up, palms spreading over the tops of them, and he’s leaning back a little to balance their weight, not to pull away, because he’s just arched his throat for Ryan, Do anything, bite me again, I don’t care.  
  
~  
  
Shane's exposing his throat. It's so long. It emphasizes the bones. Ryan glides up so his tongue clips the hollow of Shane's throat. His hand slips down, down until he finds Shane's spine.

His teeth scrapes along Shane's neck, his jaw. Then Ryan whispers, almost smiling, at the top of Shane's adam's apple. He pushes, twists one leg sideways. Knee up. Until he shoves Shane against the bus seat.

His smile tips wide, barks teeth and breath against the softness where Shane's neck meets his jaw.

"So you _can_ cooperate." It vibrates through him, through Shane. His lips still turned, smiling, as he mutters into Shane. The skin of his throat.

~  
  
He’s reeling, aligning his spine along the bus seat, and when Ryan speaks, it flares through him, and he can hear the grin in his voice. Shane laughs, breathless, almost a cough.

“Only when I feel like it.” He gets his fingers beneath Ryan’s shirt at his stomach and slides them over his hips, and he almost smiles. Mostly it’s in his eyes. “What else ya got?” he asks, but he’s edging around this again, wondering when he’s going to need to shut it down.  
  
~  
  
Shane keeps pushing. Ryan's laughs. It buzzes against Shane. He's so torn, shredded. Part of him falters. He's thinking about what it means. What it is.

 _Whatever_.

He curls around so his head nestles into the side of Shane neck. Beneath his jaw. He holds Shane with both hands, one on his neck, the other the small of his back. He nestles into Shane. Into the warmth. Mouth still again bones of Shane's neck.

"You're so warm," he breathes.  
  
~  
  
He exhales, shivers once like he can shake this desperation out, and lets the heat pounding through him settle into his skin, smooth as glass.  
  
He settles his chin on Ryan’s hair, gets one arm along the length of Ryan’s spine, the other around the small of his back, holding him there against him. “Is this cuddles?” He asks and his breath stirs that dark hair briefly. Shane’s eyes are on the sky again, and he slides his thumb over the hard bump of vertebrae at the top of Ryan’s spine, “or are we still roughhousing?” He smiles despite himself, teasing, but it flickers out too fast.

They’re not safe here, he remembers, even though, _God_ , he feels it.  
  
~  
  
He pulls out. Not quite panicked, but not quite not panicked. He’s all red and yellows. An emergency. But it doesn’t matter. The cold is swept up in this want, this fondness, that’s coursing through him as he looks at Shane. As Shane’s arm rests cold and familiar against Ryan’s spine.  
  
He catches Shane along the jaw. Thumbs just short of his cheekbones. He lips his lips and pulls back, then pulls forward, so their lips are close--so wildly close. Ryan doesn’t know what to do with it. It kindles and bursts in him. His mouth drifts close, so close, so Shane’s lips. He can tastes the cold salt of his breath. The sweat of it. Then he skims his lips along his jaw, Shane’s jaw, and says into his ear:  
  
“Up to you.”  
  
~  
  
He really thinks Ryan will kiss him. He can almost imagine the warmth of his mouth, _You are going to kill me, I know it_ , he thinks, and waits for Ryan to speak against his ear before he trusts himself to close his eyes, trusts what might come after he does.

He strokes the place between Ryan’s shoulder blades softly. “I... I could probably stay like this for entire days,” he admits, “but, I think we should find somewhere safer. Then maybe I’ll beat you at arm wrestling or whatever it is that, uh, gets you off.”

He’s trying to make it light, but there it is. The coldness of reality, their realty, slips in again, through all the cracks still left between them.  
  
~  
  
   
Shane’s right. It drags him back to reality too fast. To the cold. The harshness of the bus. And he knows Shane’s right. But he hates it. He pulls back. Pants. He’s panting too much to be normal, but he nods. Okay. He nods. He’s still clutching Shane, but he slowly starts to untether his fingers, pulls them to him, backwards. He eases back, and god, it’s _cold_.  
   
“Yeah,” he says. Because Shane’s right. Somehow the back half of it feels so dismissive, so shattering. He slides away faster, too fast. He meets Shane’s eyes, because he feels like he should. “You’re right.”  
  
~  
  
He feels the cold sweep in, winces but then Ryan’s eyes are on his and he meets them. “I’m not...” _trying to make excuses_ he thinks, but he is. He’s scared. He’s scared of what Ryan thinks, or what he thinks he does, or what he will think, eventually, and Shane’s scared to get too tangled up in it.

“I really...” he doesn’t know how to finish. “I won’t be long,” he says, looking away, jumping into action. “I’m just going to go to the top of the road and see if I can see anything. So... if you need me, shout. Okay? Don’t leave the bus.” He’s bossing him again. “Please.”

 _Damn_.  
  
He stands anyway, picks up the pipe.  
  
~  
  
Ryan just nods. It’s weird. It’s weirdly cold without Shane. He hides his shiver the best he can as he looks at him. This sucks. He doesn’t get Shane. Like he’s walking a tight rope. He wishes he could just ask. Ask what Shane wants, what he needs, what Ryan has to do to keep this from turning off and on. But, he knows, he can’t. That might take changing the state of the world. He can’t even blame Shane for being half-there. Half-gone. Ryan drops his eyes.  
   
Shane leaves, and the quietness, the silence, wears on Ryan faster than his insomnia did. He slides up onto one of the bus seats and listens. He hates it. It’s like in the cabin, but worse, way worse. He’s a sitting duck. With his dumb leg. He should’ve stopped Shane. Done something differently. He knows he can walk on his leg now. Ryan could’ve helped. Could’ve contributed in some way instead of hiding inside the bus.  
   
Either way, he has to move. He can’t just sit here. So he busies himself with the stuff he’s emptied out of his backpack.  
   
He organizes it into piles. Food, clothes, and nonsense. Because that’s what half of it is. It’s nonsense. As much as this nagging fear—this voice—keeps saying, _you’re useless, he should kill you_ , is. More time passes, and Ryan’s restless. He wants to get out of the bus. Help Shane. God, he just wants to be useful.  
   
Instead, he tries to do what he’s told. He knows his leg is still hurt, maybe worse after yesterday. He knows he’s cold, nightmarishly freezing, in the way he shivers. In the way it’s hard to make his fingers move under his command. It’s best to stay in the bus. Shane is trying to look out for him. But maybe he’d go further, do more, if Ryan wasn’t such a piece of shit. Ryan scoots over to Shane’s bag and starts digging through it.  
   
A flag flutters in his mind. About privacy. But it shouldn’t matter. Honestly, what does Ryan have in his bag? Literally nothing but hats and shirts and food. And he’s okay with giving any of it to Shane. He needs to organize this. First, it’s just the map. All crinkled and broken. Ryan sets it gingerly on one of the seats. Shane knows how to read it. Then the razor, some clothes, no food—Shane couldn’t get any food. He had to save Ryan’s ass.  
  
But at the bottom, metal snaps hard against his palm. He starts, almost afraid, then wraps his hand around it. It’s heavy, but it comes up—up, through the bag. He doesn’t really know what he’s looking at, like his brain’s blacked out. Then he yelps and squeezes around the handle. A handgun. Shane has a gun. There’s guilt, instant and hot, and Ryan knows he shouldn’t have gone through Shane’s things without asking.  
   
He can hear it now. Shane’s excuses, reasoning for having Ryan avoid it, reasons for being mad that Ryan went through his bag. _But why?_ Because he doesn’t trust Ryan. Anger comes late. Behind this heart-wrenching sadness. He feels unsure, lost, because it means Shane really, honestly, doesn’t trust him. Okay, there was the way he pulled away like Ryan might hurt him. The weirdness. But none of it was as blatant as this. Frost pierces worse through his shoulders. He shivers. He doesn’t know what to do. If he has a right to bring it up to Shane, or if Shane will just yell at him for snooping.  
   
Ryan’s mad. God, it’s so unfair. It’s so monumentally unfair that Shane’s got a gun and didn’t think Ryan was _worth it_ enough to tell him. So Ryan’s right. He’s a charity case, at best, something to use as fucking canon-fodder at worst. He snarls, this angry, roar of a sound and drops the gun. He doesn’t want to look at it anymore. Doesn’t want to think about how this drags a dagger through the tentative relationship they have. Now Ryan has to be angry, _offended_ —all these things that he doesn’t want to be, all these things he doesn’t have the energy to be. He just wants to hold onto Shane. That’s all. But he can’t. Not now.  
   
He kicks Shane’s backpack under the bus seat, away from him. He doesn’t know how to be mad, what to say, what to even do. He doesn’t even know Shane. But he trusted him. With his life. Ryan trusted—maybe still trusts—Shane. He cares about Shane, more than cares, in this bone-wrenching, life-shattering way. And he knows—this proves it—Shane doesn’t trust him. Ryan is expendable. _Fuck_. Shane let him lie to that girl with the gun.  
   
_Who even is Shane?_  
   
Ryan doesn’t know. He just knows that his heart, even angry, even screaming, wants to curl around him. Beg Shane for some kind of solace. Some kind of reasoning that makes this okay. That proves that, no, Shane does care. Shane just didn’t know how to tell him. But Shane let him lie. Shane saw that gun to Ryan’s cheek, his jaw, and let Ryan lie about having guns.  
   
But Shane had also come out. Tried to stop that woman, Renee, from killing Ryan.  
   
But he hadn’t said anything else. He’d been slow, unsteady. Sure, he didn’t want Ryan to die, but that didn’t mean much beyond the fact that he was a basic human being. No one wants to see someone get their head exploded in front of them. It’s a natural thing. It doesn’t mean Ryan means anything to Shane. And the touching—well, Ryan doesn’t know how to explain that. Other than Shane always seems to be the one that stops it, that keeps it from going further. Maybe it’s for warmth. Maybe it’s to fill a need that everyone has. Maybe Ryan is honestly, legitimately, a means to an end. A strange convenience.  
   
That hurts. God, that rips through him like a fucking cyclone.  
   
Ryan’s pissed off. Or maybe he’s just sad, and letting pissed off take its place. Shane’s still not back. Ryan doesn’t know how long it’s been either. He’s so consumed with this crack that’s driving through his chest. Starting to take control of him. He’s gripped with need, rage, to do something contrary. To show Shane’s he’s not just some _tool_ , or some half-person he can use and throw away.  
   
Ryan yanks open the bus doors, half stumbles down the stairs, but he gets outside. He can’t yell. Even if he’s mad, he isn’t stupid enough to start screaming Shane’s name and getting Shane hurt. He walks away from the bus. His shoes crunch in the snow, sink deep, and the wet creeps into his shoes and shakes him. Numb. Sore. He’s cold. He shouldn’t be, when he’s trying to find Shane, when he’s so turned up to ten he doesn’t know what to do. But he is.  
   
He can’t find Shane. He’s just wandering. Hanging around the bus because he doesn’t have a weapon, and he’s not stupid enough to think that doesn’t matter. Even if it doesn’t matter to Shane. Ryan doesn’t want to die. He doesn’t. But where _is_ Shane?  
   
This sick kind of half-worry, half-irritation, plows into him. It makes him almost sick to his stomach. He’s so lost in it, so hooked on this roar of worry and panic, that he doesn’t notice the groan—the half-hiss that doesn’t belong to him until it takes a swipe.  
   
It catches him in the chest, and god, it’s a thud. It’s so close. It’s right on him. Like a friend at a party. This weird, normal closeness, that’s violated by this click and snarl of this thing’s jaw. A monster in a mask. Coming so close Ryan, for just a moment, thought it was okay. It was normal. He can’t believe how _right there_ it is. A zombie. All half-detached jaw and eyes that don’t really look at him.  
   
“Shit!” It barely comes out of him as he hits the ground, arms wind-milling as he staggers. He slams a foot out, into what should be its groin and scrambles away, back. Towards the bus. He just needs to get back to the bus.  
   
But there’s a group of them. Three. He has to duck and trip into the snow, onto his side, to avoid the bite of a second one. He’s so fucked. He’s so absolutely and completely fucked. He has nothing. He left the fucking bus with nothing, and the bus door is past one of these lumbering fucks. He should probably cry out, cry for help, but he’s mad. He’s mad, and it makes him even madder at these stupid zombies. For interrupting him. For making this hard.  
   
He digs through the snow with his hands. God, it’s so cold. His fingers sizzle with this angry kind of iced heat before they go numb. But Ryan still feels his left hand jam against a rock caught under the snow. He shakes it loose, swings it wide at the first one. It falls as Ryan pushes himself up and darts by it. Broken leg screaming. God, he should’ve brought the gun. He doesn’t know how many bullets it has or how pissed Shane would be if he used them, but it was so stupid to leave it on the _bus_. He catches the back of its skull as he moves, and it goes down hard, in a _crunch_. He doesn’t stop to check, leaps for the door.  
   
He catches the edge of it, swung wide, waiting for someone to come back in. He’s halfway up when one of the other two catches onto his ankle. His good ankle, thank god, and pulls him. He fights it, reaches for the handle that’ll swing the door shut, but it doesn’t work. The zombie pulls too hard and he’s in free-fall. His head slams into the second stair, and the word spins and sings. He has the good sense to swing again. Misses once and kicks, hits, but the thing only staggers.  
   
It lurches again, in this nasty, bone-curdling screech, and Ryan extends a leg against it’s chest. Keeping it’s bite back. The third and last one is slowly creeping towards him. He needs to get the door closed. Get back into the bus. But his head is swimming. It’s hurting so bad that his vision keeps popping new colors into his line of sight, distorting everything. He can barely hear—barely breathe, and his injured leg drags on the rest of him. Tugs him down.  
   
Too far down. Where all that’s there is the scrape and hurt of his head. He keeps his leg extended, because he knows, distantly, that letting it get close will kill him. But he’s so faded that it takes all of him to remind himself, again and again, that he _has_ to.  
  
~  
  
Shane turns around when he hears the sound. It comes to him almost ghostly, and he thinks that if it wasn’t for a break in the wind’s insistent freezing gusts, right at that moment, he wouldn’t have heard it at all.And so he starts running. He doesn’t even look around, he’s just got to get back to the bus, back to Ryan. He comes up in the wrong side, but there’s this noise, this wet, growling, snarling sound and he thinks— _God— no._

He can’t think about what it might be doing to Ryan. He practically trips over one of them as he rounds the bus but that doesn’t matter. A sound wrenches up and out of him because he can’t see Ryan, can’t see his face, can’t see if he’s okay or not, he just knows that that thing’s practically on top of him.

It rounds on him as he approaches. He almost loses his footing as he tries to stop, and it’s like a botched sword fight. Shane slips on a slick patch of road beneath the snow and the zombie pulls away from Ryan for something easier, maybe. Shane only has time to get the pipe up in front of his face and the zombie collides with it. It feels like the pipe’s slammed with the force of a professional baseball player’s bat. Shane’s shoulders crash into the road but he keeps his head up.

He hadn’t pulled his bandana up. The thing’s got its mouth wrapped around the pipe, slowly letting go like it’s realizing this isn’t flesh. Long black oozing strings of drool and blood and bits of— god, maybe people, maybe Ryan— drip onto Shane’s face, his cheek, into his hair. He squeezes his eyes and mouth shut and kicks, tries to roll it off, and somehow he does, kneels over its wasted body. He brings the pipe down, two handed, across its gaping-mawed face again and again, until his knuckles scrape bloody against the road.

Later, he’ll figure he’s lucky that it didn’t have much blood and bile in its head because none of it leaked out into the cuts.

“Ryan—" he staggers up, covered in snow. He wipes at the black stuff on his face with his sleeve, moves unsteadily towards the bus. “Ryan—"  
  
~  
  
"Shane!"

 _Idiot_ , Ryan thinks, _idiot_. There's two more and Shane is so disoriented. Of course he is. He's trying to help Ryan. Who's broken the only rule Shane gave. And it's icy and surprising and he's probably cold.

 _So why?_ If Ryan's expendable. If Ryan isn't worth trusting. No, now isn't the time to think about this.

"Jesus, Shane—watch—!"

One of them is reaching, reaching for Shane, and all that's there, in Ryan, is this world-turning panic. This sudden, protective urge. And Ryan would give anything, everything, to keep Shane safe. _Too much_. Ryan twists himself away from the bus and forward so fast and sudden it's jarring. He spears the thing at the waist. They crash in a heap into the snow. It crunches, swishes, and explodes around them as they land. Zombie first, then Ryan.

It was a woman, maybe, because it's frame is curved like one. It's stocky but the lines are delicate, or they were once, soft. Her bones bend wrong as she swings and slams a gnarled hand into Ryan's face. Slime, something, coats his cheek.

_Okay, do something. Stop hesitating._

He aims his rock at her face. Crashes it down into her right eye. Blood spews sideways as he gasps. It spatters his cheek, and he hits again.

~  
  
“ _Fuck_!” Shane cries, and moves towards him,  but then Ryan’s slamming a rock or something— something hard into its skull and Shane’s there — doesn’t remember _how_ , and he’s dragging Ryan up and back by the back of his sweater, by the hood. He thinks it’s dead. Deader. He pulls Ryan around and says “Christ,” and drags the corner of Ryan’s hood over his cheek, wiping at blood.

His eyes flicker up to the other one. He hopes it’s the last one. It’s slow, staggering, and his heart’s pumping blood all fast and hot and he’s not even fucking scared. He’s _pissed_. “Fuck you, you goddamn—” he steps around Ryan, adjusting the pipe on his hand. He feels, for a second, like he can do anything, and he swings at it, one-handed, and it crashes to the ground. He slams the pipe into it again, stabs it right down through the top of its open mouth until the pipe crunches right through its skull to ring against the pavement.  
  
He lets himself lean on the pipe for a second, all angles, shuddering, panting, because he is still _so angry_ and there are no more zombies to kill, and he cannot look at Ryan yet because he’s afraid of what he’ll say.  
  
~  
  
“You have a gun!?"

He'd thought of how to phrase this. To deal with it. Better. Better than this. But his adrenaline is going and he's spiraling. He's just glaring at Shane and Shane's not looking at him. He's mad. Ryan can feel it. And Ryan's quivering. Fear slaps along his temple as soon as he says it. Fear that Shane tells him to fuck off. That they end any hope of friendship, of anything, here.

But anger wins, like it always does. It wins, even as his voice breaks hoarse with cold and pain. "I told that lady we didn't have one. I trusted you. I--" They're still out here. And he's yelling. It'll draw more. Shane's got shit all over his face and Ryan's scared. Scared like he used to be for Jake. He wants to wipe it off. Make sure Shane's okay. But he's so, so angry. Hopeless and stupid.

"What's it for, Shane?" It's a whisper now, but filled to the brim with desperation. "For if we don't agree? For if there's not--not enough food or something?"  
  
~  
  
He’s so startled by that that he turns to face him, but then Ryan keeps going, keeps talking, and Shane’s surprise turns white hot.

He hears him, somehow, despite the way Ryan drops his voice. Maybe because Shane is so focused on his face there’s no way he could miss it. And he’s saying all this bullshit. Shane is so tense, his jaw clenched so tight that he doesn’t even know if he can wrench it open enough to speak. He crosses the road to Ryan again, pipe in hand and God, if he were someone else, he’d hit him. With his fists, not the pipe. He wants to hit him, but it’s detached from this particular accusation. It’s something to do with Ryan putting himself in danger _again_.

“You,” he says, just as soft as he crosses the distance between them, “had no right to go through my shit and then make these—” his breath gasps and shakes. “Is that what you think?”  
  
~  
  
Ryan flinches. It's instinct. Not attached to a thought. More a response to the rage on Shane's face. In his voice. It's quick, but Ryan takes a step back.

"I don't know. I was just trying to see what we—" But it's not we. Not to Shane. It never has been. "I didn't realize it was--I didn't know it mattered." Didn't know it was _yours_ and _mine_.

_Ryan, you fucking idiot._

"It's still..." He clenches his fist around the rock so hard it cuts his skin. Draws jagged heat up his arm. Then he throws it into the snow. It vanishes. "You let me think you had nothing." _You let me lie with a gun to my head_.

_He couldn't stop you._

"What am I supposed to think? You suggested we stay together. We do this together. I thought... Man, fuck you. Just.. "

He's losing control. His voice is spiking. He's tired and cold and he hates zombies and the apocalypse so much. Hates he can't get in his car and drive home and have his Mom stroke his hair and say _he's not worth it, sweetie._

And Ryan would say _he is._

_Then he'll come around._

But it's not like that. It's just Ryan. Alone. On one side of this line Shane's carved between, this line that's yawning into a chasm.  
  
~  
  
Shane’s face contorts and he says “Do you think I— Do you think I’ve stopped thinking about that? What she could have done to you if one of them went through my bag? For _Christ’s sake_ , Ryan, I wasn’t about to try and reason with her any more than I had to, she had a gun to your fucking head, I thought I was going to have a _heart attack_.”

He cuts himself off. He has so much more to say, and his breath seems to slice the tense air between them like knives, but he doesn’t feel any closer to him. He reaches out to grab him, his sweater, changes his mind. “Get back on the fucking bus,” he says, because they’re so exposed out here. He can’t stand it beneath everything else.  
  
~  
  
Ryan's jaw clenches. He doesn't want to. He wants to walk the fuck away. Do this on his own. But his stuff is on the bus, and even with Shane looking at Ryan like he's a broken down car, it's something he has to do.

"Go to hell."

He climbs the stairs. It's weird how warmth settles into him. He didn't know he was cold. His head is killing him. Throbbing, a bit. His leg is aching. So he pushes himself onto one of the seats and glares at the the one in front of it.

This sucks worse than being alone.  
  
~  
  
Shane clatters up after him and wrenches the door shut, goes immediately back to where he left his bag. Somewhere, floating far above all of this, he takes in the piles of stuff Ryan’s left, made piles of. Somewhere in his head, he understands how this happened.  
  
His bag’s not there. Or at least, not where he left it.  
  
He goes through the bus, halfway down and back before he even finds it. He wrenches it out from beneath the seat and digs through it until he finds the gun.  
  
He checks everything, slow, methodical, but his fingers are shaking. Checks the magazine, puts it all back together, checks the safety is on, then walks back to Ryan and holds it out.  
  
“Here,” he says, and his voice is still soft, but icy. “Take it. There’s only two bullets left so… I’d tell you not to be an idiot but, frankly, I don’t know if you can handle that.”  
  
It’s mean. He twitches a little under the weight of those words, but raises his eyebrows. A challenge. His voice shakes. “Go on.”  
  
~  
   
Oh, god, he’s mad. He _furious_. It’s pulsing through his head, out of the spot where he hit it on the stairs so hard he thinks it’s going to explode. Shane first looks at the gun, _checks_ it, like Ryan fucked it up just by being near it. Then Shane comes over and shoves it in his face. He wants to smack the gun away. He wants to stand up and shove Shane into the floor. He wants to leave this bus and not look back. He wants to break down and cry. He wants a lot of things he can’t have.  
   
What he doesn’t want is that gun. He doesn’t want it anywhere near him. He doesn’t look at Shane. “No, you obviously don’t think I can handle anything.” He wishes he could drag up something mean. Something as targeted and pointed as what Shane just said, but all he manages is, “Get the fuck away from me.”  
  
~  
  
He feels like snarling or screaming like one of those things outside but he doesn’t.

He’s never been like that.

Instead, he pulls the gun back and sighs roughly and drops into the seat across the aisle and slightly back from Ryan, sets it on the seat beside his own thigh. He presses his hands over his face and touches slickness, slime. It’s in his hair. His knuckles hurt. He shifts forward and struggles out of his sweater, uses it to clean himself up as best he can. He’s seething still, and above that, deeply hurt. That Ryan would think something like that of him, now, after everything. That he would kill him over a can of beans or something.

It rushes through him sickly. There’s nowhere to put it, and it’s choking him. He kicks the metal leg of the seat in front of him hard. It doesn’t help. He just feels foolish.  
  
~  
  
Ryan's trying to get this worked out in his head. He can't sit here. Sit next to Shane and say nothing. Because he hates this. It's enormous. Ripping and shredding at his center. It hurts. Because he thinks it's never going to get better. That Shane is never going to look at him like he did earlier again. And it's awful. Because he's mad at himself too, for wanting that. He wishes he could go back and never look through Shane's stuff. He wishes this wasn't here. This black, oozing thing spreading in him like ink in water.

Shane extended the gun to him. Maybe, in this passive aggressive way, Shane was trying to prove  something. But it's so twisted in his head, this nasty, mocking thing.

Finally, he breaks the silence, and it rattles him. "I'm sorry I went through your bag." And he means it, deeply, with every piece of him. It comes out sharp and snapped, but he means it. "And I'm sorry I left the bus, and..." Accused him of a lot. "But you had a fucking gun you didn't tell me about. Fine, it's not my business." He drags his heel over the bus floor. Clenches his fingers into the cracked polyester. "But I did. And I saw it. So what am I supposed to think?"

~  
  
“I dunno, Ryan.” But he’s thinking about it. When he speaks again, it’s s little softer. He still can’t look at him. “I dunno, you’re probably supposed to think a lot of things to keep yourself safe. That’s what any sane person would do.” He clenches his jaw as this builds and builds inside him, and then it rushes out of him like smoke, he’s getting it out as fast as he can before he drowns in it.

“You know, at first maybe I didn’t trust you enough, I’d just met you, we barely knew each other, I wasn’t going to be like oh, _by the way_ , I have a _gun_. Because you’d think I was a crazy person, you were so—“ _broken_ , Shane thinks, _terrified_. “I just didn’t want to scare you more.” He takes a deep breath and it shakes, but he can’t stop now because he’s been worried about this for days and days. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you. I am, but it’s— Jesus. Jesus Ryan, you do these things—” _these things that scare me to death_ “you do these _stupid, reckless_ things, you— you _leave the bus_ with nothing, with a broken leg...— I’ve been trying so hard to make sure nothing happens to you—”

He’s getting all tangled, because he doesn’t fight like this. His words tumble together, like he’s shaking them up inside his throat, his mouth before spitting them out. “I come back for you, I f— I look out for you over and over and you think I’m going to shoot you? I— I told you to stay in the bus and you _don’t_. Do you want to die?”

He means to say it like ‘Do you want to _die_ ,’ but it doesn’t come out that way. It comes out all twisted and his voice cracks and it comes out like ‘do you _want_ to die?’

Shane draws a ragged breath, and he is looking at him now. He’s locked on him like if he just keeps looking Ryan won’t disappear.  
  
~  
  
Oh, that hits way too close to the hole in his chest. So close Ryan physically recoils. Something breaks inside him, and it’s rushing into his chest like dark water. Swelling and suffocating. He can’t stop it. Can’t stop the panic from splashing his next words.

“I left the bus because I was pissed at you. Because I saw a gun and it scared me, because, oh I dunno—I just had a gun to my head. And I don’t—I’m sorry I… I didn’t mean to accuse you of shit. I trust you, that’s why it sucked so much. I already feel like this pointless, useless person that you’ve let stay with you because you feel bad! I just want to do something, Shane! I want you to trust me. With more than just ‘well, he won’t hurt me because he’s too pathetic.’” He’s panting, gasping and cracking—it’s welling in him, welling until he’s bursting, erupting with it. “I just want to fucking do something! Anything! Whether it’s leaving a bus or digging a grave or dying!”

Shit. His eyes widen. He freezes.

“I mean—not, no, not dying. I’m just… no. I don’t want to die.” It’s weak. Softer than everything else. “I’m not trying to scare you.” It’s worse now, because he said that, and there’s this guilt. Because Shane made it so painfully clear he’s trying to keep Ryan alive.

He groans. “I just don’t want—you don’t need to look out for me. It’s not your responsibility to look out for me…”

He won’t look at Shane. He’s afraid Shane will see something in his eyes if he does. “You just said we think things to survive. Before I showed up, you were on your own. You like to be on your own. And now you’ve got me attached to you like a goddamn parasite, so I don’t know!” He glares up, and he does meet Shane’s eyes, and there it is. “I don’t know!”

~  
  
Shane can’t get in a single breath that isn’t tight and shallow, and Ryan’s words are scraping and tearing away at something inside him and it’s just coming away so easily — like wet paper — and Shane can’t remember the last time something affected him like this.  
  
God, he can’t— he blinks quickly, swallows, and it feels like it has to hollow his throat out, but the burning in his nose, behind his eyes, stops.  
  
“You’re not useless,” he says. He says it to the back of the seat in front of him. It’s cracked and he traces the mark with his eyes. “You’re not a _parasite_ , Ryan, I—…”  
  
How can he explain? He’s always been told that he’s too distant, too far away, by everyone. His parents, people he hooked up with, friends. He doesn’t try to be, not really. And he thought— God, he thought it must be obvious to Ryan that how he felt… was it not obvious?  
  
“I— how can you say that I’m just trusting you because you’re too pathetic?” he asks, and looks back at him, and it’s all confusion, but he has, he’s pulled back somewhere, emotionally, because he doesn’t want to cry, he doesn’t want to look like he’s been cut so deeply. “After…”  
  
After _what_?  
  
Shane has never held someone, been held by someone the way that they have — so charged, so _safe_ , so centered somehow. At least Shane had thought that they were. Even if it was for all the wrong reasons. Maybe he’d started thinking, today, out there in the snow looking for shelter, that even if it was for the wrong reasons, he was still the only one offering it to Ryan. He was still special, at least until Ryan sorted himself out.  
  
And now he doesn’t even have that. He looks away from him again.  
  
And it surprises him how much he doesn’t care, how much he wants to prove, anyway, to this fucking stupid, fucking idiot…  
  
“I.” It shakes, and he doesn’t know if it’s laughter or crying, and doesn’t wait long enough to find out. “I trust you because I thought we… I thought maybe we were _friends_ ,” he says. But they’d never said it. They’d just agreed to be in this. “Aren’t we? I thought—” his breath comes in too fast, leaves too fast, it sounds too overwhelmed, too much like…  
  
_Just get through it, Shane, just calm down_ , he thinks, and somehow his next words are steady enough. “I like being on my own, but I don’t want it now. Above having you around. I don’t want you to leave for… whatever reason, and if I want to protect you, that’s my business, it’s not yours. You’re not a responsibility, I _chose_ this.” He finishes, can’t look at him, so he reaches out to pick at the cracked material of the bus seat and shrugs a little, shakes his head.  
  
~  
  
Shane’s all fucked up. Ryan can see what he’s done, and it makes everything so much worse. Somehow, distantly, he knows it ought to mean something. It ought to mean something that Shane’s going so far here. Shane says _after_ and Ryan knows exactly what he means. The touching, the holding—it’s not normal. But Ryan just thought, god, he doesn’t know what he thought. That Shane just felt that sorry for him? Is that even logical?

Then Shane says _friends_ and it drains some the sludge in his chest. He takes in a full breath and it doesn’t stab into him. “N-no, no, yeah. Yes!” It’s all bright, sparkling, maybe. “I want to be friends. Yes, we’re… friends. Friends.” He has to say it a few times because he’s thinking about his mouth on Shane’s throat, his teeth pressed against Shane’s throat. He’s thinking about the slow drag of Shane’s fingers up his throat. The way his body arcs and obeys Shane’s hands like a puppet.

But he doesn’t dislike _friends_. He likes it. More than anything else, maybe. Likes the idea of meaning even that much to Shane. Shane’s words wake his body up. He wants this. To protect Ryan. And some part of Ryan is irritated, because he doesn’t need protected.

But another part...

“I’m usually the one protecting people. So this is hard… sitting here, while you… carry me through the snow. Like, jesus, I thought you were gonna die last night. I hate it.” He shudders a little, presses his head back into the seat—and, fuck, his head. Again. He sits up. But he doesn’t hate it, not that part of it. “I hate not being able to help.”

He shifts in the seat so his legs slide under the one in front of him and his shoulders rest against the lower part of the seat. Like a kid. He gets that. He doesn’t fucking care. He throws his head sideways over his shoulder, looking at Shane. The smallness, the immaturity, of the position, makes it easier. “I I don’t want to leave you either.” He takes a breath, lets it steep in his veins like a tea bag. “The gun just surprised me. I know you wouldn’t use it on me—I just… didn’t know what it meant.”  
  
~  
  
Things are settling a little, he feels calmer again, because Ryan’s voice has changed and Shane’s said what he needs to say. Mostly. It’s enough for now, he thinks, and when Ryan slides down, Shane looks over at him, and something halfway to amusement slips into his eyes, but it’s quick. Just a flicker.  
  
Ryan says _I’m usually the one protecting people_ and Shane wonders who. Besides Jake. But then they’re talking about the gun again and so:  
  
“It means that I don’t ever have to turn into one of those things,” Shane says, leaning back with a sigh. “That’s what it means. I had to use one bullet learning how to fucking use it, like— I’ve never even been to a shooting range. I thought I was going to set it off by accident.” He’s trying to make light of this maybe. He looks away from Ryan and somehow contorts himself, with some difficulty, lower into the seat, pulls his legs up and wedges his knees against the seat in front of him so he’s all huddled, boots dangling a few feet off the ground, dripping melting snow onto the bus floor.  
  
“Fuck— if you want to help, just wait until your leg heals, and then I’ll just sit on a… in a nice warm bed somewhere and order you around, if you want.” That sounds wrong. He rushes to fix it. “You can make me… toast and bacon. You can— you can clean the floors and whistle down the chimney or whatever tiny people like you do.”  
  
It’s weird, but he sort of feels… younger. They’re on a school bus, they’re both slouched in their seats — or, well, Shane’s contorted into his like an idiot, and Ryan looks like he’s planning to drop out of high school. But he likes it. It feels ridiculous and normal and he gets a glimmer of what it might have been like if they met before all this.  
  
Before they would have had to have fights about guns and food shortages and…  
  
He doesn’t want to think about it. “You didn’t happen to find my glasses in that bag while you were snooping, did you?” he asks, but all the malice is gone. Maybe the worst is over. Maybe. He hopes.  
  
~  
   
Ryan laughs and eyes Shane sidelong. He looks like an actual contortionist all balled up into his seat like that. It can’t possibly be comfortable. He’s like a cat. In this bizarrely weird position that bends at all the wrong angles, and somehow, he looks at ease in it. He’s got crooks and cracks along his legs, his pants, because his knees have forty extra bones, probably. And he’s slouched, because Shane is absolutely, undoubtedly, _always_ slouched. Ryan has never seen him stand up straight, thinks, in fact, that if Shane ever did he may be pulled away from Earth by Mars’ gravity.  
   
Then Shane’s talking like Ryan’s some character out of _Mary Poppins_ and Ryan’s laughter ratchets up a notch. And this time, it’s actual laughter, maybe for the first time since he held onto Shane in the cabin two nights ago. Because it feels okay—normal. “Yeah, that’s—you got it, that’s what I was thinking of when I said I wanted to do something, cleaning the floors and singing down the chimney.” He rolls his eyes, but there’s fondness pressed into the grooves of his face—he can’t shake it. “I could do that now—and, where would I get bacon and toast?” He scoffs. “You think when my leg’s healed I’ll be able to _conjure_ food into existence? What kind of injury do you think I have?”  
   
  
His eyes keep taking Shane in. This ridiculous position, and he’s thinking about Shane trying to shoot a gun, what the recoil probably did to his brittle frame. He looks like he’d just disintegrate into dust with the shot. Ryan’s smile fades a little, but not unhappily. The sun’s slanting through the windows, splashing Shane’s face too-bright white, so he’s glowing, almost shimmering, and his eyelashes cast this delicate shadow that curls on his cheek bone.  
   
“I get it,” Ryan says. He’d wanted a gun—because of that, because he wanted the power to point it between his eyes and pull the trigger. He wanted power over his own end. “About the gun—like I get why you have it and why you didn’t tell me. Wait…” He scrunches his face. “You wear glasses?” He glances down to Shane’s backpack. Thinks about his own broken ones, probably shattered at the bottom of his own bag. He throws his head up along the cracked polyester of the bus seat and grins lopsided at Shane. “That’s _adorable_.”  
  
~  
  
He feels warm suddenly, heat rushing to his cheeks and his ears, even if Ryan’s _obviously_ got to be joking. “It’s not _adorable_ ,” he says, and uncontorts himself, moves to sit at the edge of the seat, legs in the aisle. He looks at Ryan, leaned over his thighs. “I’m sorry,” he says again, because he thinks Ryan’s apologized about twelve times by now. He grabs his bag by the strap and tosses it into Ryan’s seat. “See if you can find them, would you?” He says because he’s giving him permission. He didn’t mean _don’t go through my stuff_ , but he doesn’t know how to say _you can_. “Then I can actually read that map.”  
  
~  
   
He knows it now. That, even pissed off, Shane was trying to prove that it was never about not trusting Ryan. That’s the only reason Shane would ask him to look again. Ryan makes this sort of skeptical throat noise as he sits up.  
   
“Adorable and _bossy_ …”  
   
He sifts through Shane’s bag, gingerly, because it feels a little forbidden. Even with Shane’s permission. There’s this net cast over it, like he’s wandering an ancient tomb and something will clamp down on Ryan’s throat if he moves too fast. Mostly it’s clothes. But it’s fascinating, like handling a relic. Something sacred. And the thought, _because Shane is something sacred_ , crashes into him so unexpected and odd his shoulders square.  
   
_Enough._  
   
Ryan takes a few things out, the razor, the rope, sets them delicately aside before a sharp cold bites into his hand. He fingers along the side of them and eases them up so they refract light into his eyes. They’re clear, weirdly transparent, even at the hinges. Nothing like Ryan’s.  
   
He raises his eyebrows and smiles, then extends them, one temple hooked over a crook in his index finger. They hang between Shane and Ryan and catch the light, spatter it across the bus. “Here, you damn slave driver.” Then, “I wear glasses too. But mine are broken.” And he offers this cheeky grin, like he knows this will probably piss Shane off. He seems like the type to be offended at broken glasses.  
  
~  
  
“I can tell,” he tells him. “Otherwise I highly doubt you’d think I was adorable.” He reaches out and takes them carefully, but he smiles at him a little, and it’s cautious but genuine.

He sort of toys with the glasses before he puts them on. They’re kind of dirty, and it annoys him, but he leaves it. He doesn’t know if he has anything clean enough to wipe them on. Determinedly, looking anywhere but at Ryan, Shane gets the map and pulls it closer. On the back side is a map of the states, but he’s looking at Illinois.

“Here’s an idea,” he says, uncertain. “We could maybe...”

He wonders if there’s still food... there would definitely probably still be supplies... He wonders if it’s safe to go back there now. “Maybe closer to the suburbs we could find somewhere to stay. With food. At least until it starts getting warmer... and...”Okay, maybe he’s done lying by omission. “I think, maybe we could get supplies at my house— my parents’ house, I mean...”  
  
The one he’d fled. Abandoned.  
  
~  
   
Uh. This is weird. He doesn’t know what to do. He sits up without realizing that’s what he’s done. His spine is ramrod straight, and he swallows. He doesn’t want to make it a thing. If Shane’s okay with it, if Shane’s close enough to go back—hell, why hasn’t he already? Ryan has a thousand questions, but they all evaporate on his tongue.  
   
Shane’s looking at the map, not at Ryan, so maybe it is a thing. Ryan doesn’t know. He just says, “Your—okay, yeah, that’s fine. If you’re okay with that.” Ryan doesn’t think he could. Go back to the place where he left his parents’ brutalized bodies. Shane hadn’t killed his, not like Ryan, but Ryan still doesn’t think he could do it. Even if it’d ended differently. The memories.  
   
_Jesus_.  
   
“It’s whatever you wanna do,” he says softly. He looks away because he feels like Shane needs some kind of privacy. Like there’s a big admission there. Something Ryan isn’t quite grasping. He runs a hand up his neck, into his hair and finds the knot. God, it feels big. He winces and brings his fingers down. But he almost wants to touch it again so he doesn’t have to think about Shane’s dead parents’ house, about taking him back there and dragging him through that.  
   
Doesn’t have to think about the way he knows in his fucking _bones_ that Shane is going to pretend it doesn’t bother him. Doesn’t want to think about how much it will.  
   
Because if Shane breaks, Ryan isn’t sure he’ll be able to fix him.  
  
~  
  
“I just... I really... I think maybe we could find a car, too. It’s not the city, it might not be overrun.” _Anymore_ , he thinks.  
  
“And I dunno... I dunno if you really have family on the West Coast, uh, still, or if you just said that, but if we want to get anywhere... I think we need a car.”  
  
He looks up, and it’s a little startling to see Ryan this clearly, at this distance. His eyes aren’t that bad, not bad enough that he’ll risk breaking his glasses day in and day out, but still it’s... he just looks at him for a moment, a little lost. Forgets, completely, what he was saying.  
  
  
~  
   
“No, everyone’s dead.” It comes out almost despondent, like someone else operating his voice. He doesn’t mean to say it so bluntly—so _honest_. But he knows they are. Ryan and Jake tried, tried every relative they knew, every friend. Most of them were near LA. A lot of them were in strike zones when they were still trying to stop it. Aunts, cousins, all of them. By any means necessary—that’s what the news reports said, towards the end. Before there stopped being news.  
   
His voice cracks when he speaks, all jumbled, trying to make Shane forget that he just said that. “I-I just said that. I mean, I live on the West Coast, but… I was trying to…” He knows what he was trying to do, what he and Jake had bounced back and forth. Between brothers. A pipe dream. “I was trying to get to the East coast actually. But it doesn’t matter. I’ll go wherever.”  
   
He rubs at the bridge of his nose. “But, ah—yeah, a car would be good, yeah.”  
  
~  
  
God, it aches. He wishes that every other thing wasn’t going to tear at Ryan, at both of them like dulled razors.

“East coast?” He asks, hoping for something better. He’s finally looked away, standing up and picking up the gun. He looms over Ryan’s seat, slipping it back into his pack, eyes down. “I thought they said to go where it was colder... although... it doesn’t seem to be slowing them down, does it? I guess they thought we’d have zombie pops or something.” _Like they wouldn’t just all thaw out in the spring... good as new._  
  
~  
   
Ryan looks up at him. He’s trying to screw all the pieces of himself back into place. Because he’s thinking about bombs. He’s thinking about soot covering Jake’s face, and how close they’d been to the blast radius. Thinking maybe it would’ve been a blessing. He has to stop. So he focuses his eyes on Shane. Shane and his straight nose and down-sloped eyes. It almost feels better.  
   
“East Coast,” he repeats. “They did say that. And just like everything else they said, they were wrong. There was even this rumor that if you wore red they couldn’t see you.” He laughs, but it’s hurting. “Zombie pops? Like, what, they just freeze overnight and become a delicious frozen snack?”  
  
~  
  
He laughs. “I don’t know what a zombie would taste like. Maybe that’s the solution. They eat us, we eat them back.” He takes his glasses off, moves his bag to the floor, and folds himself into the seat beside Ryan. If they want to get somewhere by dark they should get moving, but god, he’s tired already. He shifts, looks over at Ryan.

“So. I dunno. Let’s go east,” he says.  
  
~  
   
Ryan’s hand skims Shane’s thigh. It’s not intentional, but Shane sat down, and it was just… it happened. He tries to draw attention away from it by nudging Shane lightly in the shoulder. “Okay, if we’re going east—why did you sit down?” He smiles. Tilts his head so he can get a better angle of Shane’s face.  
   
“Do you want more Vienna sausages? Is that it? Are you having separation anxiety?” He curves his shoulder and leans closer to Shane’s face. Bites his lip. “I can get you some.”  
  
~  
  
“You’re— terrible,” Shane tells him. “Never speak to me about vienna sausages again.” He twists and reaches out and wipes at the mud or blood or slime on Ryan’s cheek. He has to crook his arm over the back of the seat to do it. Their knees knock. “I want to get you something to cover your mouth,” he says. “If you’re going to tackle zombies like a football player. You idiot.”  
  
~  
  
Ryan reaches up to touch his face like he needs proof there’s a cheek there anymore. Shane’s touch is soft against his cheek. It’s a fluttering contrast to the click their knees make when they touch.  
  
“I didn’t want to let you down. You seemed so excited about my capacity for sports. I wanted to show off.” It’s weird how close it is to true. He didn’t tackle the zombie to show off for Shane, but he has been. For a while. Everything he does is to impress this gangly creature in front of him.  
  
“And something to cover my mouth?” He huffs and shoves Shane, hard not not hard enough to knock him off the seat. “You’re just looking for an excuse to gag me.” He realizes a beat later that could have several meanings. “For, like, talking. Not for… you know what, let’s move past that. Forget I said it.”  
  
~  
  
“Jesus Christ,” Shane laughs, “I’m starting to think that you’re the one into bondage. Have you ever tried it? I think you’d be into it. Bondage and butt stuff. That’s— yeah, it’s written all over you,” he says, and his eyes are fixed on Ryan’s and there’s something beneath that playfulness there.  
  
~  
  
Ryan laughs again because it's so absurd. That Shane can say this shit like it isn't leaping over this line. This incredibly bold, defined line. Ryan pinches the bridge of his nose. "Jesus Christ."He shakes his head, smiling, in spite of himself. "I... That's—no. That's..." He is laughing and it's battering against his nerves. "I'm ignoring you."

And he looks away. Pointedly. But he's so aware of Shane. Of every point of contact between them. The way his hands curl slender and soft like they belong on a freaking harp.

And Ryan's aware of how he kinda felt like one.  
  
~  
  
His arm’s already hooked over the back of the seat, fingers tapping distractedly against the vinyl, but he’s looking away from Ryan as their laughter fades out into silence. And it’s so easy to just glance over, shift his arm and tangle his fingers in Ryan’s dark hair, fisting it slightly. And then he brushes the knot there, feels something wrong. “Jesus,” he says, soft, and carefully pushes Ryan’s head forward so he can try to see. “Was this just now?”  
  
~  
  
Ryan's body is too hot. He feels like a cell phone running about six thousand apps and charging. Just getting hotter, hotter, hotter. He's so wrapped up in it, in the way his lines crash into each other so he's sparking. Everything is so bright, too bright. He doesn't notice Shane touch his hair, not immediately. It's just sensation fighting to be felt. And then it's there, and it hurts. He winces, hisses through his teeth.

Shane's halfway to tilting him forward by the time he catches up. Slides back into his body and out of the panicked reality he'd sunk into. And then there's this whole new explosion. Because Shane's pushing his head, and he's so confused, for just a second. And then he realizes what's happening, and all that heat changes to embarrassment.

He catches Shane's hand and holds it, pulls and kinda twists so his eyes find Shane. "It's fine. I hit my head on the bus." He hasn't let go of his hand. He needs to. "It doesn't hurt."

~  
  
He makes this sound, that might be a sound of sympathy or something else. Something vaguely annoyed or frustrated. _That’s what you get._ But regardless of what it means, he lets Ryan keep hold of his wrist, as he meets his eyes. He’d moved closer, trying to see, and so they’re closer than they should be now.  
  
Closer than ‘friends’ should be, but he was the one that said it. He said it, and Ryan agreed. Agreed so quickly that Shane… he’s really not sure, but then, he’s never been sure, about Ryan, so he guesses he’s back where he started, and that’s not so bad.  
  
“I don’t know _what_ to do with you,” he says, and it should be an insult, maybe — something said to a child throwing a tantrum in the toy aisle. But it comes out so softly, and he doesn’t look away, and he doesn’t know how he can feel so soft, so caught up when they are sitting on a cold bus, surrounded by the handful of objects — bits and bats, bits of cloth and string — that is everything that they own, and everything that belongs to them in this entire world. There is a gun on the seat behind him, and a map that’s missing a big corner of the North Pacific where he tore it from the wall in panic.  
  
And for such a long time, Shane hadn’t really known who he was anymore, but he supposed it didn’t matter, because there was no one to know him anyway, and then Ryan had shown up and turned everything over and around, until Shane had opened his eyes one morning with such… purpose. And it was with Ryan tucked into his chest, and breathing softly. And that’s something he has that he hadn’t before. It’s something this apocalypse has, apparently, dropped into his lap, and, occasionally, so overwhelms him that he starts to shake like he is now.  
  
~  
   
Shane said _I don’t know what to do with you_ , but Ryan’s brain is taking it one way and his chest is taking it another. He doesn’t know how to feel about it.  
   
He may have lied slightly about the knot. But, Shane seems like the type who would take it way too far. But damn, Ryan misses Advil. He’s revising his list of things he misses most, and Advil is at the top. A kind of tremor runs through Shane’s bones. It vibrates beneath Ryan’s fingers and makes Shane’s pulse quicker.  
   
Ryan lets go, because if that’s not a sign—nothing is. He reaches behind him to run his hand over the knot again, to get that kind of controlled ache—because otherwise, it’s just an abstract pain. Almost more annoying.  
   
“Shane?” he asks. “You okay?” Then, in case too much, if it isn’t light enough. He doesn’t want Shane to be self-conscious about it. “Am I really _that_ overwhelming?”  
   
He winces. Because as soon as he says it, he has a feeling he knows the answer.  
  
~  
  
His eyes flash over him, and he draws back a little. “You’re a lot of things, Ry. Ryan.” He doesn’t know why he corrects himself. He turns, twists away, reaches for the map. “Okay,” he says, keeping his eyes on it, keeping his wrists pressed to his thighs to keep his hands steadier. He has to hunch way over to see. Ryan wasn’t bleeding, so there was that. There was that, at least, and he seems okay, so he’s probably not concussed. He takes a breath, “Okay, uh… well I think I can probably find our way back, so… should we go?”  
  
~  
   
Ryan almost thinks Shane’s trying the nickname thing again, but then he finishes the name. And Ryan wishes Shane wouldn’t stutter on the one particular syllable that makes his heart skip. He casts a glance down to his leg while Shane grabs the map.  
   
“Yeah,” and it’s weird, because something in him twists and says no. Because Shane’s further away now. He’s just going to get further and further. It drags this steel-tipped panic through him. “Yeah, while we’ve still got some daylight.”  
  
~  
  
“Right,” he says, and then looks up at him. He doesn’t ask if he thinks he can do it. They’ll get through it somehow, and if Ryan isn’t the most determined person he’s ever met, he doesn’t know who is. “All right.” He gets up, starts gathering their things.  
  
They set out sometime, Shane thinks, after late morning, and they walk. And walk. It’s easier for both of them on the road, but he can tell Ryan’s leg is hurting him. They go slower than Shane would like to but, actually, the movement, the sunlight — it’s not as bitter cold as it had been the night before.  
  
But it gets dark way too soon. Even with the walking, and the fact that it’s boring and monotonous after a while — just going on and on down this endless stretch of freeway — even with neither of them carrying on too much conversation, because they’re exposed out here and listening, watching, distracted by every flicker and flutter of movement in the trees. With the night comes the cold and, on top of that, paranoia, which almost distracts Shane from the cold, but doesn’t completely. He’s got his sweater sleeves pulled down around his hands, but the metal pipe is cold against his palm.  
  
He was sure they’d reach somewhere by now. But they haven’t. He swears he doesn’t remember this much nothing when he and his dad left the suburbs, but maybe there was.  
  
There’s a lot of stars. The darkness is almost too bright, or maybe he’s just misjudging the time of night. He doesn’t know if it’s good or bad that they can see, because it means that other things can see them.  
  
He’s scanning the trees again when he sees something strange, something that looks like it doesn’t quite belong off the opposite shoulder of the road, and his shoulders go tight, and then relax and he says. “Huh. That’s something.” He nods into the forest where something dark and solid interrupts the long, lean shadows the trees make. It’s a treehouse. “Think anyone’s home?” he asks, softer.


	6. Part 6

Part 6

Ryan hates everything. He _does_ want to die. He takes it all back. Every bit of it. Someone kill him. He might even take a zombie bite. This is the worst thing he’s ever done. Shane’s just walking, walking, walking, like it doesn’t make his tongue taste like blood and crush his ribcage into a fucking pancake.  
   
They just walk forever. Ryan has decided that that’s Shane’s plan. Just to walk into infinity. Haha, fuck you, zombies. We’ll come up with our own hell. We don’t need your bullshit. He hasn’t said a word for miles because, if he speaks, he is going to shriek like a banshee. That, or call Shane every horrible name ever invented and then turn his ire on some crushed pine cone.  
   
Also, it’s cold. It’s so cold. Ryan’s shaking so hard it makes his leg hurt worse. His leg is the only thing on his goddamn body that isn’t numb to feeling at all. As far as he’s concerned, he is a broken, disembodied leg hobbling along the fucking freeway. Not entirely fair, his head also hurts on and off, and sometimes the numbness in his extremities subsides just long enough for frost to cram her giant icepick into his ice block of a body.  
   
He almost doesn’t stop when Shane does. Stumbles and nearly eats snow-covered pavement. Because it’s so sudden. Ryan had just resigned himself to this hellish eternity, but Shane’s stopped. Ryan follows his gaze. Shane’s looking into the damn trees like he’s fucking Tarzan, about to sleep on a branch, and Ryan can go fuck himself. Then he sees the outline. Sorta. His eyes are so cracked with cold it takes him a while to manage a squint deep enough to see it. The wind bites and chips at his eyes, but he thinks he sees it.  
   
A tree house. Shane wants to stay in a tree house. Ryan laughs. It’s not too loud, mostly it’s hysterical. “Yeah, I bet Tiny Tim and his friend Jane are up there right now playing pirates.” His laugh tapers and he groans. Because this is the best they’re going to get. There’s nothing else for miles, and Ryan honest to god thinks he might drop dead. Be it from hypothermia or stress on his heart or pain or good old fashioned zombies. If they don’t stop, he’s not going to make it.  
   
“Did you bring the jetpack?” He turns to Shane. “Otherwise, this is gonna be a nightmare.”  
  
~  
  
Shane does the worst impression of a laugh ever and says, “Come on, we’ll figure out something.”

They navigate down the bank into the snow and somehow make it to the bottom of the treehouse. There definitely nobody in it. Or at least nobody alive or otherwise moving.

“Who’s Jane?” Shane asks, a little absently, staring up at the ladder. He drops his pack and the pipe and reaches up and grabs hold of a wooden step nailed to the tree, pulls himself up a little.  
  
~  
   
Ryan watches as Shane takes the first step up to the tree house. On these little slats for stairs. Ryan doesn’t know if he’s offended or flattered Shane thinks he’s going to be able to do this without issue. He’s a little both, really. Either way, Ryan refuses to be the one to comment because he will get into that tree house if he has to chop the tree down to do it.  
   
“Jane is a small child I made up three seconds ago.” He crosses his arms and runs his hands over them, trying to generate heat. “Who else?”  
  
~  
  
“I dunno. Dickens character, girlfriend.” He’s a few steps up now and wrestles with the little trap door thingy and gets it open. His head and shoulders disappear. “Hey, this is actually kind of _nice_ ,” he says. Like they’re apartment shopping. “It’s small, but—hey, holy shit...” He’s commenting on things Ryan can’t possibly see just yet, then he sort of struggles back and leaps back down into the snow. “I think we can make a fire... okay, here... um... let me get the packs up. And let’s move fast.”  
  
Shelter isn’t much of a shelter if they can’t get into it.

~  
   
“Not girlfriend,” Ryan mutters. “I dated a girl named June once, though.” He’s speaking softly. It’s likely Shane can’t even hear him with his head in the stupid tree house.  
   
Ryan stares up at him. Shane’s talking about the tree house like it’s a home they’re going to purchase. He barely listens, mostly thinking of all the ways he could end it all right now. He wonders, once, if Shane is just going to disappear up there and shout _good luck_ from the little hole in the bottom. He doesn’t. He leaps back down in this rush of motion that has Ryan pulling back, eyes wide—but slow and distant, like he’s not quite present enough to be startled. He’s not looking at Shane straight on because he can’t focus his eyes. Wow he’s tired.  
   
Shane’s hustling, then. He’s got a hair trigger with being worked up. Goes from half-poltergeist to on-duty fireman in six point two seconds. Ryan, however, feels like he’s had a good dose of Nyquil. God, wouldn’t that be nice. Shane asks for the bags.  
   
Ryan shoulders off the bag he insisted on carrying. A good choice, in retrospect, since he can’t feel his arm so it didn’t matter in the end. He grabs Shane’s pack out of the snow and extends them both.  
   
Then, slowly, oh so slowly, “Wait—a fire, wh—is it the freaking TARDIS?”  
   
~  
  
He peers at him for a moment, but says nothing. Ryan looks out of it but Shane wants to get him safe before he fights with him to figure out if he’s okay. He thinks about that knot on his head and tries not to feel anxious.

“It’s probably about that large. It’s built for twelve year olds,” he says, and struggles to get the packs through and not fall to at the same time, then he’s down in the snow again. “Here,” he says, reaching out to him. “Maybe I could uh... boost you up?” He really has no idea. Even with a boost Ryan’s still feet from the entrance. Shane considers its height, then looks all the way back down to Ryan. 

“You are so small,” he informs him.  
  
~  
   
“I am not!” It jumps off his tongue before he can think of a more appropriate response. “You’re just a giant.”  
   
This is daunting. He looks up to the tree house and thinks about his leg and Shane’s feeble bone structure. What if he falls and hurts Shane? Ugh. But there’s no other way to do this. Ryan imagines Shane’s face if he suggested he will just sleep on the ground. It’s almost worth saying it for the face, but he refrains. “Are you sure? You’re a giant, but in a popsicle stick kind of way.” He steps forward. “I could try and climb it on my own.”  
  
~  
  
“No,” Shane says, with no room for argument, because he knows that’s not happening, and even if Ryan could, he doesn’t want him to. He’s already been hurt enough today.Shane thinks he could probably get Ryan a fair ways up the trunk of the tree with a boost. “Here,” he says, and leans the pipe against the tree before he folds his hands together into a kind of footrest. “I think you could pull yourself up”  
  
   
~  
   
Okay, Shane’s idea makes marginally more sense. But Ryan doesn’t admit that out loud. He rolls his shoulder and stares at Shane’s laced fingers. He almost feels bad about stepping on them. They don’t look like things that should be stepped on. But they also don’t look like things that should squeeze pipes and kill zombies.  
   
He takes a breath and settles his good foot into Shane’s hands, braces himself against Shane’s shoulder with one hand and reaches up for the highest slat he can reach with the other. He pulls at it to make sure it can hold him. It doesn’t fall. Shane brings his hands up, and Ryan grabs the next one, a few rungs up. His arm quivers, and he feels the slice of his veins pressed against his skin. He pulls himself up, gets his fingers around the next.  
   
It _immediately_ feels wrong, but it’s too late to stop. His other arm’s about to give. He sags against it, and the wood cracks like a firework. He drags his fingers along the bark of the tree like he can claw his way up, tries to use his other hand to hold himself, to stop this. Too little, too late, he slips, falls back.  
  
~  
  
Shane can support Ryan’s weight when he expects it, for the most part. This he doesn’t expect, and he tries to figure out how to brace his body against his sudden momentum, but can’t. He topples back, and Ryan falls with him, against him. Shane supposes he should be glad for the snow, because it breaks their fall a little, but only a little. He’s probably bruised his shoulders from falling on the road, earlier, beneath the weight of that zombie and his own reckless clumsiness, but this is different, and Ryan is heavier but a lot less terrifying. Still, it hurts when he hits the ground.A muffled, bitten off noise is punched from his chest, and he’s got his arms around Ryan like he thought he might somehow be able to grab him to prevent himself falling. Flawed logic.  
  
~  
  
Ryan is surprised he didn't scream. Or yell, at least. It's still tangled on his tongue when he hits the ground. No, hits Shane. "Shit, shit!" He's on top of him. He goes to roll off but Shane's got his arms around him so Ryan turns and twists so his chest hovers over Shane's face. He can't pull up, can't get properly on his knees with his leg so he's keeping off Shane with an arm. He probably fell right on his lungs.

"Are you okay? Sorry, it..." He's panting. He digs his fingers into the snow so the cold takes out the sting the tree bark tore into his hands. "Fuck." He's checking everywhere on Shane he can find. What if he broke his back? What the hell are they going to do? 

"Can you move?"

A dumb question since Ryan is still pressed into him, still on top of him. But he asks it anyway. Asks it to drown out the worry.  
  
~  
  
“No,” he grits out, but he’s laughing, gasping and breathless. “You’re heavy.”

He sort of tries to get one elbow beneath him so he’s not flat in his back, but it hurts so he gives up, falls back, eyes on the stars for a second — what he can see of them through the trees. He thinks his lungs have forgotten how to work properly, but at least he’s breathing. He looks back at him, and pants for a moment. Ryan looks freaked so Shane wraps his fingers around the first thing he reaches which is Ryan’s waist. “Tell me you didn’t land on your leg...”  
  
~  
   
He’s scrambling. But he doesn’t know how to get off of Shane. Shane’s still holding his waist. And fuck, if Ryan has the willpower to tell him to stop. Because his fingers are in the grooves of Ryan’s waist, like they’re filling some hollow part of him. Smoothing the cracks. Ryan’s _crushing_ Shane, kinda, and he’s thinking about Shane’s fingers and how nice they feel. He hates himself.  
   
 _Tell me you didn’t land on your leg…_  
   
Right, his leg. It’s sending shocks of pain out, radiating like a gong. It’s not too sharp, nothing too different—more, but not the worst he’s felt. Not anything that speaks of more damage.  
   
“No,” Ryan says. He doesn’t think so anyway. “No, I landed on you.” He wants it to be a joke, but it comes out urgent. Concerned. “The thing fell,” he says as he casts a glance back to the tree, to the slat that’s hanging vertical. Then he looks back at Shane. He wants to slump against him.  
   
He’s so fucking tired. This day is never ending. Everything feels never ending now, except Shane’s fingers on his waist. Those will end. They have to, because Ryan’s got to get up that stupid tree. He slips from his hands to his elbows, because those got scratched up too. He swipes his thumb along Shane’s temple. For no reason. He just wants to touch him.  
   
“Are you hurt?” It’s genuine, stolen, like a tear dropped from his cheeks to Shane.  
  
~  
  
Suddenly, Ryan’s so much closer than a moment ago, and he exhales a little shock of breath at that touch, and not because it’s cold. He makes a little sound that sounds hurt, because he’s just scraped his other elbow on the ground as he tries to readjust. He realizes he’s clinging to the back of Ryan’s sweater at the small of his back as well as holding his waist. Even so, he says, “No, no, I can still move all my limbs.” His eyes sort of flit everywhere but to Ryan’s, but then he meets them, still breathing a little too hollowly, like the air’s coming in but not filling him. He thinks his heart is skipping. 

He makes himself loosen his grip on Ryan’s sweater and reaches up to hold his shoulder instead. So the slat broke. “I must’ve skipped that one,” he says softly, and wonders if he should mention the erratic beat of his heart.

He settles on no. Ryan already looks like he’s halfway to a panic attack.

Shane tries to steady his breathing because he’s sure Ryan can feel how unsteady it is, if nothing else but it’s not really working. He must have been winded. Or something.

He squeezes his eyes shut and that helps a little and he allows himself to entertain the idea that some of this shortage of breath is probably because Ryan is so close to him, and Shane’s remembering that moment on the bus when he was sure Ryan was about to kiss him, and suddenly he feels the burn of the bite mark on his neck — the kind of bite that doesn’t make him sick with fear. Ryan’s mouth. Ryan’s marked him.  
   
~  
  
"Here," Ryan starts to pull himself up. "Jesus, sorry." He hates it. The absence of Shane's grip. It's on his shoulder, but it's different. He rolls into his side into the snow, panting and wild-eyed."Why don't I stay here and you go up there? Less pain for you, less embarrassment for me." He leavens his tone with a laugh.But it's brittle. Because he knows he has to try again.  
  
~  
  
It’s so cold with Ryan gone and Shane hears himself groan a little, but he sits up. His sweater is ripped at his right elbow, and he looks over at Ryan, then around. 

Right. Zombies.

“No,” he says, and he somehow arranges all his limbs into a crouch, then reaches out for him again. “If you can’t get up, zombies definitely can’t,” he says. “So come on.”

Shane also has no idea how Ryan’s going to get down, but he can’t worry about that now. _Let’s just survive the night first_ , he thinks.He pulls himself to his feet and tells himself that that weird sound he thinks he heard just now was the wind or a coyote, and nothing else.

It sounded far enough away. 

“Come on,” he says, reaching down to help pull Ryan up. “We’ll try again.”  
  
~  
  
Ryan takes Shane's hand and pulls himself up. He looks up at the tree and presses his mouth to the curve where his wrist turns to hand to stave off the burn. Sucks at the broken skin. His tongue comes away coppery. 

"Okay, round two, I guess."  
  
~  
  
“Yup,” he says, eyes on the blood. _Fuck_. And they get back to it. 

He’s so tense as he boosts Ryan again, and fights not to lose his balance or stagger. His elbow screams, and he wonders if he fucked it, somehow. There’s blood on both of them and he’s trying not to think that they might be in trouble. 

And then that sound comes again. Closer. And it’s not a coyote. 

“Hey, no pressure,” Shane says, voice tight beneath Ryan’s weight and his own fear, “but come on, Ryan.”  
  
~  
  
Ryan hears it too. 

He catches one plank, hoists himself up. Arms burning. Taut with effort. He nestles his foot, quickly on a board. How good one. The other hangs off, useless. He moves another rung. Another. He thrusts up, grunts and catches the edge of the tree house. He's essentially dangling when his leg slips and he flails, for just a second before he gets enough swing below his waist. His arms simmer in the strain. His fingers scratch at splinters in the floor. But he pulls up, up, and over the side.

Then he's back at the edge. "No pressure," he says, almost mocking but edged with nerves. He's wide eyed as he looks down. "But cmon, Shane."  
  
~  
  
As soon as Ryan’s up, Shane whispers some kind of abstract prayer of thanks because he has no idea who he’s praying to. “Here.” He grabs the pipe and holds it up, stepping onto one of the first slats so Ryan can grab it, because he sure as fuck isn’t leaving it down here.   
  
As soon as his hands are free, he starts to climb. If there’s movement at the edge of the trees in his periphery, he ignores it as best he can, just focuses on getting up, tries to force the sheer, sheer panic away from him as he focuses on getting all of his ridiculously long limbs up that ridiculous makeshift ladder.  
  
He hauls himself into the treehouse with Ryan and, God, his arms hurts. It sends needle-sharp pains all through his forearm. He twists, dragging himself away from the edge on his back. “Close ‘er up,” he says, almost jovial, like they’re just two kids playing a game or something. They’re pirates or cowboys or anything other than two guys in the middle of a zombie apocalypse. It’s the weight of reality, though, ever-present, that makes him keep his voice down.  
  
~  
  
Ryan slams the makeshift door shut. He has to fumble with it a few times to get it to stick, but then it’s closed off the howl of the wind, and the leaves, and whatever else they were hearing. Zombies. It’s cozy. This little house. Ryan isn’t sure how in the holy hell is going to get down from here, but still. It’s nice. It’s not warm by any stretch, but it’s not outside. Ryan likes it better than the bus. 

He glances back at Shane and takes a breath. He’s exhausted. If his body doesn’t let him sleep tonight, he’s going on strike. He rocks back and falls into a sitting position next to Shane. His leg brace is all but useless at this point. One of the twigs they used is splintered and just kind of hanging uselessly by the wayside. He’s trying to keep it straight, mostly on his own. It’s weird how that happens with things, how they just become less important as time passes. Kinda like kids. Like a person. When people grow up and stop being a spectacle. Start having to earn the attention—the affection.

Ryan exhales and it’s slow and shadowed. He always wanted more than the world gave. And now it’s dried up like dirt. It’s got nothing left for him. Except Shane, and he’s so scared that if he keeps leaning into Shane. He’ll end up dead and dry too.

Ryan know he’s tired because his mind is winding out, catastrophizing everything, and comparing his leg brace to infants. He presses back, onto an arm, so he’s resting behind Shane as he puts a hand on his shoulder. “You’ve probably got a killer bruise,” he says, trying to check, again, because he’s still worried about it. But he doesn’t want to seem too worried about it. It’s all very stupid.

~  
  
In the moments of silence, calm, _relief_ that follow, Shane has been thinking so hard about how to turn to Ryan and check — see if he’s okay — his head, his leg… there was blood on his hands. There’s blood on Shane’s, too. On his knuckles, but he’d mostly tried to wash it off with snow as they walked and now his knuckles are just raw and sore as fuck. It’s worse when the cold seeps out of them, but he’s not going to complain about being warm. If they can get there.  
  
But Shane’s been thinking so hard about Ryan, eyes on his splintered brace, that Ryan’s touch comes as a surprise and he twists a little too fast to look at him, then smiles when he registers the words. “Yeah,” he laughs, “probably,” like it’s no big deal.  
  
It’s darker in here, because the roof works. That’s a blessing, and there’s a little window covered with something not-quite-transparent and not-real-glass but it’s keeping the wind out. Shane stretches out a leg — he probably would practically reach all ends of the treehouse if he just starfished his limbs — and kicks at the rounded metal thing near the far edge. It clangs gently. “I bet we could light a fire in that,” Shane says. He thinks it’s part of a washing machine, but when he pulls away from Ryan, when he slips his hand inside it, the metal is slighty warped and rough like it’s been on fire before. “Jesus, there’s still wood in here,” he says. “Hope we didn’t take someone’s house.”  
  
But somehow, he doesn’t think so. This place is older. A relic from a forgotten world, a safer one.  
  
He grabs his bag to look for matches, hoping desperately he remembered to grab them. “How’s your head?” he asks. “Hurt?”  
  
~

Ryan's fingertips linger when Shane pulls away. Like he can hold him there. He's writing this fall off like it's no big deal. Ryan sighs. Watches as Shane fiddles with this metal dish thing. He doesn't know what it is but if Shane thinks it's fire capable - that's good.

"Yeah we should keep a look out so we don't surprise them if they come back." He thinks of the last humans they'd found the gun. That was desperation. It won't be like that every time. "My head's okay."

It's not a lie. His head is okay. It's still attached. It hurts. But that feels normal now. “You really think that thing will hold a fire?”  
  
~  
  
“If it doesn’t, I’m going to make it,” he says softly.

It takes a little while, but he manages. And then, so they don’t die, he props the little plasticy window beside it open with the pipe. The air pulls the smoke back out into the night. The fire’s tiny. There isn’t much to burn, but it’s heat and light and it might give them enough warmth to sleep. He turns back to Ryan. Now that he can see, he notices, peripherally, that there’s stuff up here, maybe stuff they can use, but he’s not looking at any of that really, not just yet. He pulls himself back to Ryan and holds up one finger in front of his face, something mischievous in his eyes. “Can you follow my finger?” He asks. “I want to make sure you didn’t jiggle your brains loose.”  
  
~  
  
Ryan keeps his eyes on the way Shane moves as he makes the fire. He dexterous. His hands are tiny, nimble, like they could--yeah, Ryan is definitely tired. Potentially delirious. So he’s surprised when Shane’s wiggling his fingers in front of him like he heard Ryan’s thoughts. Ryan clears his throat.  
  
“You mean _without_ punching you?”  
  
~  
  
Shane laughs, and in a little moment of daring, he brings his finger to the end of Ryan’s nose, leaving it there, and says, “I want to see if you go cross eyed.”  
  
~  
   
Ryan’s following it, for just long enough that it starts to hurt as his eyes push against his skull.  
   
“What are you—stop!”  
   
He’s followed it long enough that Shane should be over his weird urge to act like a helicopter parent. Ryan catches Shane’s hand in his and holds it, staring up at Shane, lips pursed, _what are you gonna do now?_ look.  
  
~  
  
Shane smiles at him. It’s probably maddeningly benign. He drops Ryan’s eyes, and uses his free hand to peel Ryan’s fingers from his wrist. “Let’s see if you’re still bleeding,” he says.

He doesn’t know why he’s being like this, why he’s avoiding him, on some level, but he’s thinking about his morning on the bus, and the burn and stick of the mark from Ryan’s mouth beneath his shirt. He’s thinking about how easily Ryan sweeps him under all this feeling he doesn’t know what to do with, and the word _friends_ , and he doesn’t know how he feels about that but he knows it’s not quite right.  
  
~  
   
Ryan throws up his hands like he’s never bled a day in his life. “I never was bleeding.” He thinks about it, tries to workshop it together in his head. Shane’s train of thought. He doesn’t like that Shane pushes away the touch between them, but it feels like something he’s braced himself for. Like he’s been waiting to get hit in the jaw, all these times, and this time—it happens. But it’s lighter, more like a flick in the forehead. It hurts, but it’s manageable.  
   
Because Shane’s touches are always calculated—waiting on Ryan to be okay. Maybe he thinks he is. Ryan’s tired of Shane doing things for him. He’s fine without touching. He doesn’t need it, but then he’s thinking about his neediness. How he was just thinking of it wearing on Shane.  
   
At least Shane has sense enough to pull back before Ryan fucking kills him.  
   
Ryan will be okay with that. He can be. Because it’s better than being alone.  
   
Oh, right, the bleeding comment. He returns to Earth and glances at either of his hands. Shane must mean the scrapes. “Oh, it wasn’t—” He exposes the raw skin on his arms. It’s red, skin rubbed raw, but there’s no visible blood anymore. He’s irritated, suddenly, and he has to close his eyes to swallow this rush of fire, this fist that rams up his throat onto his tongue. He inhales long and hard.  
   
 _I’m not your fucking child._  
   
“I’m good.”  
   
And it’s the biggest lie he’s ever told.  
  
~  
  
He draws back, pulling into a crouch. “Okay, good,” he says, and unzips his sweater. He works to get it off, frowning. “I think I fucked up my arm,” he says, and he doesn’t know what he’s trying to prove but it feels like something.

His shirt isn’t ripped at least. He works the sleeve up and it definitely looks like it’s going to bruise, but otherwise it’s not exactly bloody. He reaches back and pulls the shirt over his head, twists to try and see his shoulder, but can’t quite. He can just see that it’s dark, but the extent of the bruise it too far down over his shoulder blade.  
  
~  
   
Ryan’s not paying attention. He’s in his own head, when he should probably be concerned about Shane. Who is now paying attention to his arm. But Ryan has decided to be in his own head. He’s running round and round, with a thousand thoughts he shouldn’t be having. He can’t even translate them.  
   
So it jars him when he looks up and there’s Shane’s back. With all this shadowed planes and jagged lines. Just there. Right in front of him. While he’s trying to feel sorry for himself. Then he sees the bruise. It’s massive, and it’s Ryan’s fault. Fuck. Ryan did that. And it’s this huge, swath of a thing that’s stretched all across Shane’s collarbone. And a bruise like that on something so hollow and dense as Shane’s body just—a frisson of fear cuts through Ryan.  
   
He stays where he is. Feeling particularly chastised about closeness, and honestly, touching something like that might make it worse. He winces. He almost apologizes again, but it feels unnecessary.  
   
“It looks horrible, dude—did you fracture something? How’s your movement?”  
  
~  
  
“Oh, thanks a lot,” he says, trying to keep this light. He’s not actually that worried, but then, he can’t see it. He doesn’t like what it does to Ryan’s voice.

He touches his forearm, thinking about how Ryan probably knows a whole lot about sports injuries and maybe if he feels like he’s helping he’ll feel better. Shane doesn’t want Ryan to feel useless. Shane has never felt like he was, but he’s done his best to convey it in words... he still doesn’t know if that’s enough.

Something hot and strange flashes through him, he thinks about something he could say— the kind of thing you murmur against someone else’s skin, when there’s barely space for a breath between you.

“Uh— I can move it, but it hurts here,” he says, drawing his fingers down from the inside of his elbow to his wrist. “Like little sharp pains. I think I probably just pinched a nerve or something.” He hopes.  
  
~  
   
“Maybe,” Ryan says softly. He’s pretty sure Shane wouldn’t be able to move if he’d broken something. And nothing looks swollen. “Your shoulder looks normal, but you might’ve sprained it.” He wishes there was something he could do for that. He wishes there was something he could for Shane. “I did fall on it, and because I’m not small, it was probably a lot of stress.”  
   
“If you can still move it, it’s probably nothing major…” He swallows whatever else is crawling up his throat. “Just don’t use it too much.   
  
~  
  
“Okay,” he laughs, when Ryan insists he’s not small, but he listens, keeps his eyes down, but he’s quite still.  
  
“You got it,” he tells him, brown eyes flickering up to find Ryan’s. “Actually, I think it might have been the zombie that messed it up first.” He doesn’t know if Ryan saw that, and he shrugs. “Could be worse.”

Subconsciously, he brushes the place Ryan bit him, fingers tracing the ridges that are mostly faded now. It wasn’t that hard of a bite, but it stings, in a different way than all his other minor injuries. He thinks he likes it. It’s still cold though. The fire’s only small. He doesn’t bother with his shirt because it ached to get it off over his head. He just reaches to pull his hoodie on again.  
  
~  
   
“Wait, what?”  
   
Ryan has a fuzzy memory of something with a zombie, something he noticed peripherally, not fully, because a zombie was trying to bite his face off. Panic splashes his insides crimson. Did it bite him? He’s replaying everything that happened today. Shane was normal. He’s got a side by side comparison going of when Jake first, of when Jake… but there aren’t many similarities.  
   
Shane wasn’t sluggish.    
   
No more than usual.  
   
Wasn’t mean.  
   
No meaner than usual.  
   
It doesn’t matter. He launches forward, no longer giving a single shit if Shane needs space. “What zombie? What happened? Did it—” He’s scanning Shane’s arm, his torso. No. He must mean something else.  
   
Ryan kinda recalls it. Shane stumbling. Falling. Maybe, or maybe that’s what he wants to remember. He’s got Shane’s wrist in both his hands, scanning the length of his arm—and jesus, it is bruised. Ryan’s breath comes in spates, buffeted by fear—uncertainty. He’s gentle enough. Soft with his touch. Even in his anxiety.  
   
 _Calm down. He’s not bitten. He’s fine._  
   
He draws his hands away. Tries to change course to look less like a flammable object and more like a person. “You didn’t mention it—has it been bothering you all day?” He only _just_ manages to look at Shane. Skittish in the contact. Like things he isn’t saying are going to crack his eyes open and spiral into the air between them like smoke.  
  
~  
  
“Oh— hey,” he whispers, but it’s so soft it’s barely audible. He lets Ryan take hold of him, and then realizes what he must think. _Shit_. So he lets him check. “No, sorry— no, no, it wasn’t—... I almost forgot... I. No. I’d tell you. Hey.” He touches Ryan’s face, his cheek, just for a second.

Ryan’s been touching his face, lately. Shane remembers it, the carefulness of Ryan’s hand against his jaw. But the contact is apparently too much for Shane, so he drops his hand to Ryan’s shoulder. 

“ _You_ bit me, though,” he says. “So. Good thing you’re not a zombie, I guess.” He sort of smiles. It’s not quite there.  
  
~  
   
If life were a piece of paper, Ryan would tear it to pieces and fling it into the air. He would cast it into the ether of this fucked up universe and be done with it. Shane touches his face, and it’s a gentle, tender— _more than friends_ touch. It awakens a prayer in him, a need. But… again, it’s because Ryan’s panicking. It’s always because Ryan’s panicking.  
   
That’s why Shane touches him.  
   
He squeezes his eyes shut and shifts back, putting some space between them. And then nearly chokes on his own saliva when Shane says it.  
   
 _You bit me._  
   
“I…” Clips of heat flash through him like a squeezed machine gun. He breathes in a gasp, bringing a hand up to scratch, rub at his face, and then back through his hair. It’s greasy—disgusting really, and it makes him more aware of how awful he probably looks. He rakes it forward, feels it stand on end. “That’s… I didn’t—”  
   
But he did, and saying he didn’t mean to feels like… such an enormously stupid thing to do. His skin feels splotchy, splattered in patches of fire. “Sorry. It’s…” His mind flails, tries to find something Shane did—something similar—that might make biting him, said aloud, even remotely okay.  
   
Ryan can think of nothing. He’s actually starting to think Shane hasn’t touched him a single time in their entire time together. And all he can say is, “I’m sorry, I just…” A weak laugh. “I don’t know.”  
   
~  
  
It’s sort of amazing the way Ryan just falls to pieces like this, and Shane wonders if it’s because he’s... he’s just Shane or because he’s not who Ryan is comfortable with, or if it’s because he is decidedly not female. He can’t put it together, what this is. Whether it’s embarrassment or shame or something else.

“Sorry,” he says. “Is that something— that’s probably something we shouldn’t talk about. That’s. Okay. I’ve got it.” He looks away and uncrumples his hoodie, pulls it on over his arms and fumbles with the zipper.  
  
   
~  
   
Ryan rubs his neck, follows the lines of it, the curves. Feels a bump of raised skin, a scrape, things that make him a person. It grounds him. Now Shane’s the one who seems like he’s been scolded. Ryan tilts his head a little. He laughs. They cannot fucking communicate for shit.  
   
“No, we can…” He doesn’t know— _can_ they talk about it? What even is it? He doesn’t know why he thinks they can’t.  
   
Well, there is the fact that he’s never… liked a guy. Not like this. But it’s more than that, and less than that… it’s Shane. It’s this cool aloof exterior he’s got, this almost transparent vibe. Like if Ryan says too much, does too much, Shane will evaporate like the mist that he is.  
   
“That’s not…” Ryan worries his lip. “No, we can talk about it. I just… I didn’t exactly—” He has no fucking idea what to say. “I can just be—a lot… sometimes. Or so I’ve been told.” _By you, actually_. “I lose myself in things. Get wrapped up in them.” He’s trying to be careful. Trying to be like Shane. “I don’t want to push you.”  
  
~  
  
He’s startled, really, and he looks up at him, caught. “You mean like, you’re going to embroil me in your evil web of teeth and treachery?” He teases, but it’s serious too. Too serious, and his eyes flicker to Ryan’s mouth. By _accident_ , he tells himself.

“I don’t... I don’t understand, Ryan, explain it,” he says. 

Bossy.  
  
~  
   
Ryan doesn’t see it, not consciously, but he runs the nail of his thumb over his lower lip. In reaction to something he doesn’t fully grasp. “I, uh…” Ryan clears his throat. He’s expended all his words. He feels like an extra on his first movie set, lost, a little wobbly. But Shane’s using that voice and Ryan’s just rising to it like a spring to its coil.  
   
“No…” His laugh is high, nervous and staccato. “No, uh… not that.” The red splotches on his skin are worse—they’re a full blown film over top him. His fingers dig into the skin on the back of his neck, palm sliding down his collarbone in enough friction to feel like rug burn.  
   
“Remember how I said it’s like you window shop emotions? Well, sometimes I feel like the salesman that runs out of the store and starts dousing you in perfume samples.”  
  
~  
  
He’s fascinated, fucking entranced by this flush that’s creeping up Ryan’s neck, and he hasn’t looked up in some time and Shane’s so tense he feels brittle, but very alive.

“Oh,” he says, and it’s partway to a question, or perhaps partway out of one. Ryan’s talking in riddles and he half loves it, no one’s ever done that before, not like this, but part of him wants to drag his fingers through his hair until it hurts because he’s not sure he understands, but _god_ , he wants to.

“So you’re saying,” he starts, and the pause breaks as he zips his sweater up. He’s got goosebumps, but he doesn’t feel cold. “that you’re hoping I’m going to... ah... Choose something that you’ve got?”  
  
~  
   
A _no_ starts on Ryan’s tongue, just _nnn_ … this weird, half-word. He doesn’t know how to save himself here. He’s backed himself into a corner, and Shane isn’t letting him off the hook. “No, I’m… wh—not necessarily. I’m just…” He flashes his eyes up to Shane, then away, far away—like out of the tree house and to Mars kind of way.  
   
“I just don’t want to be too much for you.” Ryan’s not selling anything here. He doesn’t expect anything. “Damn it! I just mean we can talk about whatever you want to talk about it. As long as you’re okay with it.” Then, “I just thought the biting might be something—something that you weren’t okay with. Because, normal people don’t just bite—” His jaw ticks. He almost says _friends_. That’s what Shane said they were. “I wasn’t sure if it freaked you out, because the other morning you were… grouchy, and then…” He gestures between them. “I just…”  
   
 _…want to touch you, so bad._  
   
“I don’t want to overload you. And talking about it felt like—felt like it could bring it back or something. I don’t know. I don’t—you talk now. I’m done for the rest of the night.”  
  
~  
  
Okay. Okay, he’s getting it now, and he’s watching Ryan pull away, shelter from this and he takes a breath, sighs it out. “How about this,” he says. “You be whoever you are, just be _how_ you are, Ryan, and. And I’ll tell you if it’s too much, okay? Promise. Don’t keep... you’re okay. It’s gonna be okay. You can’t tell me that I’m okay, how I am, and then just...” he waves a hand between them “do this. Pull back every time you _think_ you’re too much for me. Maybe— maybe I’m— you know— I can handle it. You not even gonna try me?”  
  
~  
   
Ryan’s brow shoots into his hairline. And it’s got him thinking about his hair, the way the skin prickles beneath it, so he’s tangling his hands in it again. “Well, I did, obviously.” He laughs, and this time it’s a little more real. Still battered, though. “I bit you.”  
   
He jerks his eyes to Shane’s, makes himself stay there. It takes muscle strength, like holding a bench press. He sucks in too much air, almost chokes on it. “But okay, I’ll… okay.” He clicks his tongue, tries to find some of his footing. “To be clear, you’re… asking me to bite you?” A smile falls crooked across his teeth. He points at Shane, kind of bouncing his hand, a stuttered gesture. “So you just keep bringing up my kinks to avoid talking about your own.”  
  
~  
  
He gasps softly, and it comes out all tangled in a laugh. “I was talking about all of it, like, all of you, but okay. I mean, okay, I’m not opposed to biting, either.

Just like he wasn’t _opposed_ to Ryan straddling him in the cabin, Ryan’s voice in his ear whispering ‘ _fuck you._ ’ Which was rude. So it shouldn’t get him warm like this, but it does. If Ryan’s around he hardly thinks he needs a fire.

It’s a ridiculous thought, and he laughs again, softly, dropping his eyes. And then he falls silent, trying to figure out how to say everything he wants to, getting a little lost there, in those thoughts. “Yeah, you can—...” he repeats, because he’s aware, somewhere, that he’s been quiet too long.  
  
~  
  
Shane's silence doesn't bother him. Not this time. Partially because Ryan's all wound around himself. Trying to catch his breath. It's weird, how Shane speaks so cavalierly, so bluntly, comfortable in a way Ryan isn't. He ghosts through the world, and yet in moments like this—he's realer than Ryan, more present.

So Ryan smirks. Settles into this aura Shane's brought between them. "All of me, huh?" He keeps his eyes on Shane. It's easier now. "Careful what you wish for. I'm not either. Opposed to biting." It rises into the air like a flame. A challenge. "I'm not opposed to a lot of things."  
  
~  
  
Fuck, Shane feels like he’s been set on fire. His mind, his body, all of him. He looks back up, and locks eyes with Ryan’s, just holds that for a moment. His heart slams against his rib cage over and over like it’s trying to escape, like it’s trying to get to this ridiculous, anxious, beautiful person that is Ryan, across from him. And Shane takes a breath. “Then what are you waiting for?” he asks, and somehow it’s not a challenge, it’s not a cliché, no matter how much he wants Ryan to just take him at his word, take up this potential challenge, and kiss him until he can’t even breathe. Instead, it’s a genuine question. Because he’s Shane. And it’s the apocalypse. And maybe the waiting is the most human thing. Maybe the waiting means they’ve got time.

But Shane doesn’t know if they do, and he doesn’t know how to handle this distance between them if they don’t. But he can’t stand the idea of this thing slipping between the cracks in his fingers like water or dust.  
  
~  
  
Lines pleat Ryan's forehead. Shane's question is genuine. And Ryan is waiting. He has been. He doesn't know what to say, how to respond, until finally it drops from his lips like a stone.

"You."  
  
~  
  
Something surges through him, and it is white hot, desperate, overwhelmed. He fists the fingers of one hand until his knuckles sting, and presses it to his thigh, trying desperately to reground himself. It takes too long, but then it slams into him like a rush. _I’m not what you’re looking for._

And he thinks it on so many levels. 

But it’s the fucking— the world’s already ended. And he thinks that if he gives in now, he’ll still be waiting for Ryan, and Ryan may never come around. Biologically, fundamentally... or maybe he’ll just, in Ryan’s infinite kindness, humour Shane until the end of... all of this.

“You sure about that?” He asks, because he has to say something. He has to fight himself not to reach out and draw Ryan to him and not fucking let go like he has, foolishly, or out of self-preservation, over and _over_ again.  
  
~  
  
Laughter shudders through Ryan. He sees it, this uncertainty in Shane. He tosses his head aside then dips it, dropping his forehead into his hand.

God, he wants Shane's hands on his throat. Around his wrist. He doesn't want to do this. To push this. He doesn't want to control it. He knows what he wants. Has known. But not Shane. Shane is unknowable.  As elusive as the obsidian beating across the brown in Shane's eyes. 

"Are _you_ sure?" He doesn't look up. Even as he shivers under the ghost of Shane's fingers. "You're the one at the window.  
  
~  
  
His breath rushes out of him once, twice, and then he reaches out, and unfolds his fingers and touches them softly to Ryan’s temple, brushes at his unwashed hair, and half closes his grip there, without really closing it at all. It’s the suggestion of a touch, or grasp more than anything else. He leans forward, and, so carefully — like he’s calculated the distance a thousand times, Shane kisses Ryan beside his mouth, the place where it’s crooked, where his smile sits, when he does smile. 

His breath shakes softly, and then he moves, kisses his temple, and says “I want to be. Sure.”

It’s the biggest admission he thinks he’s ever given. It means a lot. But it’s strange, unclear, still. He can’t fully give himself over to it, but he thinks he wants to.  
  
~  
  
It surprises him. Shane's mouth so close to his. Then on his temple. But the echo presses into his mouth. It brings the hairs on his arm up. It settles around his heart like the crackle of a fire. Its the kind of touch that lingers on his lips like sugar. He looks up into Shane's eyes. And almost breaks. Almost says fuck you and your rules. Almost almost almost.

His breath skitters out, a quiet laugh that brushes against Shane. Still close. Still possible.

But no.

His laugh brightens at the edges. It’s light, like a bird skimming a lake. "Um. You misunderstood. I just meant I wanted you to choke me." He waggles his eyebrows a bit for emphasis. “You know, _bondage_.

”God, he hopes Shane knows that was a joke.

Mostly.

~  
  
Something strange and unsure flickers through his eyes, but then he catches Ryan around the throat, the back of his head, and uses his body weight to push him down.

Even still, he’s careful. He’s got his hand between Ryan’s head and the floor, and his fingers tighten on his throat just barely as he leans down over him. “Careful,” he tells him.  
  
~  
  
Lightning rips across his spine, settling like fire in his stomach. He did not expect it. In normal circumstances, he might feel threatened. But he doesn't. He's weirdly calm aside from the fact that his tongue is thick in his mouth and his body is purring. Pliant.

It unnerves him. This side of him. He hasn't seen it before now. Before Shane. Or maybe has, but he's never acknowledged it.

He breathes slow under Shane's hand, chipping at the stillness that shackles around his limbs in this grip. Shane's. Breath stumbles out of him too slow.

Then he scoffs and it vibrates against Shane's skin. "Or what?" He slips a tentative hand up to hover over Shane's wrist. Doesn't touch. His eyes tighten.

A game, something that gives two halves if himself a chance to cross swords. But still, always, in every way, at Shane's mercy.  
  
~  
  
“Or maybe... we keep pushing at this,” he says, and closes his fingers tighter, his eyes moving between his hand and Ryan’s eyes, checking — always checking. “And it goes further...” 

Further than they’ve let it so far.

He feels his heart pulsing through every part of him, this steady, rhythmic insistence.

Who knows what will happen then?  
  
~  
  
His heartbeat flutters. The calm is sliding out of him. Melting into this rush of pounding exhilaration. Breath bounces in his throat, against Shane's hold, before it passes his lips. Heat rises in him, draws invisible beads of sweat along his palms. His temple. The divots of his throat Shane's got caged.

He didn't think Shane would go this far. He didn't think he would. But some part of him wants Shane to push until he breaks.

A smile plays at the corners of his mouth. His voice is kinda wheezing when he says, "Bossy looks good on you."

~  
  
He breathes a laugh that’s mostly uncertain, keeps his hand around Ryan’s throat as he shifts, but then he’s gently nudging Ryan’s legs apart, sliding one of his between them, so that he is directly over him. Hips. Chest. He does touch.

He looks down at him and thinks _everything_ looks good on you, but doesn’t say it, because he thinks Ryan would laugh at him. _He_ wants to laugh at himself, and might if he wasn’t so overwhelmed, embarrassed at the fact that his brain came up with it in the first place. “Is this what you imagined?” He asks, eyes flickering up. The unasked question is there: _Did_ you imagine it? Did you imagine it with me?  
  
~  
  
He's transfixed. Lost in that hand on his throat and the way Shane moves Ryan's body and he obeys like Shane's his new center of gravity.

"My imagination doesn't do you justice." It's a stolen sentence. But he already said it. He kinda wishes Shane would just strangle him. Then he bites his lip, tries to fix it. "I mean, do you..." He takes a hard breath. "Did you play an instrument? You have good hands."

Somehow, that's worse.  
  
~  
  
Shane’s eyebrows make their way through about a thousand different expressions, some simultaneously, and then he laughs, and lets him go, and draws his thumb along the underside of Ryan’s lower lip. 

“I would probably play the accordion. Or maybe a... maybe a banjo?” He suggests. “But no, I never did...” he’s only half there, in his words, and he slides his fingers down Ryan’s throat to his collarbone, to the hollow of his throat, to his chest. His eyes follow the trail of it.  
  
~  
  
Ryan's breath hitches. It's the razor all over again. This trickle of touch that holds Ryan down like bonds. He shakes beneath it this time. His hand floats to the floor where it'd still been hovering. He breathes in uneven beats, following unspoken orders from Shane's touch.

No one has ever undone him like this. Pulled him apart at a molecular level. Ryan doesn't feel like he even belongs to himself anymore. Feels like he belongs to Shane. It's terrifying.

He's watching Shane's face, his eyes trail the same line as his fingers. Mouth soft, orange in the doomed light. Ryan aches for this. For Shane's body pressed harder on top of him. For Shane's mouth on him. He twists through him, this need, like another skin.

"Accordion?" He trips over the word, fumbles, panting through it. "Whatever you say."

 _Anything you say._  
  
~  
  
“Hm,” he murmurs, far away, as he gets ahold of the zipper of Ryan’s sweater and undoes it. 

The sound takes him apart. He gasps out a breath and looks up at him, then slips his fingers beneath Ryan’s shirt, over his stomach. “C‘mere.” He’s breathless. He tugs at his waist a little, so he can pull him off the floor, so he can take off his shirt.  
  
~  
  
Ryan doesn't register the zipper, not really. He's still lost in Shane's face. The way the shadows mark him. Ryan's jealous of how carelessly they flit across his face. He wants to.

Shane pulls him back to attention with the shade of fingers on his stomach. He pulls at Ryan's waist. The touch steals through Ryan's skin, like water in a swirled glass. Ryan complies before Shane gets the words out. Up. They're closer now. Their faces.

He reaches, a curious movement, so he traces the curve of Shane's mouth before he lifts his arms to help Shane with the shirt.  
  
~  
  
“Jesus Christ,” Shane whispers as he gets it off and drops it somewhere. For a second he doesn’t touch him at all, but his hands hover like he wants to. All he can hear is his heart. He brushes Ryan’s rib cage, then pulls back, meets his eyes. 

_Friends_ doesn’t seems to fit anymore. They’re on a threshold and he knows it. “I want...” he furrows his brow. “Do you?”

He has no idea what he’s talking about. Maybe he just wants to touch him like this, shirtless, all firelit. He looks so warm. His skin looks warm. Shane wants to lose himself in him, completely.  
  
~  
  
 _Do you?_

 __It drags Ryan back, from under this sea Shane’s pushed him into. He takes a breath. A distant sound, like ice thawing, cracking, in the sun. Shane isn’t sure. He doesn’t know, and if they keep going like this—he’s going to pull Ryan further and further into this ocean. And Shane could leave him there, alone—to drown.

He slips his hands over the hollow in Shane’s hips. Blinks until his body starts to wake up. He’s not wearing a shirt, and he isn’t sure when that happened. But Shane is fully clothed and he’s shirtless and if that doesn’t feel like a metaphor for this bullshit, nothing does. Ryan pushes up, till they’re both vertical, still twisted.

He needs to stop it. Knows he does. But he can’t work it out of him. He can’t let this go, knowing one time it’s not going to happen again. Knowing one time Shane will be sure, and Ryan thinks it’ll be _no_. It’ll be _you’re too much_ or _you’re not enough_ or both.

He doesn’t answer. One of his hands on Shane’s waist follow his lines to the collar of his sweater. He bunches it, yanks Shane forward—harsh, hungry—so if he blinks, his eyelashes will snag Ryan’s. So if he speaks, his lips will brush Ryan’s. But Ryan holds them separate, fist clenching so hard his nails bite his palm through the fabric of Shane’s sweater.

His eyes beat across the curve and turn of Shane’s face. His lips, his nose, the way his hair falls over his forehead. The slant to his chin. The way his mouth is too small for the rest of him. Too much. Too much for Ryan. And then he holds Shane’s eyes, deliberate and deep.

His head ticks up a fraction, stuttered—an almost, almost question, almost surrender—and the space is even less, almost gone, but it’s not. He pants and it settles into the air like static between their mouths.

“Shut up, Shane.”

It flutters between them. Ryan pulls back. His hand slides down Shane’s front. Pressing enough that he feels Shane’s chest beneath his sweater.  He eases forward, doesn’t mean to. It’s exhaustion. Or something else, something Ryan won’t name right now. But his chest clicks into place against Shane’s and his head falls. It nestles into the space where Shane’s good shoulder meets his neck. He turns so his laugh tangles in the pulse beneath Shane’s skin.  Just like his next words.

“You know.” He lets it linger. “I think the naked body heat thing only works if we’re _both_ naked.”

~  
  
Confusion throws him almost as much as the moment of relief when Ryan doesn’t kiss him, or bite his mouth. Ryan just tells him to shut up, and it licks down into Shane’s stomach, and then Ryan presses against him, and something tightens inside him like a fist, but he tries to ignore it.  
  
He’s still trying to figure out what he is and isn’t allowed to do. Or what he’s supposed to do. He’s trying to figure out how much Ryan wants and how much he needs, and how much is too much. He touches Ryan’s waist, just above his hips, thumbs sliding over the bones, fitting them into the edges of his palms, and shivers a little as Ryan laughs against his skin. When he speaks, it feels like it gets all tangled up in Shane’s bones, but he’s right.  
  
“You just want to see me naked,” Shane retorts, smiling. “Wow, that’s really inappropriate, Ryan.”  
  
~  
  
Ryan doesn’t move. Keeps his head where it is. Even as Shane’s hands wash across his hips. Make him aware of pieces, places in him, that he’s never thought about. Uncertainty tenses Shane. It’s thrumming through him like a drumbeat. And Ryan knows he needs to back off. If not for his sake, for Shane’s.  
  
He lifts his head and meets Shane’s eyes quietly. With this almost timid expression. Because he doesn’t know how to stop. He doesn’t know what he’s doing. Only that Shane Madej is unknowable.

“How _dare_ you?” His smile flits on and off his face like a bird with a broken wing. “I’m a champion for equality.”  
  
~  
  
Shane laughs softly. “Are you?” he asks, and he can feel this moment. It’s just like all the other moments before Ryan’s pulled away, or he has, so he reaches up and catches Ryan’s face in both his hands and just holds his eyes. He runs a thumb beneath one of Ryan’s eyes — there’s something — this little spot, like a freckle or something, in the white of his eye. It’s interesting — he wonders about it, about what causes something like that, because he doesn’t know if he’s ever seen it before. If he has, he didn’t care enough to think about it.  
  
“All right,” he says softly and shifts, one hand sliding to the back of Ryan’s neck, holding him gently, maybe trying to keep him close, and with the other hand he struggles with the zip of his hoodie again, twisting and rolling his shoulders to keep enough pressure to keep the zipper taut. He gets it undone, and then finally lets Ryan go to begin to shrug it off. He doesn’t move any further away. Because he’s Shane, it’s awkward and ungainly, but he keeps his eyes down, as though he doesn’t care. “I’m sure this is less impressive,” he says finally. It sort of slips out.  
  
~  
  
Ryan’s throat catches. It bobs at his Adam’s apple, as he stares at Shane. It’s dark. It’s hard to see everything, but somehow it’s exactly what Ryan expected. And not at all. Ryan raises a hand and glides it down so it hangs on Shane’s ribs. They’re visible. So are Ryan’s, obviously. Lack of food tends to do that. But Shane’s are very visible. Like if Ryan closes his eyes, Shane will just be a skeleton.  
  
It’s all these things he’d knew it would be. Pale. Wicked pale. Skin drawn loose and tight in the way it lays over his bones. They jut, his bones do, poke out and make themselves known. His ribs, his collarbone, even the center of his chest is notched with them. Ryan can’t stop looking at it. At him. At the crookedness and wiriness of it. At this perfect imperfection.   
  
“Nah,” he says.  
  
He misses Shane’s hand on his neck physically. His absence growing into a presence, thick and heavy, across Ryan’s shoulders, down his back. Ryan reaches up. Puts his palm against Shane like he’s done before, but never like this. Never without a barrier. And he thinks about that night back at the cabin when all he wanted was to burn Shane’s shirt to ash. And he thinks this would’ve been worth it. Shane finally gets his shirt off.   
  
Ryan inclines his head, squares his shoulders forward a fraction as he twists his face into this affectionate mockery. “Are you self-conscious?” He wrinkles his nose. “Don’t be. It doesn’t suit you.”  
  
He doesn’t know how much further this is allowed to go. He’s lost. Fumbling. Shane’s taken his shirt off, and that seems like an open door. A step further. But Ryan doesn’t even know where they are. He doesn’t know where the edge of this cliff is, and just how hard he’ll splatter when he hits the bottom.  
  
~  
  
“I’m _not_ usually,” Shane says, and he gives him this quick little smile that’s gone a moment later. “I don’t usually do much with… this.” He waves a hand as his torso, shoulders and ribs thrown off-kilter by some twisting spinal glitch. Thin, too tight over his bones. He’s strange looking, disproportioned. He knows it. It’s never bothered him, really. His body is just something that allows him to move around. Eat, sleep, a place to keep his brain. But now…   
  
“It’s just that now I’m comparing it to _you_.”

He exhales a laugh. It’s ridiculous. It’s like guys comparing their junk in locker rooms or whatever it is sports guys do. But Ryan’s shoulders, the strength in them, the sharp delicate contrast in the delicacy of his collarbones. 

And he’s all warm skin, darker than Shane’s, and Shane’s caught up. He’s trying not to look at him because it would be too much, but Ryan’s imprinted behind Shane’s eyelids as beautiful and untouchable as the shadows and flickers the fire creates when he closes his eyes.  
  
~  
  
Ryan has never been uncomfortable in his body. He's more than happy being shirtless generally. But Shane saying, implying Ryan looks good has him a ten thousand feet above sea level. It bubbles beneath his breast bone, knots into this warmth that wiggles into the rest of him.

And he's so fascinated with Shane. With the way he's built so differently from anything Ryan has ever seen. Built so Ryan wants to slide into the slots between his bones. He leans forward, chin up, hands falling to Shane's thighs. "I like it." He meets his eyes. "I like you."  
  
~  
  
Surprise ticks through him, almost slowly. It climbs up all the notches of his spine, until it filters into the softness of his eyes, and Ryan is— Shane exhales once, short and soft — Ryan’s touching his thighs and Shane leans into it, into him. 

He pulls himself closer until he’s got his legs bent over Ryan’s, close enough that they’re almost flush against each other, hips to chest. He’s still mostly between Ryan’s legs, or rather, he’s bent his long legs over Ryan’s and feels very much that he is all knees and elbows, eighty percent leg, just... endless limbs. 

And Ryan says _‘I like it,’_ anyway. He says, _‘I like you,’_ and Shane can’t quite...

He laughs, uncertain, breathless. “Oh.”   
  
He thinks _wait, wait—_ , he thinks _no you don’t_.

But it feels big. Feels like a confession for Ryan.

“Well I mean, I... there’s not exactly competition,” Shane says. The words he wants to say burn and stick in his throat. It’s like pot smoke, clinging. He’s trying to work them out, but they feel so stuck, like they’re rooted around his heart, and if he gets them free, he’ll bleed.  
  
~  
  
Ryan can’t tell if he’s misstepping, or Shane’s working himself up. But it’s there, in the staggered way he moves, speaks, he’s struggling with something. Ryan hopes it isn’t him. Hopes Shane isn’t pushing himself to appease whatever he thinks Ryan wants. Because Ryan doesn’t know how to make him stop.  
  
“Well, no,” Ryan says. “But it’s not like I’ve forgotten what it was like… before.. I mean, I liked people before. I’ve been with people before.”   
  
People. Because there was a guy. Two guys.   
  
But they were stolen, shaded and steeped in shame, in shadow. Drunk and damned. Not like this. Not this bright, burst of dawn swelling to a fever pitch in his chest.   
  
His eyes skate the ridges of Shane’s torso again. He bites his lip. They’re all wrapped around each other. Mouths close. Limbs twisted together like they’re part of the same person. Ryan wants to be. He wants to lose himself. Forget where he ends and Shane begins.  But he can’t. Not with that string drawn along Shane’s spine.  
  
“I’ve never…” He sucks in air. He sees it play out again. Meeting Shane. In the--ha, he almost thinks real world. But it’s not. Not anymore. He thinks he could’ve met Shane somewhere. A bar or a mutual friend’s party or a job. Anywhere. He thinks if he’d talked to Shane. Been with him. It would’ve upended everything. It would’ve wrecked him.  
  
For Ryan, _Shane_ is the apocalypse. No zombies required.  
  
“You’re different,” and he means his torso, his body, but he means something else too. “I feel… it’s doing something to me, for me…” He tries to correct it, to bring it back to Shane’s looks. His frame. Because that’s the issue.   
  
He’s being too honest. He feels like Shane’s ducking and weaving behind smoked mirrors, and Ryan’s just… talking. Explaining. Like if he convinces Shane he’s in this, Shane will think he’s worth it. Worthy of… whatever it is Shane can give. It feels religious, ethereal. This thing emanating from Shane. This thing Ryan would kill for, die for.    
  
This thing Ryan is living for.  
  
“That I haven’t… that hasn’t happened before.”  
  
~  
  
Shane's listening to him, stealing glances, but they are so close, and he is overwhelmed and he can't stop thinking about Ryan's mouth, and the strange way he shapes certain words, and the things he's saying now which are almost impossible, it seems to Shane, in their enormity. And Ryan's saying _I've been with people_ , but he's also says _this hasn't happened before_ , and Shane can't pluck them apart in his mind. So he asks "You want it to keep happening?" and thinks _just say the word, Ryan_ , but he hopes the word is _yes._

.And it's so easy to just trail off into silence again, because that's what he does. He withdraws. But Ryan's just given him something so huge, just held it out in all this simplicity _I like you_ , and Shane wants to just take it, and trust, but he can't because it's not the only thing Ryan's saying. It's not the only thing he's getting from the way Ryan conducts himself, his body, when they are close like this. But, Shane feels, he wants to reciprocate. Desperately, needs to. It's been sitting in his throat _I like you_ , but the words are rooted so deeply in him he can't.   
  
Instead he says, "I’m— yeah. Because _I_ do. Want it to. With you." And maybe that's clear enough. It comes out all halted, and he sort of hates himself for not being able to be clear, but Ryan's hands are still on his thighs, warm through the material of his jeans and his mouth is so close.   
  
Shane winds his arms around Ryan's waist, and he's just got so much space left, because Ryan's so close, and small somehow, despite how much he seems to fill the room, every room, every space, for Shane…   
  
And so Shane just falls into that place he fits again, forearm against Ryan's spine, free hand closing softly at his waist, but not tight enough to _keep_ him there. Not if he doesn’t want it. Not if they mean different things.   
  
~  
   
It’s a different sort of thing. Entirely unlike what Shane’s done before this. Before this moment. This fucking pivot. Because it’s been all Ryan’s needs and Ryan’s wants, but this isn’t. It’s enormous between them. It’s fucking personal. And it’s like when Shane mentioned his parents. He doesn’t do personal. Not like Ryan does. So this is…Ryan’s heart’s skipping, leaping to slam dunk somewhere in his throat.  
   
Shane brings a hand around his back. This caress of sorts. He always puts his hands there, and Ryan doesn’t understand how all these things between them, these occurrences, have become usual and common. They seem too big for that. He feels the touch, the way it fits—the way it feels like a phantom limb. Part of him in a way that makes it impossible to believe he’s spent most of his life without it.  
   
“You do?” It’s a fucking squeak. “I—that’s…” He feels like Shane’s run the one play Ryan never expected. He doesn’t know how to take it. It’s just there now. Unearthed like an ancient treasure. Ryan feels insignificant in the face of it. “I mean… well, I…”  
   
He can’t get it out. Everything’s jumbled, swirling on his tongue and sticking to the sides of his mouth. Energy ramps up with his heart beat so his fingers clench against Shane’s thighs—and then he stops. Because it’s obvious. But it’s probably obvious anyway. His mom always tells—told him his eyes were too big, too bright, to ever hide anything.  
   
 _You speak louder with your eyes than your mouth, and that’s pretty impressive._  
   
Still, clawing a step further. He can’t be too eager. There’s all this blank space. All these words Shane hasn’t said and Ryan hasn’t said. This language barrier that they’re overcoming one touch at a time. But it’s not gone. Not yet.  
   
Shane hasn’t said, _I like you too._ It could be stress relief for Shane, or a thousand things. A thousand things that aren’t this massive explosion that’s started in Ryan. That he can’t seem to stop.  
   
“Yes,” he blurts before he can talk himself out of it. “Just, yes. Yes, I do.” He has to walk himself back. “This is good.”  
  
~  
  
“O— okay, great,” he says, and there’s something simmering just below that low, slightly dry tone he so often has. His eyes are dark with it. He feels a bit like they’re about to drive straight off a cliff.  
  
But he’s watching Ryan’s eyes, holding them as best he can, and he feels the tension, the immensity of whatever Ryan’s keeping down. “Good,” he says, and it’s softer. “But... I feel like there’s a ‘but’ in there, somewhere.”  
  
~  
   
Ryan looks away, scrambles to avoid Shane’s gaze. Because his damn eyes are clearly giving him away, but eventually—he gives in. Looks at Shane. His eyes soften. All of him does, so it’s barely above a whisper as he says: “There’s no but.”  
   
And, okay, he cheats. He gives up and lets his head fall, fall against Shane’s chest. His skin is warm with the dying heat from the fire, with whatever has passed between them. It’s almost reassuring to feel it so fully—that this is affecting Shane too. In some way. A real one.  
   
“Not from me.”  
  
~  
  
Shane finds a different way to fold around him. He keeps his arm along his spine, but his other arm winds around his waist, and he hitches himself carefully, somehow, even closer. He rests his chin in Ryan’s hair, and thinks that he doesn’t know if he believes him. But he wants to. 

Maybe this is just all his own self-doubt.

But maybe not. Probably not. 

“Tell me something,” he says. “Just... anything.” He presses his lips into Ryan’s hair “Just tell me something.”

Because maybe he can collect enough pieces of Ryan to know him. Maybe he can collect enough pieces to feel him close like this, even when he isn’t.  
  
~  
   
Ryan’s not sure what to say. This feels safer, a little, even if part of him wants to go back to Shane’s hand on his throat, tugging things out of him like teeth. But this is safe, nice in a more normal way. A way that doesn’t scare him half out of his mind.  
   
“Okay…”  
   
He thinks. Silence settles around them. It’s not uncomfortable. It’s easy, not like their usual, companionable ones, though. Pregnant, poised for something more. And then he shatters it.  
   
“I had to do a short film for one of my college courses, and I waited way too fucking late to get started on it. I had all these ideas. These massive ideas for these horror skits. But I couldn’t bring myself to start. Because if I chose one, then I thought I’d… miss out on the others?” It raises at the end. A question to no one. “So I put it off until I was literally out of time—those things take forever to film and edit and—whatever, so instead of working, I went to Disneyland, because that’s what Ryan Bergara does when he’s stressed, I guess.”  
   
He takes a breath. He’s told Shane a lot of things. He could stop, but he keeps going. All his words jumbled and messy on his tongue. “And there was this guy, this… kid, maybe. I don’t know. He was sitting on one of the benches outside Space Mountain. Just kind of, staring. He looked so fucking… sad, like he’d lost something huge. Some part of him. Like it was just a husk of him on the bench. It was so stark. Surrounded by all this light and laughter and shit. I mean, it’s Disney. Happiest place on Earth. It’s fucking magical. Or it’s supposed to be. It always was for me. But, anyway, long story short, I made my short film based on a kid I saw outside Space Mountain. I never even _talked_ to him.”  
   
His fingers creep up from Shane’s thighs, clench along his hips like he’s searching for fabric to latch onto. He doesn’t find enough so he wraps his arms around Shane, squeezes into him. Not much. But enough.  
   
“It was probably the most pretentious thing I’ve ever made. But I think I… I was going through a kinda shitty breakup, and I think I related to him. A lot. And I didn’t want—I didn’t wanna be a husk of myself. I wanted to be… I wanted to get past it. So it was this whole stupid metaphor for… moving on, I guess.”  
   
He pulls back and faces Shane’s chest, where his cheek had been pressed against it. He laughs quietly. “He was probably just pissed because he didn’t have a fast pass or something.”  
   
~  
  
“I was gonna say,” he says, smiling. He shifts and drags his fingers through Ryan’s hair, smooths it a little where it’s sticking up. “Where do you even keep all this empathy?” He asks. “You’ve got enough for like ten people, at least.”

But it’s true. Ryan is such a   _good_ person that Shane is constantly shocked by it. He feels so much. Just... he embodies this gentle, sweet, kindness.

Shane’s amazed by it, by him. But he also figures that it can’t last forever. Eventually it becomes a weight. Reality hits everyone at some point, but… it seems like reality has already hit Ryan and he’s still holding fast to this kindness. Like it’s all he can be. Shane doesn’t think he’s ever met such a pure person. He wants to keep him that way, protect him. He wants to make it easier for Ryan to be gentle like that, in the harshest world Shane can imagine. 

But fuck. _How_?  
  
~  
   
“Is that empathy?” he asks. He thinks about it. “Okay, maybe.” He was relating it back to himself, but that’s what empathy is, isn’t it? “I don’t know—I honestly think I was just an angsty fuck because I got dumped.”  
   
He wants to say _your turn, tell me something_. But he’s too scared to say it. He doesn’t know where the boundary lies. Shane’s touching his hair, and it’s so warm—it’s safe. In this chaotic storm of a world. It’s safe, and Ryan wishes it could last forever.  
   
“Remind me to try the radio tomorrow—we’re far enough away now that maybe it could pick something up.” He doubts it. But he’s made a promise, to Jake, that he isn’t going to stop looking. Stop trying.  
  
~  
  
“Try the radio tomorrow,” Shane says, just to be annoying. He shift, extends one leg a little. “We should figure out the bed situation,” he says after a moment, but he’s wondering about the breakup. Touchy subjects. These bigger questions. Instead he asks, “How many people have you been with?” Like it matters. It doesn’t. Or maybe it does.  
  
~  
   
Ryan’s dozed. He’s half-asleep—didn’t even properly tell Shane to fuck himself for the stupid comment—against Shane’s chest when the question crashes into him. He shivers, and it catches a shake along his bones. He’s tired, and all these feelings are bundled in him so tight that shaking seems natural. Normal. Too much sensation.  
   
“You mean people?” As if it’s completely possible Shane means rhinoceroses. “Uh, I…” He thinks. He doesn’t know why he’s so quick to answer when he gets so little from Shane. But he thinks. In his own way. Shane gives a lot. More than Ryan knows.  
   
“I’ve had… three serious relationships, and… I dunno, hookups, probably like…” He thinks again of the ones he’s never talked about. The ones he always leaves out of these questions. He doesn’t leave them out this time. “Five? Or so? It’s not really...” He’s self-conscious suddenly. He doesn’t want that number so low. Wants Shane to think he’s desirable. Worth something.  
   
“I’m not a casual person. Usually when I… usually when I do something, I’m all in. All the hookups were drunk—some drunker than others.” Then, to deflect, “You? You said you don’t date? Have you never…?”  
  
~  
  
“It’s a relative term,” he says, and his lips brush Ryan’s temple. He’s still running his fingers through Ryan’s hair, tugging gently, but not enough to pull him back, away from Shane’s chest. “I guess you could say I had... arrangements. That sounds— I don’t really sleep around a lot, it’s more...” he sighs. “People I cared about, people I liked as people... they were easy to be around and so. You know... there was one. We watched the same movies and, for a while we split the rent at... at her place.” _And shared the bed, and a lot more besides._ “But eventually I just... guess I just didn’t give enough. Or something. I tried to.”

He goes quiet for a moment. “It was... that was the big one. There were others, before and after. Just... they were sort of... like long-term agreements to have the occasional one-off, uh... evening. Or lazy afternoon...I dunno. It was nicer when it was easy, just people I trusted. Usually friends. And things just happened. Otherwise, I felt like I was always— trying so hard, and it just... I came up short.”

He sighs softly. “I dunno, it’s hard to explain. In terms of anything you might call actually dating, maybe... maybe just one. And it didn’t work, so... In terms of a grand total... I don’t know. There were one or two people I went back to over the years. Like a mutual... comfort thing. Like... movies, being idiots at 2 a.m., sex, breakfast... and then it just... wouldn’t happen again for a while. Was never a big deal, just. Something we did.”  
  
~  
  
Something stabs into Ryan's heart. Gnarled. Violent in a way that frays his lungs, his muscles. Jealousy, he realizes. He's jealous. It's a girl. The way he says _there was one_. Like she's made of moondust and marble. They _split the rent_. It's intimate in this dumb way. This way Ryan wants so much.

But it didn't work. There's no reason he should feel jealous. She's probably... whoa, no. That's way too far. He doesn't want that. Hopes she isn't.

Shane's stroking his hair, soft, but dipped in this authority. It reduces Ryan to primal things like jealousy and lust. It holds him still. It's the only reason he doesn't physically recoil. At Shane. With someone else.

"Arrangements." He laughs. He can't imagine Shane not being enough. Shane is like rain in summer. Something you long for, wait for. And even if it doesn't last long, it's enough. It's beautiful. 

"That sounds very you." The opposite of Ryan. But Jesus, he wants movies at 2 a.m., he wants acting like idiots, breakfast... 

"Sorry about the girl." He squeezes his eyes shut against Shane's skin. "You don't owe people things, you know? You gave what you had. It just wasn't... It isn't a failure. It just wasn't right." And then because he needs to say it. "You're enough. Enough for someone. Even without trying."

 _Enough for me._  
  
He catches himself. “Or you can keep doing the arrangement things. If it's easier.” Except he can't because everyone's gone. But still. Ryan needs him to know he doesn't have to try with this. For Ryan.  
  
Even if it hurts.  
  
~  
  
It’s nice. Overwhelmingly so. Shane has no idea what to do with it. “You’re just saying that ‘cause you need me to help you get down from this treehouse later,” he jokes. It’s a little hollow. A lot hollow.  
  
 _You’re enough._  
  
~  
  
Ryan winces. Because it brings back how useless he's been in this. How he does need Shane, but he tamps it down. Pushes a laugh. Because it's a joke. It should be funny.

"It is not." He can't resist continuing, "I could get down on my own.”  
  
~  
  
“Yeah, I’ll bet,” Shane says, and he’s grinning now, hard. “Try not to break your other leg, though. Bend your knees when you hit the ground.”  
  
~  
  
Ryan wriggles back, trying to look at him. To get past Shane's hand. "I can climb down. My leg can deal with weight." He doesn't know the logistics but, "I'll do it right now!"

He won't. Or he doesn't want to. He's too tired to see properly.  
  
~  
  
Shane laughs a little wildly. “ _No_ you _won’t_ ,” he informs him, and draws him back. Softer, lips brushing the upper shell of his ear he says, “no you won’t.”  
  
~  
  
Ryan shudders. It's not like he expected Shane to say _be my guest,_ but he sorta did. It's the kind of challenge Shane would take. The kind of bluff he'd call. So the words pull across Ryan's body like a violin bow when he says then a second time.

He's still indignant. He will needs to prove himself. But Shane's got a grip on him and he can prove himself tomorrow.So he just says, "fuck you."  
  
~  
  
“If you want,” Shane quips, trailing his fingers slowly down Ryan’s spine, but he’s pushing, testing, and he knows it. Only hopes he isn’t going to push that one step too far.  
  
~

Ryan arcs against Shane’s touch, then brings his hands up Shane’s sides, careful on the bruised side. He lets his breath hit damp along Shane’s collarbone as he moves his mouth, his lips, along his collar up to his neck. They cling to the skin beneath them, over Ryan’s teeth as they scrape a scattered line along Shane’s pulse. He stops at the skin under his ear, raises to speak into it, says. “It’s just a phrase, Shane, keep it in your pants.”  
~  
  
Shane’s breath clatters free from his lungs — it’s sort of like falling upstairs, that weird little jolt and stumble — and he shuts his eyes for a second. Ryan’s words kind of save him, keep him from arching his long spine, save him from _pressing_ into Ryan, and maybe that saves them both.  
  
He swallows. “Well. Now you’ve just hurt my feelings,” he says, and he gets his voice all cartoonish, sad. He thinks maybe it doesn’t even shake, and he drops back down to sounding normal. “But, if you insist.”  
  
~  
  
He giggles and it's lost in the soft skin beneath Shane's ear. He takes this breath that washes through him. He almost shakes. Enamored by this a stupid voice, enchanted by how Shane wields it. He brings his hand over to the bruise on Shane's opposite shoulder. He's gentle, whisper soft. It's not under his hand.  
  
He doesn't want to stop. So he doesn't know why he says, “You probably do need to rest this. Rest in general.”  
  
Maybe because Shane is bigger than this. Maybe Shane is everything and it's tearing Ryan's heart like paper that he's hurt. That it's Ryan's fault.  
  
Just like Jake.  
  
~  
  
“ _You_ should rest,” Shane says, sort of shifting his shoulder like he can hide it in shadows. Like he can just slip into them until he disappears, and he’s left to flicker over Ryan’s skin without all this uncertainty, without consequence.  
  
Shane thinks he’d rather be the light that catches and glints in Ryan’s eyes and along his mouth, but that’s probably for Ryan. That brightness.  
  
He sighs against his hair, and then starts to pull back, changes his mind. Instead, he presses a little closer again, reaches for his sweater and sort of spreads it on the floor. It’s wooden boards, not very soft, but warmer and a little more forgiving than the metal floor of the bus. “Come on,” he says, moving to lie down, tugging Ryan with him, but he doesn’t know, really has no idea, if Ryan will come.  
  
Shane feels like he’s been connecting his life through all the nights Ryan’s fallen asleep close enough to Shane to touch him. These are moments like stars — the only thing that stands out, lovely, against the burn and grisle and gutting bleakness of everything else. Sleeping beside him, and Ryan’s smile, and the way he laughs. Shane wishes he could bottle it but then thinks, _no_. He just wants to keep it— keep… keep Ryan.  
  
~  
  
Ryan is gripped suddenly. It snaps around his shoulders like a hawk's talons. Sleep. He wanted it. He asked for it, just now, with Shane. But Shane tries to tug him down, to sleep, and it's colors slice through him in slashes of blood reds and bitter blacks and gravestone greys. He falters. Panic crushes down on him with all the rage of a river.   
  
“Wait…”   
  
He catches Shane's arms. Hopes he doesn't hurt the bruises with the pulse hammering along his skin. “I can't,” he whimpers. Truly, whimpers.  
  
“Give me a second…” He hooks his arms around Shane again, holds tight, so he keeps them together. Upright.   
  
And then it's there. Courage in fear. “Your turn,” he almost begs, “tell me something.”  
  
~  
  
“Oh Ryan,” Shane murmurs, and it’s halfway between exasperation, needing him to be fine — because Shane can’t fix him — and just desperately wanting to protect him from all of this. From everything out there, and in Ryan’s head. But he waits. He twists one forearm out of Ryan’s grip as little sparks of pain sing up from his wrist to his elbow. He sort of shakes his hand out, then turns the tables a little, gets his fingers around Ryan’s arm instead. He resettles himself, eyes down, thinking.  
  
“Okay…” what can he say? He thinks about the time he bit into a pumpkin and then thinks, _no, that just makes you sound like an idiot._  
  
“I— okay, I… when I was kid I used to think about, like… how cool it would be if I could just… live in the woods.” He says it completely seriously because he’s finished with laughing off all of his oddities a long time ago. It didn’t get him anywhere. “Like, I was nine or ten, and I watched that movie _Stand By Me_ , you know the one— I think it’s a Stephen King novel… the one where the kids go on this adventure to find the body of a kid that got hit by a train? And there’s this— there’s this moment where the main guy sort of ends up on his own, and he runs into this deer, and it’s so…” He takes a breath. “I remember that being the first time a movie really made me feel something. And I always had a problem with feeling stuff as a kid, you know I— it would be Christmas, and my parents read all the Christmas stories and we watched all the Christmas movies and I understood, you know, like I got it that it was supposed to be this big thing, and super exciting and I built up all this anticipation. And then it would come and go and I’d realize I’d been sort of outside of it the whole time, like… I was in my head thinking that this wasn’t what the books said it was going to be, and that was different, and everyone else seemed to have all the right feelings and... expressions on their faces and I… just thought it was just sort of disappointing.”  
  
He frowns a little and kind of tugs at Ryan’s arm, at his shoulder, but doesn’t pull him closer. He keeps his own eyes down, talking to the space that exists between them, their bare skin. His ribs rise and fall with his breath. His heart’s calm, not pounding fear like it has been, so much, so much…  
  
“Um, eventually I started to think that it was this act, you know, I thought: no one can feel this stuff this much.” He breathes a laugh. “But I guess they do. But for me it’s always been sort of… peripheral. Other things, too. I’m always thinking about everything so much it’s like I don’t get a second to… to feel it. But I can’t stop.”  
  
 _Sex, too, it was like — he couldn’t shut his mind off._  
  
“So I got it into my head that if I just lived in the woods, little log cabin or… that I could just… live without all that expectation. And I dunno— I dunno, sometimes, if it’s worse when the expectation comes from other people or from myself. I just… I disappointed a lot of people. I disappointed my parents, I think. I think they wanted… something more. Or less… uh…  
  
 _hollow_ , he thinks.  
  
“Blank.” He settles on. And that’s how he feels. Pale. Boring. “Like that… you know that beige colour in the construction paper packs? That’s… you get there and you’re like _ugh_ , and you just keep going?”  
  
Shane shuts up. Something plummets and falls somewhere inside him.  
  
~   
  
Relief drowns out the start of Shane's story. Relief that he has Shane for a few more moments. That he doesn't have to sleep, or try, not yet. The fear recedes, and it's loud like the tide. Then he listens. Because it's what Shane did. What he does. And it's soothing.  
  
It's long, winding, like it gets away from Shane. Startles him in it's rawness. But Ryan listens, and it soothes him like a salve. His eyelids flutter towards the end, but then Shane's hurting. Breaking. And Ryan's awake again. So aware of this pain Shane's holding inside him.  
  
This pain Ryan can't help. Can't even see. Not really.  
  
“That's a running theme,” Ryan whispers. “You trying to be more than you are. Blank…” Ryan scoffs. “That's, no… there's so much going on in your big, dumb head. It's all just… shrouded in mist or something.” He's sleepy voiced, but he brightens when he says, “You're a mist person.” He quiets.  “You speak a different language.”  
  
He edges closer so his head’s almost on Shane's chest again, but he's looking up. “You're the one who should be disappointed that they never bothered to learn it.” He breathes a laugh. “And speak for yourself, I like the beige construction paper. It's great for set design.”  
  
~  
  
He laughs, and it breaks, somewhere and he meets Ryan’s eyes and _jesus, jesus,_ he thinks _I feel something now._  
  
“I’m not— trying to paint this tragic consumptive childhood or something,” he says. “There were people that got it. Got me.”  
  
Were.  
  
No. _Are_. He has to think that.  
  
He thinks he mumbles it aloud. _Are_ , but then his eyes are on Ryan’s again. “Maybe,” he says, “If I hadn’t’ve studied fucking _history_ , I would have met you at film school, before. And I’d be like ‘who’s that guy that never shuts up?’ ”  
  
~  
  
They meet eyes, and Ryan feels like he’s lived a thousand different lives. Just from the look. From whatever’s going on in Shane. The wild, bone-deep uncertainty that’s running through Shane. Ryan wants so badly to reach out and touch it, this live wire that’s got him keyed up like this.   
  
Sadness and nostalgia and uncertainty and things Ryan doesn’t know that he’s felt before, not like this. It’s this darkness that Ryan wants to pull into himself. To help Shane, maybe, but to sink in it, understand it, just for a second. Ryan wants it. Not for Shane. For Ryan.   
  
Craves it.  
  
It’s hilarious that Shane called himself _blank_.  
  
 _Are_ , he hears. He thinks he hears it, or maybe it’s his own head, trying to fight against the bleakness of this new world, new reality. But no. It must be Shane. Shane didn’t look like he did. Maybe, just maybe, some of Shane’s people, the ones that get him, are still around. Still fighting.   
  
A longing pangs through Ryan, like a far off hunger, for these people. But it hurts. Hurts like this distant electric shock, alive, thrumming through him in this breathing, necessary way. A light bulb burned too bright. It hurts because Shane’s talked about sharing rent with them and early morning breakfasts with them and got me. And Ryan wants to get him, have him, but he doesn’t know how to compare to these people who knew Shane before. These people Shane _chose_. In this different world. Ryan’s just this pathetic kid that ran up to his doorstep and lost him his cabin and hurt his arm.   
  
Ryan wants Shane to have these other people. As much as he wants Shane. He wants Shane to have his people back. He wants Shane to have _are_. Even if Ryan doesn’t have a place in it. Even if it feels like tearing his heart out by the roots.  
  
Because Shane didn’t choose Ryan. Shane wouldn’t choose Ryan.  
  
Ryan’s slumped forward again, so his head is on Shane’s chest. And he thinks he’s using it to hide, hide from this stare Shane’s got where he seems to see too much behind that layer of film. The mist.    
  
Because Shane didn’t meet him at film school, and really, truthfully, no matter how much Ryan fights against it, Shane would probably have hated him. Shane’s the kind of person that would’ve felt untouchable to Ryan. This ethereal fucking presence, who would’ve somehow been funnier and better than the rest of them. Ryan would’ve annoyed the shit out of him if Shane didn’t have to listen to him because, like Shane said, _there’s no competition._  
  
His laugh is subdued, probably too quiet. Genuine, but a little bruised, scraped. “You studied history?”  
  
~  
  
  
“Uh. Yeah,” he says, like it’s sort of embarrassing. “You know, I really went for the academic career that would give me a _high paying_ job _._ ”  
  
Shane runs one hand, palm open, down Ryan’s back, trying to keep all the heat there. The fire’s already dying, and he watches it longingly over Ryan’s head, but he doesn’t move. Wouldn’t for anything, if he could help it. He brings his hand back up, palm turning to the edges of his knuckles along Ryan’s spine, and one shoulder blade, and then he’s got his fingers in his hair again, bolder this time, finding his ear and tracing it.  
  
This is not something friends do.  
  
Probably not even post-apocalypse friends.  
  
It doesn’t make him stop.  
  
“Oh,” he says, sudden, but very soft. “Trumpet.”  
  
~  
  
Ryan’s fading against Shane’s touch. He makes the conscious realization that he is, and it starts this buzz of frenzy in him. He can’t think about it. If he thinks about it, then his body is going to rebel because it’s going to think about sleep. Damn it. He is thinking about sleep. He tries to think about Shane’s hands, and slowly, he starts to. Because they’re so soft. He doesn’t think anyone’s ever touched him like this before. Not his girlfriends. Not his mother. It’s different. All bristles and bones. Soft in a way that mutes the storm inside Ryan.  
  
Then Shane says, _'trumpet'_ and he’s more awake. Just a little. Because he can’t begin to understand why. “Trumpet?” he asks, or murmurs, really. Like his voice is a silent echo under the water. “Is that a history thing?”  
  
~  
  
“No. _What?_ No,” he says. “You asked if I played an instrument, it’s trumpet. I was in the marching band… I forgot.”  
  
But that was like another life. Was another life. One that was lightyears away from this one. The words sort of circle around back to him and ducks his head a little, trying to come up with something to make that, all of that, sound a little bit cooler, or something. Or at least own up to his own strangeness.  
  
~  
   
He’s kind of lost. Lost thinking about Shane and trumpets and the films Shane could come up with if he’d been in film school. _Of the guy who never shuts up._ And his mom holding him and stroking the back of his head as he tried not to cry after a breakup. Then the last thing she said to him: _just fucking shut up, Ryan._ And about how rarely she called him Ryan and not something gentle and soft. How Ryan, how his own name, hit his chest like an axe. And how he’d never heard her say fuck. Not once. In twenty-seven years. Not once.  
   
But _Ryan_ hurt worse.  
   
It was the disease. He knows that. It was this twisted, awful thing in her, but he can’t help thinking it had to be her too. She had to have had that in her. That frustration. That need for him to shut up and let her breathe. Because he isn’t sure he did.  
   
Maybe that’s how Shane feels. Because that’s where he is. Shane’s the one who’s irritated. No, wait. It takes a while, but that chips off him too, like dried wax. Shane isn’t mad. No one’s mad. But it lingers, until finally he can rewind the conversation. Find the words.  
   
And answer, “I asked that like ten minutes ago, dude.”  
  
~  
  
“I know,” he says. He says it like he’s fucked up somehow, like he’s smiling sheepishly, somewhere in his mind, even though he’s not smiling here and now. “I just… sometimes it takes me a while to come around to things.”  
  
And he’d forgotten.  
  
“I feel old now,” he says. And there’s something wrong, something altered in Ryan. He notices it in the set of his shoulders as he shifts a little against him, trying to work the stiffness from his own. But he doesn’t ask. Maybe it’s just a passing thing, maybe Ryan doesn’t need to put it all out there for Shane to pick through. He lays his hand over the back of Ryan’s neck and touches his lips to his hair, thinks _shh, please sleep_.  
  
~  
  
Ryan isn’t there enough to answer Shane right away. He thinks, several times, he needs to answer. To assure Shane’s it okay. But he doesn’t know what what’s okay. He can’t remember what Shane said, and then he can’t remember what he was trying to remember. It’s all fuzzy edges and blurred colors. He hasn’t opened his eyes, and then he’s back with him mom, with Jake in the apartment, and he almost starts awake, but then there’s cabin… and there’s Shane. And there’s knuckles on his back like blankets.  
   
“Mm,” he tries to work something out, and finally it’s, “s’fine.” It’s supposed to be _it’s fine_ , maybe, something to reassure Shane. But he still doesn’t know what for, and he’s said it. It’s not there to keep him awake. And for just a second, there isn’t a purpose to be awake. His body slides forward limbs limp with sleep, and his breathing slows to near stillness.  
  
~  
  
Shane sighs softly when Ryan’s breath evens out. And then he sits there. He sits there, and holds him, and does not move for a long, long time, because he’s afraid that if he does, he’ll startle Ryan out of it.  
  
Several times, he sleeps, somehow mutually supported by one another’s body weight, or maybe Shane’s holding them both up. His spine, his knees, the joints in his hips — vaguely, through the in and outs of dozing, he notices it — they hurt. And he’s cold. At some point, he reaches out in the darkness, because the fire’s out, but the window’s open, and pulls the sweater as carefully as he can around Ryan’s back.  
  
He thinks he could probably pull him down, now. Could probably get them both lying properly on the floor, but he doesn’t. He’s too tired to care, and Ryan is warm against him, and still breathing evenly.  
  
Outside, the sky burns the darkness off to white, white, white. And it starts to snow. Morning comes and Shane is still tangled around Ryan. He’s trapped him in all his limbs, his legs are stretched out as much as he can, around Ryan and tangled at the ankle behind Ryan’s back. Ryan’s hip dips sharply into the inside of one of Shane’s thighs, but he’s long since stopped caring. His fingers have fallen loosely to the small of Ryan’s back, and his face is tucked into his neck, back and shoulders hunched oddly, but sleeping. It will hurt, tomorrow, but he was going to hurt tomorrow, anyway.  
  
~  
   
Ryan hurts. His back hurts, his legs hurt. It’s all just hurt. He thinks it’s because he was running. Because of pushing the dresser over. He wants to throw up. But then it’s not his house, it’s the cabin. He’s wandering, trying to find Shane, or maybe Jake. He’s trying to find them. But the cabin is so long, and it weaves and winds in front of him. And it’s got branches and mud like the woods, and Ryan’s tripping, tripping on everything.  
   
And Jake’s there, in the car, because that’s where he is now. Jake’s staring at the windshield and Ryan’s watching him. He’s turning the key in the ignition but it won’t start. Again and again. It won’t _start_.  
   
“Did you kill her?”  
   
Ryan doesn’t say anything.  
   
Jake asks again, “Did you kill Mom?”  
   
He can’t get it out. He can’t say it. But it’s behind him, just outside the car, her body—head crushed. And if he drives forward, he’s going to run it over. But if he doesn’t, Jake will see it.  
   
“Did you kill Mom?” Jake asks again, same inflection, same tone. Like the moment played again. It skips, repeats a few times. Weird, distorted. And then Jake’s lunging, but he’s caught—in the seatbelt, reaching and snarling. Skin peeling off. Infected. But he’s still talking, screaming, “You murdered her. There could’ve been a cure. You killed our fucking parents—now they’re gone, we’re all gone, Ryan. You gave up. On all of us. You gave up! You killed your entire family!”  
   
The seatbelt breaks and Jake lunges.  
   
Ryan gasps awake. A full body shake comes with it, but he hasn’t screamed, and the warmth of a body jars him out of his panic. Someone is there, warm, and, all wrapped around him like a cocoon. Jake. Jake’s okay, he’s—no, not Jake—Shane. It’s… Shane. He remembers, and the moment where Jake was alive, for one more breath, winks out like firelight.  
   
He thinks it may still be night, that he’s still awake, but there’s light—all throughout the treehouse—it’s bathed in white, saturation turned low. And Shane’s tucked into his neck, and it’s solid enough, gentle enough, that Ryan almost stops shaking. Shane’s skin where Ryan can see his back is almost ghostly white. All draped around Ryan like a tarp. Legs sprawled behind him, crossed somehow delicately at the ankles, despite the heaping mess of their bodies.  
   
Ryan’s still pressed up against his chest He has to kind of tilt his head to see behind him, where Shane’s got his fingertips still pressed up against Ryan. They fell asleep like this. Better yet, they _slept_ like this. Shane’s got a sore shoulder and, and Ryan needs to wake him up, but he knows Shane will just spring into action as soon as he does. He won’t sleep. Not anymore. And he’ll leave Ryan alone with his own skin.  
   
So Ryan waits.


	7. Part 7

Part 7

Shane doesn’t dream. He’s not deep enough in sleep for that, maybe. When he wakes up again he doesn’t open his eyes. Doesn’t know that it’s morning. He just adjusts his arms around Ryan, like he might tumble over if Shane doesn’t support him.  
  
God, he hurts. He squints, and it’s morning. Oh. He makes a soft, confused little _hm?_ sound, and shifts and _jesus_ _god_ , that hurts. Breath escapes his throat sharply as he straightens a little. The sweater slides from Ryan’s back with Shane’s movement and he moves to catch at it.  
  
~  
   
Shane’s awake. Ryan feels it the moment he shifts, and it’s weird, because Shane doesn’t do much. He just stays where he is. Makes this little noise like Ryan said something. He ought to be springing out of this position. Ryan wants to. His skin is aching to move. This position is bad for him, he can’t imagine what it’s like for Shane. He starts when the sweater slides off him. He hadn’t seen it, and then Shane catches it like he’s fucking Spiderman.  
   
Did Shane put that on him?  
   
Ryan brings a hand up and around. It curls to hover over Shane. Ryan touches the place where Shane neck and jaw meet, softly, in this sorta tap motion, but it clings longer than it should.  
   
“Shane?” he says, still too quiet. “Hey.”  
  
~  
  
“Hey,” he said, voice low and rough with sleep. He goes still when Ryan touches him. It’s not tension anymore, it’s just— it feels like he’s waiting, but he doesn’t know what it is he’s waiting for.  
  
Ryan says his name and Shane wants to melt into him, forget all his awkward joints and limbs, and just…  
  
But he can’t. He hurts. He sits up a little straighter and looks down at him. About fourteen different bones pop back into their correct place. He groans, then laughs a little. “Wow. Did you hear that?” Like Ryan somehow didn’t.  
  
He’s trying to diffuse this… whatever. This closeness. He doesn’t let him go, keeps his hand at Ryan’s shoulder, holding the sweater over him. It’s his own, he realizes. Ryan’s is over there, in the middle of the floor.  
  
~  
  
Shane's back pops and it's like fucking firecrackers. Ryan giggles at it, because it's absurd. He doesn't think he even as that many vertebrae. It lasts so long.His eyebrows lift as he looks up at Shane. His fingers fall quietly to the ground beside them. "Yeah!" He stretches it loud so it bounces in exaggeration. "Pretty sure they heard it in Australia." Then he sighs, wriggles back, reluctantly but purposefully. Shane needs to get up. "I can't believe you slept like that. Did I-" but he already knows. "You shoulda woke me up, I would've moved!"  
  
~  
  
“I must have fallen asleep right after you,” Shane lies. He watches Ryan pull away, tries to assess. He thinks Ryan might have actually gotten all the way through the night. He looks a little like he’s doing better.  
  
And then Shane’s looking at Ryan’s shoulders, and the place where his hips disappear into his jeans, and they’re hanging low because they’ve both lost weight since the apocalypse and he doesn’t think anyone’s had time to pop to the shop for new fucking pants.  
  
He doesn’t mean to. It just— Ryan’s there, and it’s light enough that Shane can see him. Look at him properly without fearing for their lives because they’re surrounded by wilderness and the dead.  
  
His eyes linger on the darker skin around Ryan’s nipples and then he looks away. “Let’s look through some of this stuff,” he says, because he noticed it yesterday. He shifts, moves. Reaches over Ryan’s legs to pull the window shut.  
  
~  
  
"Right, yeah..." Ryan frowns. "But..." He narrows his eyes, catches Shane's wrist and swats it down. Then he presses his hands against Shane's chest, slides up to his shoulders--careful around the bruise. He pushes. He's pulling himself up onto one knee and shoving until Shane's back is on the floor. So he's kneeling over top of him, minimizing touch as best he can, because he doesn't want to freak Shane out this early."You need to stretch out. Your joints are gonna explode." And then like it isn't incredibly weird, "if you roll over, I could probably work some of the four thousand kinks out of your back."  
  
~  
  
Heat surges through him, and it’s way too early for this. His eyes go wide. He’s like a cat that’s wedged itself to the very depths of Beneath the Sofa, frightened by fireworks on the fourth of July.  
  
Shane used to love the fourth of July.  
  
“That’s okay,” he says, and his voice is probably a couple octaves higher than usual. He tries to clear his throat, but his breath tangles with his heartbeat in his throat.  
  
~  
   
Ryan scoots back. Shane’s definitely terrified, so he gives him space. “Okay,” he says. “But at least stretch. Seriously, sleeping like that is… bad for you. And the way you’re made like a fucking willow tree—it’ll catch up with you.”  
   
He’s not sure if it bothers him or not. He doesn’t know what even he was ready for what it would mean, but it sucks that it was Shane again. Shane is always the one shutting him down. The one way he thinks Shane would’ve fit in with the rest of his world. But it doesn’t bother him.  
   
He glances around for whatever stuff Shane mentioned that Ryan failed spectacularly to notice. “It’s not like we’re on a time crunch.” Oh, except they could starve. There’s that. He’s sure Shane’s catalogued exactly how many seconds they have until they both wither away and die and approximately how many Vienna sausages would last split evenly. Shane seems like he’d be good at math.  
  
~  
  
 _Stretch_.  
  
Shane’s sort of frozen, and then Ryan pulls back and his mind goes _Whoops_. He knows that feeling — that assumption, that attempt to connect only to realize you were wrong. He’s been there.  
  
Suddenly he feels like an asshole. He watches Ryan for a second and then says “Uh, yeah,” as he pushes himself back to sitting.  
  
He feels bad, like he scared him off. It was just— it was an offer, it was a nice thing, and Shane got all caught up in his own idiotic mind and couldn’t…  
  
“Sorry,” he says, reaching up to touch the back of his neck. He can feel where the bruise is spreading towards his spine. “I just… I’m still kind of half-asleep…”  
  
It’s not really a lie. Not this time. It’s more that he just needs a reason. “I— I was in my head. It takes a long time to get back down to earth, ‘cause of all…” he waves a hand at his legs.  
  
~  
   
Ryan cocks his head. He’s trying to take his own advice and stretch his own joints. He presses his arms over his head and gets as much of a core stretch as he can. A few bones pop into place. God, it feels good. He shakes his head and masks a yawn.  
   
“What are you apologizing for, you weirdo?” He laughs, and it’s realer than he thought it would be. Brisk. Kinda like a splash of water. “It’s your back.”  
  
~  
  
Shane really wishes he could tell him to stop that, stop stretching like that. He looks away, pressing one hand into the floor, and arches his back until it hurts less, but then he’s reaching for a sweater, his. It’s still warm from Ryan’s skin. He pulls it on. “I just… I don’t know,” he says, and smiles across at him, and then twists to see what’s here.  
  
“Hey,” he says, and clicks a flashlight on an off at Ryan. “It still works.”  
  
There’s some nails and a hammer, too. Probably for the actual treehouse itself. Shane takes the hammer and places it on the floor where he put the flashlight.  
  
When did he start thinking of these things as weapons?  
  
~  
  
Ryan’s the kind of dazed sleep brings, so when the flashlight hits him he jumps. He doesn’t quite scream, but it scares him more than it should. It’s light, and it still managed to catch his attention with the glare.  
   
“Yeah, I see that!” He runs a hand through his hair and takes a breath.  
   
He’s back to feeling odd about the closeness. It’s not Shane’s fault, it isn’t. If anyone’s its Ryan’s but he’s so aware of it. Of how it’s only appropriate in certain moments. In the dark. Maybe when Shane thinks Ryan needs it. He doesn’t think Shane _likes_ it. He thinks Shane tolerates it, and damn it if he’s not going to try and stop making him tolerate things.  
   
He grins. “Any Vienna sausages?”  
  
~  
  
“Fuck you, man” Shane laughs. He’s digging through comics and magazines. “Jesus,” he says, accidentally finding a porn mag. He tosses it aside and then his fingers hit a metal tin. He works it open. It’s a couple of cigarettes, half-smoked, some gum, and a deck of cards. The gum is hard as a rock. He dumps everything but the cards and holds the tin out to Ryan like he wants to know what he thinks about it, careful, because he thinks the fucking flashlight scared him.  
  
~  
   
Ryan tilts his head because that’s all he can seem to do this morning. He leans forward to inspect the tin Shane’s offered, and it’s half-burned cigarettes and chewing gum. Oh, and cards. He brightens.  
   
“Hey, we could play Poker or something with that.” He winces because that’s not exactly zombie survival talk. Then he wrinkles his nose. “Cigarettes, though, have some self-respect, tree-house builders.”  
  
~  
  
“Yeah, toss those,” Shane says “I dare you to eat that gum, though. What’s over there?” He nods in Ryan’s direction, then glances out the window. He wants to get moving before there’s too much snow because that will make it harder for Ryan to walk.  
  
~  
   
Ryan closes the tin and scoots over to the other side of the treehouse. There’s a small shelf built into the corner, and wow, he takes back what he said about self-respect.  These tree- dwellers were the real deal. He uses the shelf to hoist himself up. He misses his shovel. It’s early morning, and his leg hisses under any attempt at weight. He reaches in and pulls out some Mild _Slim Jims_ and it’s so funny because they look like they don’t belong here. Like a sliver of the past left over.  
   
“There’s food,” he says, but he’s still digging through the shelf. A couple cans of SPAM, which means whoever was here before them was probably trying to survive like they were. He finds a plastic bag of dried fruits, and there’s even a couple bottles of water near the back.  
   
“Oh, hey, there’s water!”  
   
Then an ash-tray. Gross. And a mug. He pulls it off the shelf, turns it in his hands. It’s kind of cool. It’s this soft, quiet blue, and it’s got this scene of a campfire printed on it. Almost Christmas-like, but not. He smiles because it’s the kind of thing that warrants it.  
   
“This is cool,” he says. “I found a mug.” He gathers all of it in his hands. He has to limp, but he moves back to Shane and lies it on the floor in front of him. He holds onto the mug and extends it. “Look.”   
  
~  
  
Shane’s found a book — some of this stuff, like the book, all the magazines, the half-smoked cigarettes, is definitely kid stuff, but there’s also an empty bottle of antiseptic, from one of those pocket-sized first aid kits, and he doesn’t know what kids are drinking these days, but it’s probably not that.  
  
He glances up when Ryan speaks to look at the mug, and then does a double take, reaches out for it, taking it by the rim. It’s light. Not ceramic, but just a little tin mug — a campfire mug, like the scene printed on it, and something stops him, something makes him catch his breath. He stares down at it for a moment or two and then…  
  
His heart’s pounding in his chest and he glances back at the empty bottle of antiseptic he’s cast aside, takes in the bottles of water. He remembers standing in line a few days before Christmas two years ago, the fluorescent lights, the cover of a cover of a cover of a Christmas song playing over the store’s sound system. He remembers being too hot in his jacket, and just antsy to get out of there and back home, turning this tin mug, or one very much like it, over and over in his hands and longing for summer.  
  
Without looking up at Ryan, Shane hands it back and says, “Nice, keep it.”  
  
~  
   
Okay, the mug did something to Shane. Vexed him. A lot. Ryan chews his lip as he watches Shane take it in, and he takes it in. His body reacts to it, with this weird, almost invisible line of tension. Ryan’s got his mouth open, about to ask what’s wrong, but Shane’s handing it back. He’s not looking at Ryan. Ryan takes it, anyway. He cradles it, staring down at it like he can see whatever Shane did. There’s nothing.  
   
He rakes air into his lungs. He thinks about asking, and god, he wants to. But he knows not to. He can see it in the set of Shane’s shoulders. Feel it in the thickness of the air. He keeps biting his lip, and some of the chapped flakes come away so he has to lick to stop the cold, coppery taste of invisible blood away.  
   
He busies himself with sliding it into his bag, grabbing the bottled water and putting it in there too. “Okay, well.” And it’s so awkward. It’s awkward because he doesn’t want it to be awkward. But it is. There’s this huge, pregnant pause where he’s supposed to say something else. But he doesn’t. It takes too long. He swallows. “Anything else?”  
   
And it’s loud and shrill enough that he may as well be asking the zombies waiting in the trees.   
  
~  
  
“I think we’re good,” Shane says, trying to keep his voice steady and even, contrasting Ryan’s, and holds the hammer out to him. “Here,” he says, and he hates it, a little, but it feels better that Ryan has something, some kind of weapon. Shane just doesn’t really like to see it in his hands. They pack up, Shane takes the mug like it’s no big thing, takes the cards, and they go. In the end, getting Ryan down from the treehouse wasn’t as hard as trudging through the cold   
for the next eleven hours. The snow makes it hard, but they make it to places Shane knows.  
  
Knew.  
  
Everything is different now.  
  
Shane’s so on edge. He doesn’t know if there’s more dead around here, or people, but it’s more than just him and Ryan and he doesn’t like that. He sticks really close. He’s never more than an arms-length from him. They sleep in someone’s backyard shed. It’s tiny and cramped, and there’s almost no space. A lawnmower digs into Shane’s back and he tries to whisper Ryan into sleep with Frasier episodes, as best as he can remember them, and his culinary explorations in college, but neither of them quite gets there.  
  
There’s noises outside. Never too close, but strange things, unidentifiable things. Metal scrapes the ground somewhere out on the street. There’s a bang that might be gunfire, but only once. There are no voices. No groans.  
  
In the morning, they scrape themselves off the ground. Shane feels nauseous and his head hurts. They eat the slim jims. His headache reaches a screaming pitch, but he doesn’t complain until he’s stopping to lean against a telephone pole mid-afternoon, taking deep breaths so he doesn’t throw up.  
  
Ryan makes him drink too much of the water, and it helps a little. It’s raining — cold, so fucking cold, but not even dark when they reach the department store just outside Schaumberg.  
  
It’s been gutted, mostly. Windows smashed, but re-boarded since, and so much stuff taken. The bizarre thing is that the electronics section is almost empty, but there’s endless rows of purses and raincoats… it’s strange to see all this spring stuff in the middle of winter. Almost uncanny, but then, it’s been months since the outbreak.  
  
They’re just standing together in the entrance, surrounded by almost-empty clothing racks and fragments of glass and wood and computer. Shane doesn’t like it, but it’s warmer than outside, and dry, and his head is still killing him, but at least now he can see straight.  
  
“All right,” he says. “Let’s… try not to die in here.”  
  
~  
  
   
“Wow,” Ryan says, “thanks for the sage wisdom, sensei.”  
   
He likes his hammer. He always holds it with two hands, ready for zombies that aren’t there. But it’s weirdly exhilarating, holding a weapon, he and Jake never found much. They always managed to lose anything they did when they ran into trouble. It’s weird, being with Shane, how they don’t. Ryan and Jake were lucky to have survived. They were constantly running into them, fighting them… if he had been smarter, more like Shane, then…  
   
No, he isn’t going to start this again. It’s been a struggle not to dwell on it. It helps no one. He knows that. But he’s been replaying so much of what he did wrong, that night in the apartment, the days before it, all the things Shane’s doing better. All the things Ryan didn’t do. It’s distracted him, which has almost been a blessing because it’s been bitterly cold. And his leg tries so hard to fall in the slush and snow. It’s awful. The pain. He’s had to work out his breathing a few times.  
   
Shane’s tried so hard to help him sleep. Ryan thinks he’s going to just take to pretending. Too bad he always kinda sucked at acting. He hates that his weird insomnia’s not getting better, or if it is, it’s progress is too slow for him to notice. Shane has to kill himself for Ryan to get any kind of sleep, and it’s not his responsibility.  
   
He’s got a headache. Ryan could see it in the way he kept rubbing his temples, way too often. He knew it, but he didn’t ask. He thinks silence works best with Shane on things like this. Then Shane ended up half-dead against a telephone pole and getting him to drink water was like pulling fucking teeth. Ryan’s just worried. He’s been running through all the things that could be wrong with Shane. They’d have no way to cure any of them. Because it might not just be a headache. It’s this pressing, awful fear. But he tries to ignore it. Just like everything else.  
   
So now they’re here, and Ryan’s not going to get swept up in pity or panic or pain again. The department store is probably the most apocalyptic thing he’s seen since he met up with Shane. It’s death incarnate. He can feel nightmares and ghosts littered about the glass fragments. Sharp and jagged.  
   
He walks ahead of Shane, doesn’t wait, because if they’re going to face off a bunch of zombies, well—he’s tired of being the child in this relationship.  
  
~  
  
 _Careful, Ryan_ , Shane thinks. He thinks it so fucking hard, and he’s right on his heels. “I think we should go up,” Shane murmurs, nodding towards the escalators. Less likely to be zombies up there. He doesn’t think they’re super great with stairs.  
  
~  
   
Ryan looks over his shoulder and shrugs. Shane’s advice is generally the type to follow. But he _would_ , he fucking would, want to go up an escalator. Ryan doesn’t say anything. Just goes up. Uses the broken conveyor belts to hoist himself a few times so he doesn’t have to do all the steps. He lands once on his bad leg hard enough to make his eyes water.  
   
He blinks it away and gets to the top. He lets out a breath. God, he misses chairs. His leg sparks and cracks so he has to roll his shoulders. Then he stops.  
   
The escalator let out near the foot court. There’s broken signs caved in over kiosks dotting the perimeter, and a sparse few tables, some overturned, mark the stained floor. But what’s got him frozen is right in the fucking middle of it: two zombies bent over chewing what looks to be a dead person. Bile rises up Ryan’s throat. He throws out a hand to stop Shane, to show him, before he squeezes his hammer tighter.   
  
~  
  
Shane tenses up, but presses his lips together so he doesn’t curse out loud. He just watches them for a moment, tries to forget what it is they’re doing, or what— _who_ it is they’re eating.  
  
“Let’s go around,” Shane whispers, because there’s more up ahead, places where they could hide, close the doors on the undead. He doesn’t like the idea of no other exit, but he also doesn’t know if he can survive another night without sleeping, or out in that rain. If the fucking zombies don’t get them, probably pneumonia will.  
   
~  
   
Ryan looks back at him. “No, if we… I mean, are we gonna stay here? We need to—they’re not looking.” He just widens his eyes as a final warning and creeps, crouched, towards the two of them. They’re distracted. He glances back at Shane, still needing fucking permission for some stupid reason.  
  
~  
  
Shane shakes his head, eyes intense, desperate, but Ryan’s right. Damn it, he’s fucking right. Shane hates this. Ryan’s leg isn’t good enough to move quickly, but there’s two zombies and Shane knows he can’t fucking take out two at once.  
  
He makes one quick hand movement, to keep Ryan’s attention, and his eyes flicker over his shoulder to the two dead things. “You, go,” Shane mouths, and points in one direction. Shane takes a step the other way, hopes Ryan gets it.  
  
  
  
If they catch the zombie’s attention at the same time, from two angles, maybe they’ll get confused. Maybe they’ll each only have to deal with one.  
  
~  
   
Ryan nods and walks in the direction Shane indicated. He guesses Shane’s planning on surprising them from both sides. Ryan takes one, Shane takes the other. Smart. Ryan was totally not going to walk up to them and try his luck swinging. Okay, he was. This is why he couldn’t protect his damn brother.  
   
He takes a breath and circles around, keeping that same creeping gait. It’s fucking horrendous on his leg. But his leg can deal with it if it doesn’t want to become a zombie leg. He grips the hammer so tight his knuckles whiten as he watches Shane on the other side. He’s so weirdly graceful. He has so much limb it’s incredible how he controls it all.  
   
And he makes it look _elegant_. Purposeful, like he needs every bit of his legs to work out a step. It’s even more concentrated, more apparent now that he’s sneaking, and—and Ryan needs to _focus_. Immediately. He creeps around so he’s holding his breath, a few steps from the zombie, only a flipped table between them.  
   
He glances up, tries to meet Shane’s eyes.  
  
~  
  
Shane’s biting his lower lip too hard. He stops before he makes it bleed. And he’s avoiding Ryan’s eyes, because he doesn’t want to start this, doesn’t want to lose this safety. He feels sick. He’s trying not to imagine one of those things ripping Ryan’s throat out.  
  
And he can smell whatever they’re eating. It’s not rotted, it’s like… it’s fresh. Shane’s head pounds harder and he swallows and it tastes like acid.  
  
He takes a couple quick, short breaths, then looks up, meets Ryan’s eyes like he knew he would, and nods once.  
  
~  
   
Ryan inhales for what feels like a thousand years. He steps around the zombie and swings up, over his head, and down until he feels the skull crunch and shatter beneath the impact. It’s awful. Slime, not blood, spews, and he’s suddenly aware of this awful, rotted smell. He tries not to think about it. About the people they were. About what he’s doing. About how he did the same thing to his own mother.  
   
The thing crumbles, head smashed. Ryan’s left staring at it and the corpse beneath it. Half the woman’s—it’s a woman—face is gone. It’s just black and red grime. He can see bits of her brain. The zombie is just as bad, one-armed, with bits of gray-white hair still clinging to one side of its leathery head—the side Ryan hasn’t crushed. Mostly gone. It happens, the longer it goes, they lose hair. They’re body stops making new things, stops supporting soft things like hair. Something about the blood, keratin, Ryan read once.  
   
His jaw clenches, but he keeps his chin up, up, because if he lets it fall he doesn’t know what’s going to happen. Something clatters behind him. And there it is again, that growl. He spins. Hammer sprinkling the floor with black spatter.  
  
~  
  
Shane swings and misses because he’s not a sports guy, because the zombie heard him. He sidesteps when it swings around and cracks his shin off an overturned table leg. Instinctively his body arches over it, over that pain, but he gets the pipe up and whacks it in the face. Not hard enough. There’s another snarl. Shane looks up and there’s another one, behind Ryan.  
  
He twists and gets the pipe right through its eye. It crumples and Shane briefly wonders how he can get a lucky, precisely aimed hit like that when he can’t even hit it’s _head_ right the first time. But okay, great, he needs to help Ryan.  
  
He pulls the pipe. It’s stuck. “Shit,” he says and pulls, but it’s fucking head and torso comes up with the pipe. Shane grimaces and plants his boot against the zombie’s face, careful of those teeth and pulls harder. The pipe groans against bone and Shane winces. “Fuck, come _on_.”  
  
Out it comes. Shane stumbles back.  
  
~  
   
One more.  
   
Nope.  
   
There’s two. Of course there is. The second one kind of shambles behind the first, like no one’s told it the curtain’s up yet. But the first is locked on to him. It’s got a full-on run going. He doesn’t think he can swing, not with it moving that fast. Instead he ducks so there’s a table between them. He does not, however, anticipate the zombie walking directly into the not-screwed-down table. It topples into him and he staggers back, into another one, and lands on his ass. Hard. His head swims.  
   
 _Fuck_.  
   
It’s still lumbering towards him. He kicks the first table so it rams the thing’s knees. It falls, but keeps coming. Crawling. He struggles to his feet, fast, sways once he gets there. Nearly buckles under the weight. But he’s up and it’s not. He takes a step, swings. He hits its back and debris flies in an arc. He has to swing a second time to stop the zombie’s movement.  
   
He looks up, and the second one takes a swing at him from his right. It catches his jaw with this half-grab. He stumbles and swings the hammer sideways, one-handed.  It hits the shoulder right as the zombie yanks towards him. The hammer sticks just long enough for Ryan to lose his grip on the hammer. It falls.  
   
Right onto his toe.  
   
“Ah,” it comes out like an expletive. But he doesn’t have the breath, the harshness, for a real one. The hammer’s knocked it out of him. His vision pops a thousand spots. He spills back, barely keeping his feet as the zombie wobbles forward.   
  
~  
  
Shane’s there, at his back — gets there, somehow. He catches Ryan around the chest and jerks him back more and it’s the arm holding the pipe. The zombie sort of stumbles, sort of lunges and it’s instinctive that Shane reaches out to stop it with his free hand. His fingers sink into its flesh below the breastbone — too soft, barely containing the decaying contents of its body.  
  
It snaps its teeth inches from Ryan’s face and Shane yells something, panics, twists them both sideways, away from it. It can’t reach Ryan. So it goes for Shane, and it’s sheer luck that it misses biting Shane’s outstretched arm as Shane turns them both away.  
  
They fall, or Shane pushes them, he doesn’t know, but he’s over Ryan’s body on the ground, and the pipe is caught beneath them both. Shane reaches, reaches, grabs the hammer from the floor and twists back just in time to slam it into the zombie’s temple. Somehow it works. It’s enough force that it works. The zombie falls. Shane hits it again just to be sure.  
  
~  
   
Ryan’s trying to collect himself, but by the time he does, Shane’s hitting the zombie to finish it off. Thank god. He’s quivery again, jerking his head around to make sure there aren’t more. But the room’s gone still. He can’t quite get words up his windpipe. He closes his eyes and they flutter. Breath comes hard past his clenched teeth. Out. Then in. Pain rattles up his spine one notch at a time, slow, thick, _awful_. His throat’s hot with it, sizzling like he might throw up.  
   
Shane saved him. Again. He’s just going to have to stop the tally. The scoreboard’s broken at this point. Shane: 4000, Ryan: -3. It’s embarrassing. He needs a mercy rule. But none of that matters because there’s an honest to god tear on his cheek from the toe-situation. It’s his bad leg, which is good and bad, he figures.  
   
He blinks and wipes off the tear. Shane’s still on top of him, so he can’t do much of anything. He barely punches out a, “thanks,” and, “you okay?” because he thinks he saw Shane hit his shin. Another breath shudders through him as he adjusts himself around the pulse in his toe.  
   
He really hates zombies.  
  
~  
  
“I really hate zombies,” Shane says. “I hate them.”  
  
He rolls off of him as carefully as he can, detangles himself, detangles the pipe, breathless, shaking. “Jesus, here. You okay?” He reaches for him. “Let’s— are you okay, man?” They have to keep moving. “Can you get up?”  
  
~  
   
He laughs, and it’s this dithering wheeze. But it’s a laugh. Because Shane said his words.  
   
“Yup,” Ryan says. It’s dry, like Shane’s asked if he wants a drink. He means it to all of it. He’s okay. He can get up. And he hates zombies. So much. He pushes himself up onto one arm. He decides he’s never taking his shoe off again, because he dropped a can of soup on his toe in the kitchen once and the bruise was solid black and disgusting under his toenail.  
   
He’s not dealing with the visual. Not with dead zombie bodies strewn about, stinking like sewage.  
   
“Can _you_ get up?” he says it almost petulantly.   
  
~  
  
Shane looks at him, it’s this _come on, dude_ kind of look. He licks his lower lip and says, “I don’t think so, you’re gonna have to help me,” and holds his hand out, waiting for Ryan to stand up and pull him to his feet.  
  
He’s perfectly fine. Just coming down from being terrified. No big deal, right? Just your day-to-day in the zombie apocalypse.  
  
And if Ryan wants to be a child, Shane’s going to be one right back. He thinks he might get a smile out of it.  
  
~  
   
Ryan stares back at him. Holds it for longer than he ought to. They need to go. There might be more. He pushes himself up. Oh god, it’s horrible. It takes everything in him not to lurch forward, maybe just face plant back to the floor. But he will not give Shane that satisfaction. Or worry. Or whatever. Shane can’t have it.  
   
It feels like some kind of victory, anyway. Shane’s giving him space to get up on his own. His toe is painting rainbows across the room, but it’ll settle. Shane, on the other hand… Ryan extends a hand.  
   
“Come on, ya big lummox.” He fights with his smile. He wants to keep this hard glare, but a grin ends up half-tangled on his mouth.  
  
~  
  
Shane smiles, a genuine one. He breathes a soft laugh, both the pipe and the hammer in one hand before he takes Ryan’s and stands up, mostly on his own. There’s wreckage all around them. Shane doesn’t let go of Ryan’s hand right away. “Okay,” he says, and squeezes his fingers gently before he does, finally, let him go. “Onwards.”  
  
The rest of the mall is quieter, and empty. But people have been here. Maybe are still here. Shane hopes they’ll all leave one another alone. “Hey,” he says, after they’ve sort of cleared a corner of the upstairs. They’re in a little cul-de-sac kind of hallway, there’s three stores, and a corridor to the bathrooms across the way. With the pipe and the hammer, they’ve worked the metal grate across the entrace open enough to slip inside. It won’t lock again, sure, but it will keep zombies out for a little while, if there’s any more.  
  
“Think the water runs in here?” Shane has this idea that he could get his hair clean, get whatever’s caked underneath his fingernails out.  
  
~  
   
Ryan’s limping more than he wants to be. Worse than before. He’s trying not to be pissed, trying to be cool with everything. But he’s mad. He’s mad he dropped the stupid hammer.  
   
 _Whatever_.  
   
He walks further into the store. It looks like a bookstore. Barnes and Noble, maybe. There’s a rack of children’s toys directly in front of them and books beyond it. It’s small, but it’s incredible how untouched it looks. Like it’ll open in a few hours.  
   
“Maybe,” he says. He’s glad Shane’s feeling optimistic. Water would be amazing. “You go look. I’ll see if they have any books on spawning water into existence through sheer force of will in case it doesn’t.”  
   
Ryan wanders towards the shelves. Past some self-help books. He doubts they have _How to Stop Fucking Up During the Zombie Apocalypse_ so he’s not really interested. Learning about influencing people and making friends and getting rich quick feels a little outdated.  It’s so odd. Being in here. So untouched by everything. His fingers skim the spines of the fiction books.  
   
Its weird no one thought to come in here. People need something for entertainment. TV and internet’s out. Reading seems like the next viable choice. _But you have to survive long enough to need entertainment._   
  
~  
  
Shane lets him go for a moment, just watching him until he half loses him behind a shelf. Shane’s too tall to disappear behind shelves, so he sort of circles the opposite side of the one Ryan’s looking at and comes around into his aisle so he doesn’t surprise him.  
  
He hovers there, back half to Ryan. He pretends to pull a book half off a shelf. It’s fucking— something he would never read, but he stares at the back anyway. Really, he’s watching Ryan out of the corner of his eye. Ryan looks so small, so… like he’s just barely keeping himself together. But at the same time, he’s untouched by this, all this horror. He’s just… he’s so real. He’s so vividly bright against everything, and Shane slowly tucks the book back into its place, turns, and steps behind Ryan. Gently, carefully, he lays his forearm against the back of Ryan’s shoulders, because he needs to touch him, suddenly, overwhelmingly — but doesn’t actually lean on him. He’s using him like a stone wall or a fence or a mailbox or something, that he can lean on while he fucking chews a piece of hay. “Did you like to read? Do you,” he corrects.  
  
~  
  
Ryan's tugged a book free. He reads the back of it. It's about a virtual reality game that's realer than reality. He wants one of those right now. He's lost in it, thinking about logistics of virtual reality when Shane touches him. He doesn't jump hard because he did see him in the aisle. Maybe didn't fully register himBut he starts."Oh, uh..." He licks at his bottom lip. Tips his head back so he can see Shane. "Yeah, I mean, not a ton. I was always pretty busy, but I like reading." He looks back down at the book, skims the sunset colors of the cover. "I like stories.""You?"  
  
~  
  
Shane doesn’t quite meet his eyes. Maybe he can’t. But he shifts, steps out from half-behind him and more to his side as he adjusts his arm over Ryan’s shoulders, standing close instead of pulling him in. He reaches out for something, anything, tugs it off the shelf. “Yeah, I… not fiction so much. Anymore. I read Lord of the Rings, though, after the movies came out. Those were good.”  
  
His fingers slide gently down Ryan’s upper arm, curl around it. He thinks that he wants to find him — them — warmer clothes. He’s pretending to look at books, but he doesn’t even see them, just feels the soft press of Ryan’s body tucked against his side.  
  
~  
  
Shock ripples through Ryan. Shane's touching, and it's not dark. And Ryan's not feeling apart. He isn't sure how to process it. He likes it. Leans into it oh so sightly. He's hesitant, though. He knows how fast this changes. Doesn't want to let himself get attached."That's impressive. Those are dense. I've read like four pages of them." He slides his book back. Considers the others. A little preoccupied by this sudden closeness. "The movies were awesome, though." He looks up at Shane, curious. "Did you read the Harry Potter books?"  
  
~  
  
Shane pulls a face and shakes his head. “Nah. You?” He looks back, and something tightens in him because he didn’t expect to meet Ryan’s eyes. His fingers twitch a little against Ryan’s arm. “I bet you did. Nerd.” He can’t keep the smile back.  
  
~  
  
Ryan’s mouth falls open. He thought this was a fucking nice little moment, and here Shane is calling him a nerd. Okay, fine, he doesn’t hate it. Especially because he feels Shane twitch against his arm like he’s holding something back. He chuckles quietly.   
  
“As a matter a fact, I did.” He kind of drives up on his toes so that’ll make his point clearer. He twists just enough to move, but not Shane’s hand away.“They’re good books! Ninety-five percent of our generation has read them--and, how am I the nerd? You studied history and played the trumpet in the _marching band_ , you, sir, are the nerd here.”  
  
~  
  
  
Shane laughs. He thinks about pushing Ryan back into the bookshelf of fiction books — all of them oddly colourful compared to everything he’s seen lately — and just…  
  
He says “Okay, fair. That’s fair,” and draws away.  
  
He goes to explore behind the counter. There’s a cash register of course, and the crazy thing is is that it probably still has money in it, but Shane doesn’t even bother looking for the key.  
  
He finds the door to the staffroom and glances back at Ryan before pushing inside. His guess is that the only way someone’s going to be in here is if they were in here before the store was shut down, and they changed.  
  
It’s very quiet, and also very empty. It’s mostly boxes of books, but with some digging, Shane finds a few treasures. “Hey, Ryan.”  
  
~  
   
Shane’s gone. Because that’s what Shane does—gets him thinking, wondering, and then he leaves. Sometimes Ryan thinks he understands Shane’s language, and other times it’s like lip reading with a blindfold on. He sighs and keeps drifting down the aisles. He should take some of these books. They look fun. It’s something to do—something to get his mind going. That isn’t Shane. Or guilt. Or his fucking toe.  
   
It’s eerie as he walks. This muted, thick quiet. It swallows his footsteps. His skin prickles as he gets further back. He jerks his head, again and again, imagining sounds. There’s nothing. He doesn’t know how sound would even survive in here. It’s a breathless kind of quiet. He finds a few shelves with board games and starts picking through them. Repeating again and again that the grate was closed. There’s no evidence of anything. If there was something in here, they’d know by now.  
   
He’s got a Pokemon-themed monopoly game in his hands when he hears Shane from behind the counter. It makes him jump so the game clatters to the floor. Shane’s voice is crisp in the quiet. Like Ryan can make out these nuances in it—the way it’s thick and gray like smoke. Almost sleepy. He swears softly and doesn’t bother picking the game up. He walks over, but doesn’t see Shane. He sees the door a second later, lets out this breath that’d gotten caught in his throat and walks inside.  
   
“Shane?”  
  
~  
  
“Hungry?” he asks, and pushes a box— a fucking _box_ of those protein granola bars towards the edge of the desk. There’s still three in there. He checked.  
  
“And,” he says, and his voice is easy and soft, but beneath there’s something pleased, excited about this.  
  
He shakes a little bottle. It’s Tylenol — halfway empty, just generic, but it’s a painkiller.  
  
~  
   
The smile that twists Ryan’s face is a full-face, full- _body_ event. He feels himself brighten. Pulled up in a way he can feel his eyes squint at the edges. And he doesn’t know if it’s from the _Tylenol_ or the granola bars or the fact that Shane seems so subtly happy with himself. The fact that it looks so good on him.  
   
“Freakin’ sweet!” He digs into the box Shane’s pushed at him and sees the three bars inside. “You’re good at sniffing stuff out like this, huh? Like a giant German shepherd or something.” He’s still smiling when he looks up. “You should take some of that for your dumb head—is it still hurting?”  
  
~  
  
Fuck, Shane barely hears him. He’s still leaning over the desk, and his eyes are on Ryan, and Ryan _smiles_ and Shane’s heart just…  
  
He’s watching him so hard, and he _knows_ , without a doubt, that he’s never seen anyone smile like this before. That Ryan is fucking— blessed, special, a godsend to Shane, to maybe the whole fucking world. He’s rocked by it. He can’t look away.  
  
Until Ryan looks up and Shane drops his eyes so fast he almost feels like he’s fallen.  
  
“Uh…” he plays the words back. “I’m— yeah,” he says, and it is. He’s forgotten about it in the interval, almost, but now it’s back, full force, throbbing beneath his temples.  
  
He grabs a box of tea — someone drinks Vanilla Darjeeling, and honestly, ten months ago, he would have said no fucking thanks, but he desperately wants something that isn’t just water, he wants hot drinks, so he takes that, too. In case they ever find a place to boil water again.  
  
“Anything good out there? Maybe we should take a book or something.” If that’s what Ryan wants, Shane thinks, anything. It’s an extra weight, more than tea sure, but hardly by much. Shane doesn’t care. Shane will carry some fucking books if Ryan wants them. “No— no hardcovers,” he tells him, and he doesn’t know if he’s joking or not.  
  
~  
   
Shane looks away _fast_. It’s almost disconcerting. Maybe Ryan should’ve been nicer about the headache. Shane doesn’t think he actually thinks his head is _dumb_ , right? That’s dumb. It _is_ dumb if he thinks that.  
   
But Shane’s fiddling with teas and Ryan’s distracted. Shane seems like a person that likes tea. Ryan likes tea, but he doesn’t think someone would look at him and think: _that guy likes tea._ Shane, on the other hand, he should probably be a tea mascot. Ryan would absolutely buy that tea.  
   
“Oh, there’s board games out there.” He thinks back to the books. Hears Shane’s hard cover comment and it’s got him focused on the weight. Of how Shane’s shoulders are probably killing him—especially with that bruise. Hell, Ryan’s shoulders hurt and he’s not bruised or made of silly string. It would probably be more trouble than it was worth. Ryan’s fine with ghost tic-tac-toe.  
   
He nurses a raw spot on his lip with his tongue, near the side of his mouth. “We probably don’t need books unless you want one. You can go look—maybe you can stop being a loser and read Harry Potter.”   
  
  
~  
  
“I don’t need to read Harry Potter, I know what Hogwarts house I’m in, or whatever,” Shane says, trailing him out. “I bet _you_ don’t.”  
  
What the hell is he doing? He doesn’t know. He’s being stupid, but he wants this — this laughing, smiling Ryan who’s got something to eat tonight. He wants to figure out how to keep it, instead of being the person that makes that smile vanish.  
  
~~  
   
Ryan draws back. Again, Shane is an uncharted sky. And Ryan’s pretty sure his plane’s on fire. He laughs, because it’s ridiculous that Shane’s bringing this up. That he’s so playfully combative about it. Ryan likes it. He doesn’t know how long it’ll last, but he likes it. A lot. He wants to find the buttons to press, the words to stay, that make Shane happy enough to do this.  
   
“ _My_ Hogwarts house?” he asks. “Yeah, I do know my Hogwarts house, actually.” He watches Shane, thinks about the tea and the history and all of it. “You’re probably, what? A Ravenclaw? You seem like you’d over-intellectualize everything.”  
  
~  
  
“Is that the smart one?” Shane asks. “That’s what I thought, originally. Then I did… you know, that sorting hat test online.” When online existed… He’s not giving it over so easily. “Anyway, what’s yours?”  
  
~  
   
Okay, Shane absolutely did not tell him what his house was. Ryan narrows his eyes. His mouth quirks up in this inquisitive maybe-smile. “You—I’m not telling you mine if you don’t tell me yours.” He thinks about it. He definitely thought Shane was a Ravenclaw. His world is slightly rocked.  
   
“Are you—Hufflepuff?” He’s hard-working, right? He seems to be. No one survives in a cabin on their own for that long if they’re not. And he seems loyal. He hasn’t robbed Ryan blind (though that would be a sad payout) or left him for dead.  
  
~  
  
They’re in another section — history and politics, it looks like, and Shane leans back against the shelf, smiling down at Ryan, something like mischief in his eyes. “Wrong again,” he says. “You’ve only got three guesses, Ryan.”  
  
He studies him. “You know,” he says, “I could pop little round glasses on you and you’d probably look like Harry Potter. Were your glasses round?” He has yet to even see these glasses Ryan speaks of, even though they’re apparently broken, but he thinks he could imagine them being round.  
  
~  
   
He scoffs. “No, obviously not. Round glasses are for _losers_.” Shane’s are almost-round. They’re not like, perfect-circle, but they’re close. He knows this. “I’m not a loser, so they’re—” He tries to try the rounded square shape. It’s been so long since he put them on he has to drag them back to memory. “Whatever. I’m cool with being Harry Potter.”  
   
He is. He always liked Harry.  
   
But Shane isn’t a Hufflepuff _or_ a Ravenclaw? He scoffs. “Okay, I’m…” He turns to walk backwards. His toe hates it. His leg hates it. But he hates them so fuck it. He gets a pace ahead of Shane so he can point, finger-bouncing, at him to make this point. “I think you took the test wrong. The test is wrong, no way you’re—”   
  
God, Slytherin or Gryffindor? No way Shane’s a Gryffindor. He’s so soft. Sometimes Ryan worries he’s just going to blow away like an over-sized dandelion. (Actually, a dandelion tree would be kinda cool.) And Shane just… he _retreats_ so much. He… well, he is blunter than Ryan with some conversation. But generally, he’s a nightmare for it. He also doesn’t seem like the type to get preoccupied with honor.  
   
Ryan’s a Gryffindor. He can’t reconcile that Shane would be too. Not that he isn’t brave. He is. And he’s been pretty chivalrous through this whole thing. He’s survived and kept Ryan alive like a fucking champion. But Shane doesn’t seem to _value_ those things. He doesn’t stand on them. He values quiet—he should be a _Ravenclaw_ , Ryan argues in his own head.  
   
He’s resourceful. That’s obvious. But what does Shane value? Not whatever Ryan’s doing, he’s pretty sure. It’s sad, but Ryan doesn’t have anything he’s done that he thinks Shane’s _valued_. God, he’s contributed so little. He really is the antithesis of a person Shane would want to be around. So maybe…  
   
“ _Slytherin?_ ” he asks, but his voice smears with skepticism, pops off at the end. It seems so wrong. But maybe it’s not. He doesn’t really know if Shane was ambitious. And he’s got resourcefulness and cunning.   
  
~  
  
Shane’s smiling, watching him try to figure it out. It’s— probably one of the best things he’s ever seen. He rolls away from the shelf, sort of lets his shoulder stay against it as he twists to face Ryan completely, then straightens up as much as he ever does, which is never completely, and takes another step closer.  
  
 _Slytherin?_ Ryan asks, like he can’t believe it. Shane raises his eyebrows and points a finger gun at him. “Bingo,” he says, smiling more, like he can’t wipe it off his face. It’s stupid. He feels sort of stupid, but it’s nice to feel… maybe normal?  
  
They’re just hanging out in a bookstore, after all. Sure, the lights are off, and it’s darker than it should be, but isn’t this what people do? Go to bookstores? Just… hang out and talk about stupid stuff.  
  
Shane cuts himself off before he can start thinking about… dating.  
  
Because Shane doesn’t date.  
  
~  
   
Ryan shakes his head. Like he’s JK Rowling herself. “Nah,” he says. “Nah, I think you’re wrong. You probably didn’t answer the questions right.” Shane looks so self-satisfied with this. He refuses to accept this. Shane is too happy with how hard it was to guess. Maybe it’s a lesson in how much he doesn’t know about Shane.  
   
Because he doesn’t. He knows nothing, and he’s thinking about Shane looking at that mug. The way it drew shadows onto him like an old jacket. He thinks about it tucked into his bag back near the front of the store. There’s more to this. More to Shane. More, and Ryan wants it—but he’s terrified of it. Because it feels dark.  
   
What if Shane can’t handle it when they go back to his house?  
   
What if—god, what _if_?  
   
It isn’t like he doesn’t love this. Ryan _wants_ this. This happy, almost bubbling Shane. This summer shower. But he wants the spring storm too. The lightning. The flood. He wants to know the words to say or the things to do to ease it, to soothe it. He wants _all_ of it. But Shane’s not giving it. It’s all tolerated touches and tinted truths. Ryan didn’t know he was a Slytherin. Because there’s a yawning chasm of things he doesn’t know.  
   
Fuck, but he doesn’t want to ruin this moment either.  
   
He crosses his arms over his chest—has to fight not to take a step back. Because he _wants_ like he’s never wanted anything. This layered, fascinating labyrinth of a person. Ryan craves it like thirst craves water. Chases it like the sun chases the moon. It’s bad. This thing brewing in him. It’s uncontainable. Bigger than everything else. And Ryan has been here before.  
   
Has been the one to fling himself off the cliff while the other person steps back. And this time Jake isn’t there to play Horse until Ryan forgets. His mom isn’t there to hand him a cup of tea and make it better.  
   
It’s just Ryan now.  
   
“What’s mine?” And he _knows_ Shane will know. Because Ryan is everything Shane isn’t. Simple. Readable. Knowable.  
  
~  
  
Shane’s watching him, and his eyes change, as they flicker over Ryan’s face, because something’s clouded over Ryan’s. Shane wants to reach out and wrench whatever that weird veil is away from Ryan’s eyes, but he’s scared that if he does, Ryan will break apart. Maybe that’s all he’s got, maybe that’s all that’s protecting him. Maybe he doesn’t want to give himself over to Shane, to trust that Shane wouldn’t try to black out that brightness in Ryan’s eyes, but Shane doesn’t even know if he could promise that.  
  
So Ryan’s probably better off not. Not trusting him. Shane’s never… been enough before.  
  
But here’s Ryan, always, Ryan always telling him that he’s enough, that he doesn’t have to try for anyone, but Shane _wants_ to.  
  
He wants to, but Ryan… Ryan’s so much. So bright, so… naive? No, it’s not that. It’s something else— trusting, maybe.  
  
All Shane could do would be to throw him reality checks. So he’s right not to give all his trust over to Shane.  
  
“You’re Gryffindor,” he tells him. Because he’s seen the movies — some of them — and Ryan’s all reds and golds.  
  
   
~  
   
He ruined it. Shane may as well have said, ' _Wow, congrats, you jackass, way to ruin the three seconds of not-shit we had._ ' Because it’s in the air. It’s obvious.  
   
Ryan sighs, theatrically. “Yeah. I’m just not as interesting as you, I guess.”  
   
He doesn’t want to have ruined it. He wants it all back. Wants to get these horrible, gnawing thoughts out of his head. About how he’s a waste of Shane’s time. About how he thinks Shane would be better off without him.  
   
“Oh, hey,” he says. “You never reminded me about the radio.” They’re in a mall. It’s probably not the best time. But it breaks up this awful thing that’s fallen between them. He walks off—kinda limps, back towards the bags. He has to sit all the way down to dig through it. He gets there and digs—drowning in his own thoughts. He doesn’t know if Shane followed him. He wants him to have.  
   
He thinks he does.  
   
He just doesn’t want it to be weird. He wants Shane to want him. In all the way he wants Shane. He digs out the radio and turns it over in his hand.  
   
 _What’d you think, Jake? Think I have a shot?_  
  
 _Literally zero—no offense._  
  
 _None taken._  
  
~  
  
Shane does follow him. Of course he does. Ryan reminds Shane about reminding him about the radio and Shane says “Oh, shit,” softly, because he did forget, but he’s a million miles away.  
  
He stands behind Ryan, watching him go through the stuff. He casts a glance out through the grate and there’s nothing, but he reaches down for Ryan anyway, gently tugs back on the hood of his sweater. “Let’s go into the back room,” he says, “If you’re gonna turn that on. We’ll close the door.”  
  
That way, even if someone or something does hear something, they won’t be standing here like fresh meat.  
  
And somewhere, Shane’s still thinking about Ryan and Gryffindor, and what he meant, ‘ _I’m not as interesting as you,_ ’ because really, Shane thinks it’s the opposite. It’s the opposite, and he’s… God, Ryan really has no idea and Shane hates it. He wants to take his face between his hands and tell him that he’s the brightest thing Shane’s ever fucking seen. Instead, he lets go of his hood, and something in him aches.  
  
~  
   
Ryan stiffens when Shane grabs him, tries not to let it show. He’s still working out what it means or if it means anything or if he’s imagined it or—Shane lets go. It hits Ryan like a blow. Like that hammer on his toe again. Ryan stands up and glances at the radio.  
   
“Good idea.” He pulls a small smile, gestures the radio at Shane. “You know, I was wondering if you were an ambitious guy, since Slytherin… and I’ve decided you are. Ambitious about being alive. And I respect that.” He raises his eyebrows and starts towards the back room again.  
   
He doesn’t want Shane to think—well, he doesn’t know. Part of him thinks he’s overthinking. That Shane isn’t thinking about this at all. That Ryan’s just this guy he picked up. A casual acquaintance, a friend by circumstance. But then, all the touching. Shane must be thinking _something_ about it, right? It isn’t normal.  
   
Jesus, what if he isn’t?  
   
Or it’s in a way Ryan hasn’t wrapped his head around yet. A way that means Shane isn’t worried about strange silences between them or noticing Ryan’s weird mood shifts. Maybe touch is a tool for Shane, not something he needs or wants, at least, not from Ryan. He wonders how Shane touched that girl he split the rent with.  
   
He wonders if he touched her throat, slid his hand up so it caught all the hollows and stole the breath from them. He wonders if Shane reduced her to ash with a hand on her neck, or at the small of her back. Ryan hopes she is alive. So he can ask her what it was like to kiss him. What his lips tasted like. If they were smooth or chapped. If Shane’s tongue is as smoke-soft as his voice.  
   
Fuck, he needs to stop. He gets into the room again and squares his shoulders. Glances down at the radio. He can’t bring himself to look up at Shane as he says, “Ready?”  
  
  
~  
  
Shane thought to grab the flashlight before he followed Ryan back. He pushes the door shut and flicks the light on. It’s kind of spooky, in a Scooby-doo kind of way.  
  
He nods at Ryan but Ryan’s not looking. Shane wonders if he’s going to hear music for the first time in forever. “I hope we don’t get, like, house music or something,” he says, moving closer. The light illuminates the little radio in Ryan’s hand. Shane holds it at about chest height as he comes to stand across from him.  
  
~  
   
Ryan blinks in the darkness. Shane shines the flashlight on the radio and Ryan still can’t look at him. He smiles quietly at _house music_ , though. Ryan doesn’t even know what that _means_. But he likes it—it sounds like a Shane word.  
   
“Brace yourself,” he says, because he knows Shane doesn’t like noise.  
   
He flips it on, and it’s the same, screeching static it usually is. He flicks across the stations, giving each one enough time to be anything other than static. It goes for a while, maybe a couple minutes. He thinks he hears a clip of sound, something other than screeching on one so he stops. He stares at it. Grits his teeth like it’ll help him listen, and bends his head down as he brings it to his ear.  
  
~  
  
Shane winces, physically recoils, but he keeps the light where it’s supposed to be. He’s just about to be like _This is fucking awful_ but then Ryan brings the thing to his ear like it’s personally singing him a little ditty that Shane can’t hear.  
  
Shane’s watching him, brow slightly furrowed. There’s nothing but static on that thing and Shane’s getting ansty. Bored. He looked away, towards the door, and hopes they aren’t going to come out to every zombie in a five mile radius clamoring at the metal grate.  
  
~  
   
 _Disneyland_.  
   
He swears he heard it. The same thing Jake heard. The exact same thing, and he knows—he knows it sounds dumb. That it was already in his head. But he was trying to be so _conscious_ of that.  
   
God, but Shane’s looking away like this is the _worst_ thing anyone has ever forced upon him. And to be fair to him, it sounds like a nightmare. There’s no denying that. It’s back to static so Ryan flips it off, and truly, the silence is soothing.  
   
He opens his mouth to ask, to see if Shane heard something—but… he didn’t. It’s obvious. Ryan manage the words. He can’t bring himself to say what he thought he heard—what Jake heard because he knows Shane’s going to shoot it down. He’ll log it. Maybe try again and see if he catches it again. If he does, he’ll say something.  
   
“You’re welcome,” he says, like the smartass he is.  
  
~  
  
“That was… truly terrible,” Shane tells him. If it wasn’t Jake’s, Jake’s thing, Shane would tell him to throw it away. He toys with the flashlight, flicks it off so it’s just the two of them in darkness.  
  
“Let’s wait a minute, before we go out,” he says. “Just in case we’ve attracted anything.” He toys with the light in his hands, but doesn’t turn it back on.  
  
~  
   
Ryan’s mouth twitches. Great—he can tell it’s going to be a bitch getting Shane to do it again. Maybe he’ll wander off and do it while he’s peeing in the woods or something. Ugh, but he needs Shane to verify. If Shane heard it, then he’d know it was real.  
   
“It wasn’t _that_ loud,” and he knows it sounds childish and small, but he wants to defend the poor radio.  
  
~  
  
Shane flicks the light on and shines it at Ryan, careful of his eyes. “It’s just… I think it’s just static, Ryan,” he says, and here he is. He’s fucking… he’s shooting him down. He’s breaking up the hope Ryan gets. He shuts the light off again so he doesn’t have to see what it does to his face.  
  
Shane turns, half sits on the desk and lets the silence, the darkness fall around him. He can’t hear anything at all outside but maybe that’s because nothing’s _seen_ them yet.  
  
   
~  
   
It’s like Shane’s dropped a weight inside him. A brand. Because it burns and sinks into him. Almost drags him to the floor so he’s too aware of his throbbing foot and broken leg. It’s fitting Shane turns off the light—Ryan knows how the flashlight feels. He swallows and looks away. God, he didn’t even _say_ anything and Shane shot it down.  
   
“Yeah,” he says, voice cracking more than he means it to. “Maybe.” Then, “But maybe not.”  
  
~  
  
He hears Ryan’s voice crack and he fucking _hates_ it. He sighs and presses a hand to his forehead, rubs at his temples.  
  
And Ryan hears him, and agrees, and Shane hates that, too. But then Ryan doesn’t, he changes it. He holds onto whatever lunatic thing he thinks about that fucking screaming radio even in the face of Shane’s skepticism, of Shane’s apparently incredible ability to just shatter hope like thin ice beneath his boot heel.  
  
“That’s why you’re a Gryffindor,” he says. He says it into the darkness and it hangs there, ridiculously. They weren’t even talking about this. He pulls away from the desk with a soft groan. “Okay,” he says, and his voice is better, more normal, but it’s fake, that normalness. Still, he’s good at it.   
  
“Let’s go.”  
  
   
~  
   
Ryan thinks Shane’s upset. There’s something shimmering beneath his voice. Ryan’s thinking it might be the radio. Shane really didn’t like the radio. Ryan tries not to be offended, hurt, by that. And then Shane’s back to talking about Gryffindor and Ryan has no clue what’s going on.  
   
But he’s going to roll with it if it kills him.  
   
“Sure,” he says, “And I don’t think it’s in the documentation, _but_ ,” he says, moving towards the door. This is his fault. Be it the radio or his weirdness earlier. It’s his fault. “It makes sense Slytherins would be skeptical. And Ravenclaws, which I still think you could be, but Slytherins too.” He opens the door and the bookstore is quiet. Still. But there’s more light out here. “They’re shady fucks most of the time, so they’ve gotta be skeptical, right?”   
  
~  
  
There’s something here, a thread of okay-ness. Shane grasps for it.  
  
“Did you just call me a fuck?” Shane asks. “That was rude. That was uncalled for, Ryan.” He goes back to the bags, finds the Tylenol. He wants two. He wants to sleep, but he only takes one, swallows it dry and hopes it still works that way. He’s fading a little, trying not to, because Ryan is always so present, but Shane is exhausted. “I’m… I want to see if the water works. I want to try and… wash. Anything.” He looks up, hopes Ryan will come, but he doesn’t know if he will. Maybe Ryan hates Shane dragging him around like a kid, but Shane hates when he’s out of his sight.  
  
He remembers the bus — remembers thinking Ryan had been bitten. He licks his lips and reminds himself that there’s nothing else up here. They’re okay. Maybe they’re even safe.  
  
No. He can’t think that. He can never think that again, because that will be the moment they won’t be.  
  
~  
   
“Oh, it was extremely called for.” He smiles back at Shane. Feels a little less terrible for everything. He watches Shane take the Tylenol. He almost says he should take two, but he knows Shane will blow him off. Ryan wonders if they’d help the pain in his leg, his toe. Maybe. But no, he can’t start this train of constantly taking pain killers for it. He might get away from this tentative relationship he has with the pain. This new normal. And he’ll need more and more and he’ll waste the small supply they have.  
   
Shane’s talking about the water again. About going to check.  
   
“Cool.” Ryan looks back to the shelves. Thinks about the _Monopoly_ game he left lying in the floor. He needs to go pick it up—or, well, maybe it doesn’t matter. But no, it does. It matters. Ryan needs it to matter.  
   
But he feels Shane’s gaze on him, and honestly, he wouldn’t mind washing something either. He isn’t sure if it’s the right move, but he says, “Want me to come with?”  
  
~  
  
“Yeah,” Shane says, and he brightens a little. He doesn’t even bother to shut it down.  
  
They make the adventure to the bathroom together. It’s just across the hall, but there’s nothing— it’s quiet. Shane gently tapping the top of the pipe against the You Are Here directory sign as he passes it, but he’s being too slow and Ryan’s already several steps ahead and Shane lengthens his strides to catch up.  
  
“This feels like a horror movie,” Shane says, as they go into the bathroom. It’s dark. “I have a bathroom horror story…” he tells Ryan, flicking the flashlight on again. He opens each of the stall doors one by one but there’s nothing. He turns back. The flashlight bounces weirdly off mirror.  
  
He catches sight of his reflection, trying to figure out the path of the light, and it’s bizarre. He recognizes himself, but it’s all wrong. He’s thinner than he was, by a lot, his hair is insane and in the dim light his eyes look weird, dark. “Jesus,” he says, going over to the mirror. He sets the flashlight up so it shines at the ceiling and and braces his hands on either side of a sink, leaning forward until he’s almost nose to nose with the glass. His pupils are huge in the dark. “You ever hear about that thing where you look at your face in the mirror in low light…” he’s staring hard into his own eyes, but even like this, even after not seeing himself, truly, for months, he can’t get it to work. He just looks like Shane, pupils blown wide and his face shadowy.  
  
~  
   
The bathroom is… a bathroom. He walks to it quickly because he’s curious about the water. Man, he hopes there’s running water. Shane takes his damn time, though. Another reason he could be anything other than a Slytherin: _patience_. Shane has patience for days. Very Hufflepuff. Ryan’s never letting this go, probably.  
   
He watches as Shane checks the stalls. A good idea. It reminds Ryan of the closet—the one he didn’t check, and he shuts it off. He thinks he’s getting tired, more than usual tired. Thoughts are getting harder to control.  
   
He looks at himself in the mirror. Fuck. He looks awful. His mom would be _ashamed_. His hair’s stood up like an explosion, twisted with oil and whatever else he’s gotten in it over the past few days. He messes with it until it’s more contained, still spikier than is entirely normal. But slightly organized in its chaos.  
   
And oh man, he’s lost weight. A lot of weight. The lines of his face are stark. Cheeks gaunt beneath their bones. And the circles under his eyes are insane, stained halfway to his chin. Ugh, he wishes he’d met Shane when he didn’t look like a wreck. He doesn’t even want to see beneath his shirt.  
   
Shane’s staring at the mirror like he’s going to jump into it back to reality. Ryan hopes he takes Ryan with him. “What’re you—no, what the hell are you doing?”   
  
~  
  
“The light plays tricks and it’s supposed to look, you know, demonic.” He cocks his head. Shadows play across his face. It looks pretty fucking creepy to anyone else, maybe. Shane shrugs and pulls away. “It’s not working.”  
  
The demons are all out there, anyway. Hopefully far away from where they are.  
  
He’s scared to try the water. He wants it so bad, he’s scared. Still, someone’s got to. He reaches out and pulls the tap up. There’s a horrible noise, like air escaping and it scares the life out of Shane. He flinches back, but then it gurgles, water shoots out. “Holy shit, holy _shit_ , Ryan!” he says, and it’s genuine delight.  
  
The water is cold as fuck. He half wants to drink it, but he’s not sure that’s a great idea. He presses a soap dispenser and pink liquid comes out. “This is the best day ever,” he says.  
  
Even with the tap cranked all the way to hot, the water stays cold. It hurts his hands, but he washes them, scrubs shit out from beneath his nails.  
  
~  
  
"Yes!" It's pure excitement. He'd been avoiding it. Too scared to somehow screw that up too. Like it would have somehow been his fault if there wasn't water.

Shane is losing his shit over this. Ryan like this. Likes when things go well. When Shane lets himself be happy. He doesn't do it much. It's stupid but there's a flash of jealousy at the water for the effect it has.

But it doesn't last because it's water. It's real, running water. There's a whole line of sinks so Ryan steps to the one beside Shane and turns it the faucet. It takes a second but water eventually finds its way out. Ryan grins.

He puts his hands under it and wow it is cold. Painfully cold. But he's not wasting this. He washes the shit off his hands then rolls up the sleeves of his sweater to rinse his arms. 

He pushes at the pump next to it, the dispenser for soap. It's empty. Oh well. At least there's soap at all. He feels himself droop, almost sad, from this minor thing so he cups a handful of water and splashes himself in the face. It's freezing. And it gets all over the place.

He shakes his head, breathless. "Shit, that is cold!"  
  
~  
  
“Yup,” Shane says, already bracing himself before he basically fucking almost kneels on the floor to get his he’d under the tap. He squeezes his eyes shut even as he gasps sharply against the cold. He drags his fingers through his hair, trying to get all of it wet. It’s really an incredibly awkward movement, but he doesn’t give a shit. He’s getting zombie drool out of his hair if it kills him.  
  
Well, okay, maybe not that far. But he’s going to do his fucking best.  
  
~  
  
Ryan breaks into this hysterical fucking laughter. It bounces off the walls of the bathroom so if he wasn't laughing so hard, he'd wince. But it looks hilarious, Shane bent all wrong and weird. It shouldn't be funny because he knows it's probably uncomfortable. But he can't help it.

"You look like a tent that got blown into a tree or something. God, there's so much of you, dude." He looks around, doesn't go nearer. He's still giggling, softer now. "I'd offer to help but anymore limb over there and I think the universe would just shit itself."

~  
  
He laughs, or tries and inhales some water and comes up soaked, coughing. He shoves handfuls of hair out of his eyes, shaking his head and splashes a handful of it from the tap at Ryan. “My tallness isn’t my fault, okay? Can you even reach the sink?”  
  
He thinks about it, and then gets his hoodie off. The sleeves are wet anyway, and gross and cold. He lays it on the countertop, then pulls his shirt off, too, so that he has something dry for later. He gets a handful of hand soap and works it through his hair, looking at Ryan like ‘fucking fight me.’ “What?” he asks. God, he hopes this washes out.  
  
~  
  
Ryan closes one eye and flinches away from the splash. He's still laughing and it colors his "hey!" like the water droplets.

He sours at the short joke, but he guesses he earned it. Shane takes off his shirt and Ryan's back to this morning. The way Shane almost glittered with the sunlight. Then Shane's got soap all in his hair and Ryan's struck by it. By how much he wants to touch Shane. Help him. Drag that soap down his back and clean every fucking inch of him.

But he can't. He's so unsure of himself. He's afraid to even offer to help. 

"I, uh... You're just..." He clears his throat. "You got it?" It's the best he can do.  
  
~  
  
“What, are you going to help me?” Shane asks, and it echoes weirdly against the sink, and shakes with laughter but at least he’s not breathing water this time. There’s goosebumps all over him and he’s trying not to shiver, trying to get the soap out of his hair as fast as he can, but it’s not like shampoo, his hair’s tangled as fuck, and his fingers keeps sticking. One of his limbs knocks the flashlight off the counter. They’re making too much noise.  
  
He swears and moves to get it and cracks the back of his head off the tap.  
  
~  
  
Shane says _are you gonna help me_ like it's so fucking funny. Like Ryan couldn't _possibly_ provide value. But Shane's a sticking and clattering and the floor's wet. He hits his head. He could lose his chest footing and.... Fine, Ryan can do this. Fuck Shane and his permission. Fuck Shane thinking Ryan's useless.

"Stop, for God's sake, stop."He picks up the flashlight and sets it on the other sink. "Just duck your giant head under. I'll get the soap out, you freaking octopus."

~  
  
He stills a little, the pain receding somewhat, leaving just his renewed headache in its wake, but he says “Okay,” and braces his hands against the sink again, holding on tighter than perhaps is necessary and telling himself that it’s because the water’s cold.  
  
~  
  
God damn it. He can see how much Shane doesn't want this. But it's practical. Shane can shove that up his Slytherin ass. Ryan moves to stand on the side of the sink, pushed up against it so he can get his hands where they need to be.

He presses his hands into the back of Shane's obscenely tangled hair and slides it under the water. Ryan's so stiff, preoccupied, he doesn't notice the temperature. He runs his fingers through Shane's hair once, pressing grooves into his scalp. He tries to be gentle with the knots. Massaging them in repeated tugs until they give.

"Jesus, dude." He says it to distance himself from how much he likes this. How much he's wondered what Shane's hair would feel like. Even wet and tangled and freezing it's got an electric current thrumming through his arms. It's the best thing he's ever touched.

He gets both hands around Shane's head and rakes this fingers forward so they brush Shane's temple. He bites his lip and pulls back, scrubbing another few times to get the soap out.

"Lean forward." He places a hand on the base of Shane's neck, glides over the top notch of his spine. Shane's's covered in goosebumps. "Sorry it's cold."

He tips him forward, braces a hand around his neck. And god, the bones whisper and wrap around his fingers. The tiny bumps prickle up his spine until they've infected him too. He's so aware of the shape of Shane's neck, where it curves, how well Ryan's hand fits against it.

_Stop, Ryan. Be normal._

He uses his fingernails to glide up the back of Shane's hair,  where it's short enough to follow his motion. He scrapes once, twice.

"I think you're good." He eases Shane back by the shoulders before he lets go "Watch your head."

~  
  
God, it feels good. It’s different from those super awkward hairdresser visits where Shane can’t shake the tension from his shoulders for hours afterwards — strangers’ fingers in his hair, strangers’ acting like this is totally normal and not awkwardly sexual at all. This is different.  
  
This is Ryan.  
  
There’s a moment where Ryan’s fingers slide over his temples and they’re cold, as cold as the water, but it eases something in him, and Shane relaxes a little, stops squeezing his eyes shut. He stops squeezing the sink so hard and sort of folds his arm along the counter so Ryan can reach easier, but they’re mostly done. Shane’s lost in the loss of Ryan’s hand against his neck, and when Ryan touches his shoulders, so careful, making sure he’s careful, something twists sharply in his stomach.  
  
It’s been a while since someone…  
  
Shane backs out, getting his hand up to squeeze water from his hair, get it out of his face, and he meets Ryan’s eyes. “Thank you,” he says, and he means it, and maybe he sounds more like he means it than he should. It was just soap and cold water after all. Anyone could do it. He shivers and looks away, then back, tongue against his lower lip for a moment. “You want me to… help you? Here.”  
  
But Ryan can reach the sink. Ryan doesn’t have to flail around like an octopus like Shane, apparently, does.  
  
~  
  
Ryan's yanking himself down from this high. Pulling with everything he's got, but Shane looks at him. His _thank you_ feels different, intense. Ryan goes barrelling right back into the high. He doesn't know that Shane's told him thank you before. Hasn't had a reason to. Triumph blazes through his chest.

Then Shane says _you want me to help you?_

Something entirely different flutters and flares through him. Twinges all of him like he's bit down on a grain of sand.

_Say no, dude. You cannot handle this like a sane person. Tell him no._

It makes no sense. Ryan could do it on his own. The offer is unnecessary, probably another way Shane thinks Ryan is incompetent. But...

"Uhh, sure." He wants it. He knows it's bad, but he does. It's like the razor. He wants Shane's hands on him. Even more than he wants his hands on Shane.

_You absolute fucking idiot._

"It'll probably save me bashing my head in." 

He unzips his sweater and drapes it over one of the stalls. Then does the same with his shirt.

He steps to the sink, staring at the soap dispenser. "You want me to...?"

Oh, he's freaking out. He's panicking. He skims his hands under the water. He's got to wet his hair before the soap. He sets his hands against the sink and bends down.

"You better not bash my head in."  
  
~  
  
“Why do you think I want to kill you?” Shane asks, coming up behind him. He catches his own eyes in the mirror, and he is so tall, and Ryan’s so trusting, and he looks away quickly. It’s weird, he feels weird about it.  
  
Or maybe Ryan’s not trusting. Maybe Ryan’s just trying to be brave. Gryffindor. Maybe Ryan’s trust is for other people.  
  
Shane reaches out and eases his cold fingers over Ryan’s neck, closing his fingers a little as he guides him further under the tap.  
  
He remembers holding Ryan’s throat in the treehouse and tries to ignore the hot jolt that spreads from his gut and up his spine.  
  
He doesn’t know exactly who that person is, that Shane that leans over Ryan with his fingers around his throat, the Shane who slid his fingers into Ryan’s mouth, once, and nearly lost himself there.  
  
 _Get a grip_ , Shane thinks.  
  
~  
  
Ryan closes his eyes, gets out a panted, "because Slytherins are shady fucks."

It's normal. All chill. Even when his body starts to fracture under Shane's touch. Cold, cascading fingers over his neck. No. He will be fine. It's practical. It's not... It's _not_.

He's got this.

He braces himself on the edge of the sink. The water is cold cold cold. He shivers. It's the water. That's why. That's why he has to take a few gasping breaths. The water.

~  
  
He can hear him, he can hear Ryan’s breath, sharp and tight like it’s echoing around the walls. Maybe it is.  
  
It does things to him, his breathing like that and Shane takes a long slow breath like he can possibly steady Ryan’s, and yet, there’s an ache in him, one that’s been building for days and days. It’s like he’s been waiting for it. He’s not even cold anymore, or at least, he doesn’t notice it.  
  
He runs his fingers through Ryan’s hair, feels how it’s different from his own beneath the water. He swallows, eases him back a little, but before Ryan can do it, Shane’s already reaching for the soap, pumping out a handful. He keeps one hand on Ryan’s neck, but pulls away for a second to rub his hands together, get the soap between them. “Okay?” he asks, fingertips at the base of his skull.  
  
~  
   
Ryan giggles. It makes no sense. He’s back to the nervous laughs from a few days ago. He’s so done up in tension. He’s barely got control over his own limbs anymore. But he’s so aware of _Shane_ having control of them, of every tip and turn of his body on Shane’s direction. He shouldn’t have agreed to this.  
   
Shane lets go. No, it’s fine. Everything’s fine. He’s got this.  
   
He realizes he hasn’t answered. Shane asked him a question and he’s just stuck in his head. “Mhm.” He doesn’t trust himself to open his mouth. He’s got to get this under control. This anticipation. Waiting for Shane to touch him again. It’s just a shampoo. He’s gotten a shampoo before. With hair dressers. Hell, he generally likes them. It’s normal.  Except this isn’t a hairdresser.  
   
This is Shane.  
   
There are fingertips at the base of his skull. He feels them like static, electrifying him so the hair on his neck stands up. So goosebumps spread further and deeper, so deep he thinks his bones have them.  
   
This is _Shane_.  
  
~  
  
His face works through a couple expressions, humor, confusion, but then he’s working fucking hand soap through Ryan’s hair and everything falls away again. It smells like that pink bubblegum which is super weird. It’s a super weird smell in the middle of an apocalypse.  
  
Some of the soap slides from his palm and down his wrist, drips to slide over Ryan’s neck. “Sorry,” he whispers. He doesn’t know why he’s whispering, and he can barely hear himself over the water. He’s trying to be careful, to not get hand soap into Ryan’s eyes, because he bets that will sting like a bitch.  
  
He slides his fingers up behind his ears, over his temples, sort of cradles his forehead far enough above his brows so he can work the other hand over the top of his hair, and it tangles around his fingers. “Okay,” he says, and shifts. His thigh brushes the back of Ryan’s, his good leg and Shane tenses a little, but he’s careful as he eases Ryan’s head back under the stream of water. Not braining Ryan is more important than the shock that rushes through him at that touch.  
  
He has a flash of someone else’s thighs, someone else’s hips in his hands, and Shane behind them.  
  
 _Stop_ , he thinks.  
  
He’s like a broken record. It’s all he can ever think around Ryan. _Stop, stop, stop._  
  
But why?  
  
~  
   
Fuck. Shane’s hands feel so good. It’s like his skull’s never had hands on it before. He has to swallow to keep something, everything, inside of him. The soap drips—lands on him, trickles and drags along a blood vessel in his neck. It flurries a line along his pulse, down to the very center of him. Down to… _oh, please no._ He hisses, almost groans—almost moans. _Shit_. Now he’s aware that Shane is _behind him._ Ryan has to bite down on his lip to keep from making anymore sound. He hears it in his own head and it’s… it’s everything he should not be doing right now. He’s breathing too hard. Way, way too hard. Noises are burning the inside of his mouth. He cannot open it. If he does, he doesn’t know.  
   
 _This is a shampoo_ , he thinks. _That’s all._  
   
Shane brushes Ryan’s thigh. Jesus. Shane is… Ryan’s eyelids press tighter together, twitch. He squeezes his lips together so hard it hurts. His fingers dig hard into the porcelain of the sink, arms clenching until he feels vein and bone bite into his skin. Feels the way his shoulders twitch.  
   
Shane is going to know. He is absolutely going to see something is going on with Ryan. He is going to think Ryan is insane. Ryan feels insane—half out of his mind with these touches, the brush of thigh, the fingers across his forehead, the gentle tug in his hair.  
   
It’s back: that desperation—the ache at his very core. The voice begging, pleading, for Shane to tear him in two.  
  
~  
  
For a second, just a second, Shane’s hands go still, and he’s not breathing slow and steady anymore, it’s all shallow, and his eyes are on Ryan, on his back, his shoulder blades. He watches one one of them tic, twitch, muscle and bone shifting under skin that has so many goosebumps it’s kind of insane.  
  
The soap bubbles and foams beneath his fingers, and he smooths it up and out of Ryan’s hair and it swirls down the drain. Somewhere in his mind he knows that they’re probably using up water from water tanks somewhere, that it’s not going to last forever. But he’s only distracted from Ryan for a second, like a moment of static, a screen glitch. He doesn’t know why he does it, he shouldn’t do it, but he moves closer, like maybe he can warm Ryan up a little, or ease the tension, and he knows the water is cold, he knows…  
  
His right hand slides over Ryan’s forehead again, keeping it there as he runs the left back through his hair, down his neck, and he lingers there for a moment. “I’ve got you,” he says, and God, it feels… it breaks something in him. He’s wanted to say it. He’s been thinking it…  
  
~  
   
Shane is taking him apart, one seam at a time. He moves up, for some god forsaken reason, he’s closer. His body is so _there_ , connected to Ryan at all these points. They aren’t touching, but Ryan can feel Shane’s body. All these pieces of him just breaths away from Ryan. He keeps swallowing, over and over, so that there’s nothing left in his mouth but madness.  
   
Shane cradles his forehead, slips a hand down, down, to his neck. His fucking neck. Like the jackass that he is. It lingers, clings like plasma. He’s got this grip on Ryan—this hold so deep and complete that it’s like an extension of reality when Shane says:  
   
 _I’ve got you._  
   
And it cleaves straight down his chest. Shatters his heart like the sink water. Sends it skittering all over his skin—quivering and quiet. Because he really fucking does. Ryan opens his mouth, because he has to, and it’s so different from his voice. It’s clouded, raw—sharp. “I know, Shane.” And then it shudders out of him so it’s softer, more him, when he repeats, “I know.”   
  
~  
  
He wants to pull back. It’s weird, too intense, and the way Ryan says it— Shane tries to catch a look at Ryan’s face in the mirror, but he can’t quite see it, it’s just his dark hair and his back, and Shane behind him.  
  
“Okay,” he says, and lets him go, a little. He’s dragging his fingers through Ryan’s hair, getting the last of any soap, and that’s it, he thinks.  
  
And now he’s supposed to step away like this hasn’t been the most intense handful of minutes of his life.  
  
But then he’d have to discount the razor, and Ryan kneeling over him in the cabin and…  
  
It’s all Ryan.  
  
It’s always Ryan.  
  
Shane swallows, but he’s trying to keep a grip on himself but it’s so… it’s not easy. He reaches out to shut the tap off, fingers resting on the metal, and he says “I think we’re about done, here.”  
  
~  
   
 _“I think we’re about done, here.”_  
   
Fucking hell. He’s tinged in bright lights and screaming colors. There’s so much energy in him. So, so much. Shane goes to pull away, and Ryan has to move. He’s got to move or he’s going to yell at him. He’s going to turn around and punch him in the fucking face for doing this to him _again_.  
   
He yanks back, Shane’s hands still around either side of him and spins too fast. He slams into Shane’s chest while he’s still reaching for the faucet and steps back so the sink digs into his tailbone. It hurts but he doesn’t care. His face is twisted in this angry, visceral kind of rage. Water painting tracks down it like war paint. There’s so much in him. He’s twitching, fingers, mouth, eyes, body—he can’t stop. Like Shane’s wrapped a cord around his throat and plugged it in.  
   
He forces himself to freeze, hands up so only the barest tips of his fingers are touching Shane’s chest. Everything is pounding. His head. His leg. His… All of it is so loud. Too loud. The water in his hair drips to his shoulders and it’s so _heavy_ , like claws. He works his jaw to keep from screaming, from putting that goddamn radio to shame. He should’ve said no.  
   
He should have said _no_.  
   
He’s let Shane do this to him again. And he’s… god, it hurts. It hurts so much and he’s between screaming and crying and slamming Shane against the wall and tearing into his mouth until he bleeds. Until he can’t say things like I’ve got you and then let Ryan go. Drop him over the fucking side of this mountain.  
   
Because Shane’s all of it. The one dropping him over the edge. The mountain. And the jagged rocks at the bottom. He’s _all_ of it. And Ryan has let him, again and again. And that’s what makes him the angriest, what nearly reduces him to tears. He would do it again.  
   
 _Why do you keep doing this to me?_  
  
 _Why?_  
  
~  
  
Shane catches his breath, or tries. It doesn’t quite come. His eyes go wide, and Ryan sort of rushes into him and Shane grabs hold of the edge of the sink with one hand, and Ryan’s forearm with the other, because for a second, he really thought he was going to get hit.  
  
And then Ryan’s looking at him, breathing fast, and he’s flushed and soaking wet and furious and Shane — god he doesn’t blame him. He doesn’t fucking blame him, not for a second, but it’s like the realization slams into him, too, full force.  
  
Tension surges through him like a live wire, stinging all through him as it goes, his nerves, his bones. God, he wants to kiss him, he wants to _taste_ him, but he thinks that all he’d taste is blood because Ryan looks like he’s about ready to rip Shane’s head right the fuck off his shoulders.   
  
Instead he does the next closest thing, the thing he’s aching to do, the thing that’s pulsing through him hot and disorienting and he grabs Ryan by the hip and by the jaw at once and _presses_ against him, presses him back into the sink. Somehow he presses him back and drags him forward at the same time and their mouths are centimeters apart, and he didn’t expect— somehow he understood him, but didn’t _expect_ the hard press of Ryan through his jeans against Shane’s thigh and it’s— “Ah,” Shane says, and it’s shaken out of him, startled loose. It’s the bitten off beginning of a moan and he traps it halfway out of his throat, panting against Ryan’s mouth but not touching him. Never touching his lips.  
  
~  
   
Ryan’s expecting Shane to draw back. He grabs his arm, though. So he _knew_ Ryan was thinking of decking him. Good. That means he must at least sort of understand what he did. Because the worst thing would be if he had no idea what he’d done. That would hurt the worst. But he must—he keeps doing this, this isn’t just in Ryan’s head.  
   
It can’t be.  
   
They stand there, locked in this charged not-quite-touch. It’s happening again. Shane’s drawing him in with his intense eyes and quiet mouth and the freckle on his right cheek. He’s wet and— _fuck_. Ryan closes his eyes, opens his mouth to say, _move_ or something like it.  
   
But Shane _does_ move. He grabs Ryan by the jaw, the hip, and drags him so their faces are almost touching. So he arcs hard against the sink. Rage slips away from him, crumbles, clings about his fingernails, but his mouth falls open—eyes wide. He’s pressed against Shane’s thigh, and oh—god. The touch shouldn’t do this to him. Shouldn’t draw him so close to the edge.  
   
Breath finally comes out of his mouth in a rush, shaken, disarmed. It touches and tangles in Shane’s. God, he could kiss him. It would be so easy. His eyes bounce from Shane’s mouth to his eyes. His hand moves, gets a grip on Shane’s hip and pulls. Like he can get them closer. Because he’s had it, and now it’s all he wants.  
  
~  
  
Ryan meets his eyes and Shane closes them, takes a breath that sounds like he’s trying to get it through a fucking drinking straw, and then lets it out in a rush. “Ryan,” he says, pleads it, but he doesn’t know what he’s asking for.  
  
Or he doesn’t want to admit it. And he knows Ryan must be able to feel him, like he feels Ryan and then he’s being pulled forward, and God, he’s going to die, Ryan’s going to kill him. He doesn’t pull back.  
  
~  
   
He feels Shane, then, and he doesn’t know why he’s surprised. The way Shane’s looking at him. The hardness against him shouldn’t be surprising. Not if Ryan’s being honest. He’s scared, though. He’s walking a tight rope now. All that rage scattered around him like shattered shards of a mirror.  
   
Shane says, “ _Ryan_ ” and there’s this well of panic in him because Shane is begging. It tears through him like a hurricane. It’s more than Shane’s ever given him, he thinks, in a weird way. Ryan drags his fingers, scratching along Shane’s hipbone, his abdomen. He pauses at the button of his jeans, hesitates. He’s so scared of misreading this, of going too far.  
   
He meets Shane’s eyes as he presses himself even further into Shane, almost a grind, so the solid touch turns to a jab against into thigh. He’s breathing hard, too hard, because Shane’s against him too. His hand grips Shane’s waistband again as he holds his eyes.  
   
 _Tell me what you want._  
  
~  
  
Heat trails Ryan’s fingers and he tenses against the way he wants to arch forward, into that touch.

Shane opens his eyes again in time to meet Ryan’s and he lets his hand slide from Ryan’s hip to lightly grab his wrist because he thinks— okay, no, he’s got a handle on where this is going.

And he doesn’t want to be a mistake. Not for Ryan. Shane doesn’t think he can handle that.

But it’s so fucking confusing because the way Ryan’s looking at him says something else, and the way he rocks up against him says something else and Shane drops his forehead down against Ryan’s and slides his fingers from Ryan’s jaw to his cheek, running his thumb over it, then shifts, stroking the edge of his thumb over Ryan’s mouth. 

He’s watching, close, how Ryan’s lips move beneath his touch.  
  
~  
  
Ryan is overwhelmed. With fear. With want. With _Shane_. It's drowning him. Like he's his dad's car crumpling beneath another car's impact. 

Shane catches his hand, stops him. It's almost a relief. Then he streams his fingers over Ryan's face, his cheeks, his mouth. Ryan's lips quiver and he makes this kind of "ah," sound. Draws it out, almost to a whine. He's winding and winding to a crescendo. It hurts.

He doesn't know where to go or what to do. Before it's always been unbuttoning pants. Working the solid to soft. Before it's been quick and dirty. Do it and go. It's been easier. Even with girls it's been Ryan. Ryan's decisions. Ryan's hand slid under a shirt.

This isn't that.

Ryan's never been this afraid of doing too much or doing too little. Or being a tool. Of meaning nothing. 

_God, please don't let this mean nothing to him._

But the way Shane's looking at him. He feels like maybe it's not his fault. Maybe his mom didn't really want him to shut up.

He wraps a hand around Shane's neck and pulls him, almost into Ryan's mouth. But not quite there.

"Shane..."

He's so scared to move. Because he thinks he'll break them.  
  
~  
  
Shane feels that sound run through him, through all of him, and he gasps softly and he thinks _Okay, okay you’ve got this_ , and then Ryan pulls him closer, somehow even closer, says his _name_ and Shane _presses_ his hips forward, this long, fluid motion and another sound struggles free from his chest. “You’re okay,” he hears himself say. He says it because he doesn’t think _he_ is, he’s vibrating like there’s electricity humming inside him.  
  
And Ryan’s mouth is so close.  
  
And Shane imagines kissing him and thinks that if he does, and Ryan doesn’t want— that… he thinks that will crush him. His ribs will just shatter and cave in on him, on his heart. So he slides his fingers up between their mouths, and they are so close that his knuckles brush his own lips, and he presses his fingertips against Ryan’s and he gasps against him like that, eyes shut.  
  
He releases Ryan’s wrist and grabs his hip again, but doesn’t pull him, just slides his hand up Ryan’s side, around his back, spreads his fingers there at the small of his back, the suggestion of a tug.  
  
 _Come closer, I want you, I need you._  
  
He never completes the motion.  
  
~  
  
Shane says _you're okay_ and it makes Ryan feel the shake, the hum beneath his own skin. He's not okay. Not at all. He's in pieces, scared of leaving this moment with no more of Shane than before it.

Shane's fingers touch his lips. He breathes against them, damp and hot. Shane breathes too, gasps. And it draws the ache in Ryan's pants to a near burn.

Then Shane touches his back. Almost pushes but no. Ryan responds anyway. He edges forward and opens his mouth. His teeth catch two of Shane's fingers. He's still panting this broken heat and it snags around Shane's fingers. His tongue presses wet against his the tips. Stark salt and bubble gum soap and metal. It's not intentional, the taste. His tongue sits thick in his mouth, an almost-lick cowed by curiosity.

His hands slide into Shane's hair. It's still wet, cool to touch. Down to his neck, his shoulders. He can't touch enough of Shane, can't get his hips far enough into him, his mouth far enough around him. But fuck, he's trying.  
  
~  
  
That touch of his tongue is almost too much and Shane gasps again, and hooks those fingers, wet from Ryan’s tongue, over his lower teeth, tugs Ryan’s mouth a little further open, and gently slides them inside, slides them gently, careful, over Ryan’s tongue, but he’s shivering with urgency, and his body tenses, tenses, tenses around something and he’s panting against Ryan’s mouth and his own fingers and _god_ , what does he do with all this?  
  
“Ry—” he whispers, and maybe it’s because he _can’t_ get the full name out, jesus, he can barely breathe, and Ryan’s tongue is soft and slick, but this is— it’s all tangled with something else Shane wants, and he moves as if to pull his fingers back even as his hand on Ryan’s back finally does pull him closer to him, but there’s not _friction_ , it’s only touch.  
  
~  
  
It's sensory overload. It's all Shane doing everything he never thought Shane would do. He looks like he's about to come apart. He pulls Ryan. Their bodies touch at every point. Shane bony and bending, Ryan soft and unyielding.

He closes his mouth around Shane's fingers. It's involuntary. A reaction to the way his spine crackles along his back. To Shane's touch. Ryan's hands dig into Shane's hips, press into the bones.

He gets out an _mmf_ sound, because he can't do much with his teeth scraping Shane's fingers in his mouth. But he wants to know if Shane's okay. He isn't sure.  
  
~  
  
It hinges on that moment as Ryan’s lips slide over his fingers. Shane opens his eyes and looks at him, and he just comes apart. It’s so fast he can’t get a handle on it. It just flows over him like a wave and he gasps on the inhale, and exhales a little “ _Oh_ —” but it’s quick and soft and then he’s gone, he’s pitched, blind, over the edge, and his hands go tight against Ryan’s back, scrape too hard against Ryan’s teeth as he drags his fingers from his mouth, sort of half trying to stop this, and catches hold of Ryan’s throat, fingers sliding hot and slick from his lips, to his chin, down over his adam’s apple. It drags at his skin, but it’s not intentionally rough.  
  
Fuck, his hips are pressing forward, not rocking just pressing, digging harder, bruisingly sharp against Ryan’s as he spills over, hotly, the ache breaking, sliding away from him as he loses control of everything, and he’s clinging to him and thinking _damn, damn_ because he never meant to, but god, it’s— god it’s Ryan, and Shane can’t do anything but give in, and let himself go under.  
  
~  
  
There was a show at Disneyland called World of Color—it was on the water, different Disney film clips overlaid across a mist painted in reds and pinks and blues against the backdrop of the Ferris wheel and California Screamin’ lit in these lights meant for stars and spaceships.  And at the end, the music swells and bursts this explosion of color along the water. A thousand fountains all shouting up, up, in every single shade Ryan’s mind can fathom. An eruption of light that silenced the world around it—the breath everyone’s been holding, waiting for. The finale. This otherworldly moment that reached into Ryan’s chest and shook him. Made him _hear_ his heartbeat.

Ryan watched that show a thousand times. Remembers all twenty-eight fucking minutes of it. He’s spent his life trying to recreate that—that moment that strips him down to nothing but his pulse. He wants to cause that, pull that out of someone.

But this is so much more, so much bigger than that surge of color and light and life. It’s like the World of Color turned up to ten. Like he’s in the center of it instead of standing in the bleachers. Shane’s eyes open and it’s like the world’s in slow-motion. They fracture so Ryan sees the lightning, the thunder, the scorched earth at the very center of him. It’s this physical quake, where his body bows and breaks in this tremor that flushes his skin and paints his lips pinker. It’s all colors. The dark red clench of Shane’s fingers along Ryan’s back. The white-hot scrape of his fingers along Ryan’s teeth. The bite of brown as Shane’s eyes sputter to black and roar back wild and amber.

Ryan did this. Ryan. That sinks into him and bangs in golds and silvers in his chest. And then he comes back to his body—Shane’s got a hand on his throat. Oh. The world’s speeding up, up, until it’s in fast-forward. His windpipe trips. The stutter wraps around his waist like a wire. All the way up to his chest.  Shane’s fingers drag their touch behind them, slick and searing. Ryan feels himself rise to a fever pitch.

“Oh...” He doesn’t know if it’s a word or a whimper. He’s reduced to the agony tearing beneath his waist. His body and skin abandon him to it—compliant, but not for Ryan. Shane is pressed into him, and those are the only parts of him he feels. Narrowed to Shane. His muscles go taut, stretched to near-brittle. 

He gasps, feels it reverberate under Shane’s palm. He can’t breathe. And somehow that makes it worse, winds him up further. His head rocks back. His whole body tips with it so his back arcs and his hips slam against Shane’s.  He drops his hands, one grips the porcelain behind him so hard the sink shudders.

“Shane.” It whines, peels out at the a and falls between them. He’s begging. He needs them to be closer. He needs to hold onto him. His free hand slams into Shane’s chest, gripping at sweat and salt, tracking marks with his fingernails as he clenches his hand over and over. He can’t grab him—he can’t breathe—he can’t, he _can’t_ …  
  
~  
  
He thinks, probably, vaguely, beneath the thunder in his heart, that he should apologize. He thinks he should be horribly embarrassed and then Ryan’s arching, gripping the sink, interrupting the urgent rhythm of Shane’s own heart as his hand slams into his chest and for a second Shane’s breath rushes out of him and all he can see is Ryan, and Shane’s not thinking anything at all.  
  
His mind goes quiet. He’s aware that, somewhere, there’s water still running, but he can only hear his breath coming out of him heavy, rolling up from his chest, shaking with heat every time Ryan’s hand closes against him, like he could just dig straight through Shane’s chest and pull his living heart out.  
  
 _Take it_ , Shane thinks, as he comes back to himself, and his eyes are dark as the rain outside, and he’s shaking but steady as he slides one boot along the floor, getting closer, still to him, somehow. Because Ryan said his name again. Because even with Ryan like this, held to Shane, held beneath him, bent back over the sinks, with Shane’s hand around his throat — and Shane squeezes now, controlled, steady, but digs his fingers up into the soft places where he can feel Ryan’s breath in and out in and out become a little more restricted, and he focuses on that, focuses on his face — even like this, Shane feels like Ryan’s got him, Ryan’s guiding him — not in any kind of controlling way, but like a star, a directional indicator, the pull of something beautiful, but so far away… and Shane would do absolutely anything for him.  
  
Even if he never gets to reach him, Shane would do anything for him. Anything anything anything. Drop to his knees, right now, make him promise after promise, he’d listen to the screaming static on that fucking radio again, he’d save his life, he’d kiss his mouth.  
  
He doesn’t know how to say that though, how to say any of it, and he thinks _I’ve got you_ , and remembers how Ryan’s voice twisted and changed. So Shane says nothing, and keeps his fingers at Ryan’s throat, and keeps his eyes on Ryan’s face as he pulls Ryan closer still to him, by the small of the back. He practically presses him down, back, over the sink as far as Ryan’s spine will bend, because Shane is _leaning_ over him, chest to chest. He presses one long leg between his thighs against the heat there and feels the way Ryan’s hips fit against his own and he wants it without these fucking layers and layers between them, but it’s not as easy as all that.  
  
~  
   
Shane squeezes, _squeezes_. And it’s this thrill of being under someone else’s control. _No_. Not someone else’s—Shane’s. Shane and the callouses where his palm’s held the pipe too tight. Shane and his slender fingers, wet from Ryan’s mouth, from the sink—all soft and curling. Shane and his windows and his mist and his dark eyes. Shane is the one who held him in the cabin. Shane is the one who buried Jake. Shane is the one who knows where to put his fingerprints so Ryan’s breath heaves, grinds against his chest and throat, grinds until it’s rubbed Ryan raw.  
   
Shane is the one that made him okay with silence.  
   
His back digs into the sink, but he can’t feel it. He can’t feel anything but Shane. The hand on his throat. This hand that’s pulling him into this clouded peace. Quieting him in a way he can’t quiet himself. He’s separate from his mind, his body—just this thread suspended in nothing. In the nothingness that Shane wields so easily.  
   
Shane pulls him closer, somehow, and his chest is against Ryan so Ryan’s back arches—bends so bad it hurts. Except it’s not his back. It’s the quake in that silence. The cracks spidering along it. The sigh and swish of skin. The friction where their bodies cling and slip under the water. He’s closed his eyes. He doesn’t know when, but he can’t take anything else. It’s just Shane’s hand on his throat. If he takes in anymore, he’ll…  
   
Shane’s thigh brushes him. The clenched ache in his pants. Presses in this way it wasn’t before, and Ryan’s face twists. He grits his teeth as his hand finally snaps up, finds something to grab. Shane’s hair. Every bristle, every drip of water, roars through him. The way Shane’s skin bites back under his grip—it’s enough. He chokes, gasps this bent groan that gets caught in his throat. His mouth hangs open, waiting, trying to push the rest of it out. But he can’t.  
   
He snaps like a string under scissors. Lets go.  
   
It washes through him, drags him back into those muted waves—as it comes out of him one shaking rung at a time, hiccuped, stuttered breaths. A burst of relief, of salvation, and then a slow stream of hot release. He comes back to his mind in slivers. Just breathes, sort of gasping—sweat-slick hand still tangled in Shane’s hair—forever before he flutters his eyes open, into Shane’s.  
   
And thinks,  
   
 _Oh shit._  
  
~  
  
Shane feels Ryan come undone beneath him and loosens his fingers around Ryan's throat at the same time, giving him back everything, and it is beautiful and intimate and impossible somehow, because he feels like they're hardly touching, even though they're clinging to one another. He sees it, that exact moment Ryan regrets it, the second he realizes what he's done.

 _Fuck_ , he thinks, and the relief, the heat drains out of him and leaves him cold, unpleasantly damp, a little lost. But he'd been waiting for it, maybe. He'd been afraid of it and it's— god, somehow so much harder than he expected it to be. 

"There it is."   
  
That look that says _oh shit._

He doesn't means to say it as he draws back, steadies Ryan, both of them still breathless and half-dazed. He's got his fingers on Ryan's hip, at the junction of his shoulder and neck. He can see the marks he's dug, reddened, into Ryan's skin. 

It was too good to last. It was too intense for someone like Shane to hold onto. He wouldn't even know how, and Ryan... Ryan's terrified of this, of what this means for _Ryan_ , like Shane figured he would be.

~

He’s out of breath. Still shivering a little because the cold’s coming back to him. He wants to grab Shane’s wrist, keep that hand on his throat. But he’s… he isn’t embarrassed, really. Shane got off too. He’s done this before, but he’s scared. Because he has _done this before_. This ends with two mutual nods in a bathroom and that’s it. And Shane’s strange, so stingy with touch… what if that’s all this was?  
  
Then Shane says _there it is_ and his mind’s spinning, off the rails. He doesn’t know what it means. But he doesn’t like it, like he’s been dismissed. It makes the cold deeper, harsher. It felt like more. God damn it.   
  
_God damn it._  
  
Ryan grabs Shane’s hand so his palms, some of the only pieces of him with heat, press into Shane’s knuckles. He holds Shane’s eyes. He doesn’t want this answer, god, he’s scared. Scared he’s failed some test. Scared this is where Shane leaves him.  
  
The daze hasn’t quite left his voice, but it’s honest, clear and curious, as he says, “There what is?”  
  
~  
  
Shane didn't expect this, but he turns back to him, faces him because it would be fucking unfair not to and no matter what Ryan thinks about this, about him, he deserves this from Shane. Attention, truth. He'd still give him anything. He fights not to close his fingers around Ryan's hand.

Still, Shane says "Nothing," And his face twists a little, because he didn't mean _nothing_. He tries again. "I mean, I figured this wasn't your thing. It's... it's just been a while, or whatever."

He thinks about his own moment of liberation, of falling to pieces. He thinks about Ryan's mouth and shivers a little.

"Clearly, for us both. But I get it, I'm not usually your thing. Don't— don't worry about it."  
  
~  
   
 _You are exactly my thing._  
   
He can’t say it. It’s lost in his throat because he’s thinking about those drunk nights with guys where he thought exactly that, _this isn’t really my thing, it’s just once—it’s just twice… it’s just…_  
  
 _I like girls._  
   
But that isn’t the whole truth. He could say it. Say the word _bisexual_ , because that’s what he’d read about, what he’d thought about. What he hadn’t been able to tell his own mother. That was it. What he’d said once to Jake and balked. And Jesus Christ, he thought Shane _knew_ that. What else could he have been talking about? But Shane looks just… shattered about this. Shattered that he’s not usually Ryan’s thing.  
   
“Shane, that’s… Jesus.”  
   
Because it was his thing, wasn’t it? That’s why he kept going back. That’s why it kept happening with a different guy every time. But that’s not what _this_ is. This is… different. This thing that’s kindled in his heart for Shane. This is terrifying in a way bisexual never was.  
   
God this is so confusing. All these signs and missteps and scene breaks. He squeezes Shane’s hand because he shivers. It’s cold and he just wants to find the words in him that will make Shane stop looking like this. Stop being hurt. And he wishes he could know that it was more than a need filled for Shane. But he can’t tell. Through all this. He doesn’t know if it’s a bruised ego or… if Shane wants Ryan.  
   
“I’m… that was…” His heart’s pounding, racing, with unsaid words. He can’t say it. He can’t. He’s gone shaky again. “I can _masturbate_ …” A breath of laughter skips out, unwilling. “It wasn’t…” God, it was so much more than that moment. The release. He can’t even articulate how much more it was.  
   
 _I want you._  
   
“This wasn’t about that.” And then, in this weird rush, “This was about…” He freezes, lost in Shane’s eyes, licks his bottom lip. “About you. For me, it was.”  
  
~  
  
Something rushes through Shane like wind through a house, through a cracked window. It scatters everything he isn't holding down.

"Oh," he says, and his voice breaks the word clean in two. And Ryan's still holding his hand and Shane...

He swallows and says, "Then stop looking so _terrified_ , Ryan," and it skips out, higher, on a laugh he can't quite get out. God his heart is racing. They're being so so careless in here, with more than just zombies. "Sorry. Then, sorry. I just figured... I dunno."  
  
He’s looking between Ryan’s eyes, his mouth, his eyes again. “Jesus… I.”  
  
~  
   
But he is terrified, because he can’t say what he needs to say. He can’t ask Shane. He can’t just put it out there like Shane just did. Because Shane didn’t say it back. He didn’t. The question burns the back of his throat, clings and chokes. He needs to know, aches to know, but he doesn’t want to. It all but tears him in half. Two polarized ends.  
   
He closes his eyes, and it’s hilarious, because his voice wobbles. “I’m not terrified.” He opens them again. “I just didn’t… you know, I never know when you’re going to like… do your Shane thing and need me to shut up and go away.” It’s not the question. Not really. It doesn’t even make sense. It’s easy to dodge.  
   
Because Ryan kinda wants Shane to dodge. He wants to live in this unknown. This maybe space. Falling is better than crashing.  
   
Because he will crash—he will never stop crashing—if this was just something Shane needed. If he’s just a happy coincidence. Which would mean...  
   
“Wait, are you…?” It tapers off because he’s horrified at himself. It’s not the question he wanted to ask. It’s not about _Ryan_. But it’s way more than he has any right to ask.  
  
~  
  
"I never need you to—” but Ryan's still going and shivering and he's still holding Shane's hand and Shane can feel it like it’s the only thing.

"Am I what?" Shane asks, and his eyes are on their hands. He presses his thumb against Ryan's skin but doesn't tighten his fingers.  
  
~  
   
He’s going to kill him. Shane is going to kill him. He wants to back out of this, but it feels dishonest to back out. To pretend it’s nothing. And it’s something, maybe it doesn’t mean one way or the other, but it’s information. It’s more about Shane. And god that’s all he wants.  
   
“Are you… like, I mean it’s your thing? M—this? You’re into... guys?”   
  
~  
  
Shane meets his eyes, and thinks _God, yes_ , but he reigns himself back, pushes everything down so he can try to figure this out.

"Yeah," he says, and his eyes are fixed on Ryan's face. "I guess. I mean, I am. I'm into people." It sounds pretentious, somehow, but how else can he say it? "Probably, usually guys," he clarifies, but even that feels slightly off-centre.  
  
~  
   
So it could easily be a need filled. This confirms it, and _goddammit Ryan, stop._  
   
It doesn’t mean Shane’s not interested in Ryan. It didn’t feel like nothing. It felt like something. But then, Shane’s always so closed off. He holds so much back. Maybe it was nothing. Oh, god, Ryan is going to collapse. Because this makes him want Shane more, this casual way he says it. The way he owns it—doesn’t question it. God, Ryan looses a breath. He’s still holding Shane’s hand. And he thinks when he lets go it’s going to kill him.  
   
“Oh, cool, okay.” He wants Shane to be into him. And suddenly, he hates every guy that’s ever fucking existed. Well, most of them are gone now. That makes him feel bad. Into people. It’s so broad. He thinks of the people Shane would be into—really, truly into. Someone serene, even, like Shane is. Someone with as many layers. As many truths. “Okay.”  
  
~  
  
"Okay?" He repeats. He doesn't think Ryan looks okay. Not exactly. Shane licks his lips, presses them together, gets up the balls to do this thing, because he doesn't know where Ryan stands, he feels like he gets it even less, now. So Ryan's not straight. Or he is, and he's into Shane— is that what he said? Is that what he _meant_? Jesus, Shane hates this. He hates all these questions, all this uncertainty, but he pulls Ryan close anyway, by his hand which is still holding onto his. Shane closes some of the distance on his own, too, and he leans down to kiss Ryan's temple because he doesn't get it, doesn't know why Ryan's wanting, but he can't just walk away from it either, like it means nothing.   
  
It means everything to Shane. 

He lingers there, raises his free hand to touch the back of Ryan's hair, cold and wet.

"We're... we're sitting ducks here," he says, almost against his skin, and then draws away.  
  
~  
  
Another shiver trips down Ryan's spine at Shane's touch. He'd barely noticed they'd gotten closer and then... It feels like a promise. A secret. Something.   
  
A kiss.

People looking to fulfill those needs don't kiss like that. The guys in the bathroom never waited, never kissed him like that. Never looked at him like this.

He's still unsure but Shane whispers his concern and pulls back and it's so obnoxiously him. Ruining everything. True, but ugh.   
  
Still, it's enough. For now.

It's enough.

Unsolved as it is. Ryan accepts it. He lowers his gaze, smiling softly, and lets Shane go.

"Yeah, yeah..."  
  
~  
  
"I'm going to, uh..." Shane sort up backs up towards one of the stalls, finally separates them completely. He's glad for the low light because he's a fucking mess, his jeans, it's sort of awful. He wants to clean himself up, and lo and behold there's actual toilet paper in here, it's a miracle.

He pushes the door shut and takes a second, alone, to exhale anxiety, relief, then he starts laughing, can't keep it together, and it's a bit overwhelmed maybe, hysterical. He can't quite believe that just happened. He can't believe they both— they'd barely touched. It was like—

 _Stop_ , he tells himself for the ten thousandth time, and this time, he does.  
  
~  
   
Shane’s laughing and it’s bizarre. Not unpleasant, but definitely weird. Ryan smiles to himself but doesn’t say anything. Just cleans himself off in a different stall and tries to keep his head on straight. He’s resolved to let it go and he’s going to.  
   
They both do what they can. Their pants are… kind of ruined. Or Ryan’s are, he’s not sure about Shane’s, but he can’t imagine it’s much better. He gets them manageable, and without Shane touching him, without all these maybes—he’s so _tired_. The pain that he’s gotten so used to is seeping into his blood so he’s weighed almost to the floor. They should probably look for clothes or something, but Ryan is too tired to give a shit. His limp’s getting worse.  
   
They get back to the bookstore. Ryan rubbing at his eyes and Shane looking like he’s going to pipe the wall just to be sure. The conversation isn’t as awkward as it could be. Ryan doesn’t bring up Shane’s deranged laughter, or the fact that they got each other off with half-touches. Shane might think it’s because it’s been so long. But Ryan knows it’s not.  
   
But Ryan’s not going to think about it anymore.


	8. Part 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry we are very late getting this up, it has been A Week. Anyway, this part has my FAVOURITE special guest so... ENJOY!

Part 8

He figures a book will distract him from Shane and his stupid sleep shit, so he leaves Shane to find one. There’s plenty that look interesting—some he’s read before. He’s in fiction, mysteries, then he gets back to where he was. He picks up the Monopoly game and keeps going. Winds up in the kid’s section. Harry Potter’s there, and he thinks—no, Shane’s too antsy to finish seven books.  
   
He grabs the first one anyway.  
   
There’s a whole shelf dedicated to R.L. Stine, because of course there is. He shouldn’t want to read them. His whole life’s a horror story lately. But it’s something from his childhood, and in reality, _Goosebumps_ are too silly to be legitimately scary. He grabs a couple, then finds a blanket tucked into one of the shelves near some other knick-knacks.  
   
It’s warmer in here than it has been any of the other places they’ve been, but it’s not _warm_. There’s no heat, and it’s freezing outside. So he grabs it. There’s only one, which sucks, but he makes his way back to the camp they’ve made against one of the shelves.  
   
“Hey.” Shane’s wandered off somewhere, so he has to raise his voice a little. “Where are you—I found a blanket.” He pauses. “Singular, though. Curb your enthusiasm.”  
  
~  
  
"Enthusiasm. Curbed," Shane says, robot-like, from a few shelves over. He's crouched on the floor and has been looking for books on wilderness survival but they're all about fucking fishing. He flips to a page about how to use natural lures or whatever, considers it a moment, then rips the pages from the book for later, then goes back to Ryan with the torn out pages in hand."I should stop complaining about bookstores selling candles and blankets," he says, coming to sit on the floor in the spot he guesses he's going to crash for the night. He looks over at Ryan. "What've you got there? Is that _Goosebumps_!?" he laughs.  
  
~  
   
Ryan works his face into horror, mouth open, eyes wide. “Did you desecrate the books, Shane?! I know you were a monster, but this is unprecedented.” He already knows the pages are something helpful. Like how to use kung-fu to disarm a zombie. It makes sense now that he’s looking at Shane, thinking, that he should’ve been looking for that—not just regular books.   
  
He tosses the blanket on top of, over, Shane, and acts like he doesn’t notice. He glances at the books in his hands, bending to put them down and gingerly bringing himself to the floor across from Shane. Trying to be mindful of his leg. “Yeah, it’s _Goosebumps_ , and? Let me guess, your crap is from fucking _Man vs. Nature: Forty Ways Tree Sap Can Save Your Life_?”  
  
~  
  
"Hey, I'd read that," Shane says, detangling himself from the blanket and and looking at his pages. "Uh, I dunno... it was probably something like _River Fishing, How to Waste Your Time Getting Eaten By Mosquitos At Ungodly Hours_." He slides the pages into his bag which they'd brought over. His eyes flicker over Ryan, trying to figure him out, see how he's doing without asking. He feels better now that they've both eaten one of the protein bars in the box, but the headache is still looming. And he hasn't missed the way Ryan's been favouring his leg. He tosses some of the blanket over Ryan's legs, so they're sharing it, then twists, resettles himself so he's sort of reclining on the floor, stretched out in the aisle, facing Ryan. The blanket's over Ryan's legs, and Shane's torso and it feels more intimate than it should. Shane ignores this.

"Why Goosebumps?" he asks, looking up at him. His fingers are tracing invisible lines on the floor.

~  
  
Ryan laughs. He's both surprised and not that Shane isn't into fishing. Then Shane's all stretched out and Ryan's following the length of his body under the blanket. Thinking about before. Just for a second. And now he's gotta be cool about sharing a blanket.  
  
 _You did this to yourself, Bergara._  
  
“I read them as a kid. Freaked myself out on a regular basis.” He remembers standing outside his parents too. How they felt so safe. He wonders what that little boy would do. If he knew. He swallows. “I'd drive my mom crazy not being able to sleep--hey, kinda like you.” He nudges Shane with his foot. “But I thought it might…” He shrugs one shoulder, suddenly sheepish.  
  
“Oh hey, I got you a present.” He places the _Harry Potter_ book over top the blanket in front of Shane. “In case you wanna educate yourself on things that actually matter.”  
  
~  
  
“A present? It’s not my birthday,” he says in someone else’s voice. Shane picks it up, rolls onto his back to squint at it. He has to work his shoulderblades into the floor, wiggles around a bit until he's comfortable. "I watched the movies. Like three of them. You want me to read this?" he asks, but he doesn't wait for the answer, he just reaches into his sweater pocket and draws out his glasses. He'd had them on to look at titles in the low light, but took them off when he realized there wasn't much. He slides them up his nose now, with one hand, eyes still on the book.  
  
“ _‘Mr and Mrs Dursley of number four Privet drive were perfectly normal, thank you very much’_. That sounds nice." He knows the Dursleys are terrible, he's just being a shit. He reaches out and touches Ryan's knee, maybe by accident, draws his hand away.   
  
"Thought it might what? The _Goosebumps_ books."  
  
~  
  
“You would say that, you fucking Slytherin. Sounds nice?!” Ryan is only halfway through tearing into Shane, knows he's rising to the bait. But he likes it. He likes when Shane messes with him.  
  
He likes when Shane does anything to him.  
  
But Shane touches his knee and it knocks it out of him long enough for Shane to ask after his unfinished sentence. Ryan's body is suddenly hot again. He doesn't know what it was he was going to say.  
  
“I don't…” He laughs. “It's, I dunno. Make me forget all this, I guess.” Honesty pours out of him. “It's exhausting. Before I could go to Disneyland or go out with friends or work on a new project. I could recharge that way. The world kinda gave back. But now it's…” He looks at the book. “Now it's got to come from me and… I'm tired. I miss...” Fuck, he almost says his mom. That would be too much. “Normal shit, I guess.” He rolls his eyes at himself. “Jesus, I sound like a little bitch. Anyway, I thought it would make me feel better. That's all I meant.”  
  
~  
  
Shane's still holding _Harry Potter_ open at his chest, but he's watching Ryan, and something in him is pounding, aching to fix it. To fix the world for Ryan.

_The world kinda gave back._

There were a few things Shane had left in the back room and behind the cash while he was snooping. One was someone's discarded wrist watch, ticking loyally away for no one, with the date...

It's Saturday (maybe edging into Sunday now). It's December already. And they've missed Ryan's birthday by one week. Dragging themselves through the woods a few days ago, in desperation and terror, he'd been sure they had time left, that it wasn't the end of November yet, but it seems like time has been getting along without their notice. And Ryan's been twenty-seven for days and neither of them have acknowledged it. Neither of them had even known.

He'd left the watch where it was. It didn't feel like his.And Shane wants to be part of the world, part of a world that gives back to Ryan, but he doesn't know how.He's too late, now, to even say a single proper 'Happy birthday.'

Instead he says the only thing he can, which is "You don't sound like a little bitch," he kind of laughs it, and rolls over on his side again, to face him, laying the _Harry Potter_ book out, spine up on the floor, keeping his page like he really is going to read it, for Ryan's sake. Because he fucking is. He will. "I miss normal shit, too."

He looks him over, through his lenses, sees him clearly, even through the darkness. "Yeah... you know, it's not... it's not all bad." _Yeah fucking right, Shane._   
  
"Look, You've got all of _Goosebumps_ at your disposal.” He sort of waves at the books like they’re some kind of grandiose treasure. “We'll take some with us. Fucking— let's, let's read it," he says, and enthusiasm is leaking into his voice until it's almost urgent even in its softness. "Come on, pick a book—" he flicks one of them. "Show me what _Goosebumps_ is all about. Give me— give me goosebumps, Ryan.”  
  
~

Shane’s reaction surprises him. He honestly expected him to laugh it off. Ryan didn’t think Shane would actually agree he was a little bitch—or, well, maybe he did. He doesn’t know. But it’s not this. This strange overcorrection that keeps rolling like a snowball on a hill. Shane takes a while to get there but eventually he says _it’s not all bad. You’ve got…_

And Ryan’s head answers _you_ before Shane can even get the next words out. He wants Shane to say it—tell Ryan he has Shane. Not just _I’ve got you_. Because if anything could make the apocalypse better, it’s that. But he doesn’t, of course. He goes back to the books.

Ryan can’t really get disappointed though because Shane’s engine keeps revving. It escalates, feels personal, until Shane’s asking him to read one. Ryan starts when Shane thumps one of the books— _Night of the Living Dummy_ , a real contender the most damaging to young Ryan Bergaras’s psyche—and a smile seizes his mouth. Because this is so ridiculous. Ryan’s trying not to laugh. Shane’s asking Ryan to read him a children’s book with this earnest, soulful voice. He says _give me goosebumps_ , and Ryan’s _gone_.

Maybe it’s because of the goosebumps in the bathroom, maybe it’s because he can’t imagine this ridiculously written book scaring Shane in any capacity—maybe it’s because Shane is trying so aggressively hard to help. But it’s funny enough that he’s having trouble catching his breath.  He’s having trouble saying, “It’s written for twelve-year-olds, I don’t think it’s gonna…” He takes a breath, laugh waning. “I think you need to curb your enthusiasm again.”

Does Shane really want him to read? He’s weirdly self-conscious about it. He’s done voice-overs before for projects, but this is—this is Shane. He picks up the book Shane hit and turns it in his hands. “You don’t actually want me to read to you, do you?”

~  
  
Shane looks up at him, and there’s something intrigued, curious in his brown eyes. He raises his eyebrows, almost out of sync with one another. “Yeah,” he says, “Can you even see without your nerdy little Harry Potter glasses I’m going to imagine you having _forever_? He smiles at him, then slides off his own and holds them out. “Here, try them on.”  
  
It’s intimate, somehow. Shane has never handed anyone his glasses and said _try them on_ in his life. But hey, it’s the apocalypse. Maybe he should try something new.  
  
~

Ryan knew Shane put his glasses on, but when Shane brings up his—he really notices. The way they make him look quieter, softer, like someone who needs to be protected from bullies in a high school. It crooks a smile onto Ryan’s face. 

“I don’t have Harry Potter glasses…” He’s going to reach for his bag, dig them out, but Shane’s taking his glasses off and extending them. Saying, try them on. Ryan laughs again, but it’s subdued. “Uh, okay… I can probably read if I squint. It’ll hurt my head but I’ll live. And I definitely won’t be able to read with these dumb things.” He takes Shane’s glasses, delicately, even though the clear plastic makes them look… durable. Delicate but durable, like Shane, maybe. They’re big on his face. The world fuzzes in of him. He brings his hand closer to him and it sharpens. “You’re blind, jesus.” He brings his hand in and out, watching the way it changes.

He has to blink a few extra times as he lowers them and grabs his bag. He doesn’t hand Shane’s glasses back, sets them side, as he digs—digs to the very bottom of his fucked up bag and finally feels the case. He presses his tongue into the side of his mouth as he unearths it, pops it open to the black-rimmed glasses. They are absolutely unusable. One lens is almost completely shattered, and the other has a jagged line down the center. He pulls them on, and they sit crookedly on his nose. But for a second, the world is brighter, easier to see through the cracks.

The first one was from his dad. Ryan had been staying with his parents. He’d left his apartment a few days before they actually… well, before everything. He had it in his head something was wrong. His mom sounded so weird over the phone, so he’d been staying. They barely put up with it, so when his dad came in that morning— half-awake, fumbling to get his glasses on, Ryan had thought he’d just slept too late. That his dad was just getting him up.

The rest was him. Ryan doesn’t remember when. It was early too, thinking about the car accident, and his parents, and how tired Jake looked. He’d snapped and thrown the case into a wall in a bathroom. It came open, and they all but shattered on the ground. They’d been usable before then.

It feels nostalgic, seeing clearly again. Like the past surging through him—the half-dead past. The past where hope still felt feasible. Not like this. He sighs and glances at Shane. 

“See? Not Harry Potter.”

~  
  
Something about the broken glasses destroys Shane and he doesn’t know why. It hollows him out, leaves him feeling sort of sick. _What happened?_ he wonders, but he doesn’t want to know. Doesn’t want to make Ryan relive it.  
  
Shane’s eyes flicker between Ryan’s, what he can see of them through the cracked glass. And he can get a glimpse of it — what he would look like without all those shatters and cracks in his lenses. Shane wants to protect him from every single thing that’s ever going to try and hurt him again, from everything that’s going to make cracks in him, and his smile, and the way he sees the world. Ryan deserves to see everything whole and steady, not through a kaleidoscope of fucking disaster and hurt.  
  
So Shane reaches out, his arms are long enough that he can without even moving forward, and gently slides them off of Ryan’s nose. He folds them up, gently, trying not to break them more, closes his fingers around them, and then his eyes flicker back to up Ryan’s. “You don’t need to see any of this clearly anyway,” Shane says. “I’ll let you know if there’s any big cracks in the pavement.” He’s still got Ryan’s glasses in one loose palm. “Come down here,” he says. “Bring your book.” He twists away, sets the glasses down on his other side so that if Ryan wants them, he has to reach over Shane, and grabs the flashlight, flicking it on and shines it on the cover of the book like a spotlight. “ _Night of the Living Dummy_. Chapter One. Let’s go, baby.”  
  
~  
   
Shane takes his glasses, and it’s so soft. It’s so _gentle_. Something swells in Ryan. He hates it. Hates this weakness in him that he’s been fighting and pushing away for months now. This thing that Shane makes worse and better at the same time. The same thing that made him grab his glasses and throw them. Because he isn’t _weak_. He isn’t incapable with dealing with the zombie apocalypse—isn’t incapable with dealing with not having a mother.  
   
People lose their mothers all the time.  
   
People _have_ lost their mothers. Most of the world doesn’t have one anymore. Shane doesn’t.  
   
“Why do you not want me to see this clearly? I’m gonna get eaten by a zombie and it’s gonna be your fault.” He narrows his eyes at Shane. “You’re just waiting for the right moment to push me into one of them, probably.” He grabs Shane’s glasses. “Here.” He slides them, sloppily, back onto his face. It’s comical because he misses one ear and they sit all wrong and Ryan makes no effort to help. Instead, he lies down. He hates how easily he listens to Shane, how his body just wants to do it. But it’s relaxing in a weird way.  
   
He lies all the way down and doesn’t bother grabbing for his glasses. Not yet. He knows where Shane put them in case he feels a sudden need to take them back. He cracks open the book and squints. Shane’s got the light on it, and Ryan laughs, because of course. Of course the first three words are:  
   
 _Mmmmm! Mmmmm! Mmmm!_  
  
~  
  
Shane works on detangling himself from his glasses, puts them on correctly, and squints at the book anyway. He can't quite see though, so he reaches out and takes the cover nearest him, and laughs out loud, nudges his shoulder into Ryan's. "Go on," he says. "Read it, Ryan."  
  
Their fingers brush and Shane adjusts the flashlight in his other hand and doesn’t pull away, curious whether or not Ryan will.  
  
~  
   
Ryan scrunches his face, presses his lips together hard. He does not want to read it. But he feels like Shane’s thrown down a challenge. And Ryan is not one to step away from a challenge. Especially when issued by Shane. That’s a new rule, he decides. One he thought into existence just now.  
   
Besides, it’ll distract him from the fact that their fingers brush, and that he feels it in this life and the next. And he’s thinking about it—way too much.  
   
“Mmmm. Mmmm.” He exaggerates the pause, rolling his eyes so far up into his head it hurts a little. He ends the next one like a punch. “Mmm.” He cuts his eyes to Shane, drenched in displeasure and then jumps back to the book.  
   
He doesn’t give Shane a chance to comment on his execution, “ 'Kris Powell struggled to get her twin sister’s attention.' ” He wishes Kris Powell would learn to use her fucking words instead of making him make strange sounds. “ 'Lindy Powell glanced up from the book she was reading to see what the problem was.' ” He works himself into the rules, finds out Kris has blown a bubble and that’s why she ruined his life. God, he remembers almost none of this. And reading is weirdly therapeutic.  
  
~  
  
Shane doesn't bother to hide the fact that he's snickering softly, but he settles down quickly enough, follows along with Ryan until he turns the page. Shane tugs the book a little, closer to him, making Ryan lose his spot, and then starts to read. He stops halfway through a sentence and asks, "oh, you want me to do voices?" He turns to look at him and in the process he's closer. Their arms brush, all the way from shoulder to elbow. He leaves it there.

He's so... he's weirdly content. Or maybe it's not weird at all.  
  
~  
   
“Hey!”  
   
The guys in the bathroom definitely never did this. Maybe that’s why he’s smiling even when Shane’s throwing him off and pulling him out of his groove. He worries his lip as he shoves his elbow into Shane’s arm playfully, deepens the touch. They’re close. They’re close, and he’s not freaking out. He wants this for the rest of his life.  
   
He thinks, _yeah, maybe this isn’t so bad._  
   
It takes him off guard so he takes a beat longer than he wanted before he raises his eyebrows. “More like you wanna do voices.” He’s giggling again. God, he didn’t think he would laugh as much, laugh more, than he did before. Before the damn zombies. But with Shane… “Do voices. I know it’s your thing.”  
   
~  
  
Shane does the voices. He fucks up a couple times and for some reason it makes him feel warm, cheeks heated. He's glad the light's not on his face.

He reads to the end of the page and hesitates briefly before he keeps going. Maybe Ryan will sleep, maybe they'll be safe for one more night. And then, maybe, when they make it home... maybe.  
  
~  
   
Ryan laughs at a few of Shane’s stupid voices. They’re infuriatingly good. Sleepiness falls over him like sheer. He doesn’t notice it, not really, just feels his edges soften. Feels himself so open, so palms-up to the world, to Shane. At some point, he lost his grip on the book so he’s just half-staring at it. He scoots closer to Shane, because he’s warm. Fuck it—because he wants to be closer, and he doesn’t care what happens next. Not in this half-faded state. He ducks his head around Shane’s arm so it falls against his chest.  
   
It’s too much. Somewhere, distantly, he knows it is. But he’s exhausted, and Shane seems to be the only thing that gets him to sleep anymore. And this is nice. He’s halfway there, to sleep, and his mind hasn’t picked that up yet—hasn’t started to spiral.  
   
“Do you have goosebumps yet?” It drifts, lazy, in the dark.  
  
~  
  
Shane stops in the middle of what is now solidly Kris's voice and breathes a soft laugh. He's been wondering for several lines now whether Ryan can feel his heartbeat, if he can hear it. It's only a little fast.

"I'm sure we'll get there," he murmurs, shifts, adjusts the light on the book.

He's so calm. Maybe he's tired. His eyes are kind of itching. For a moment he lays the book down on his chest and reaches up to run at his eye beneath his glasses, then picks it up again.  
  
~  
   
Ryan doesn’t answer. He sorta clings, hazily, to _awake_ for a second. He wants to say something to Shane. He wants to hold this moment. Doesn’t want to go to sleep—because of Jake, yeah, but because of what comes next. Because it means this moment is over. It means they have to start another moment. And he doesn’t know what’s in it. Isn’t sure it could be better than this one.  
   
Still, his body relaxes into Shane’s, to the sound of the steady thrum of his heart, and he sleeps.  
  
~  
  
Shane wakes up early, his eyes snapping open, but he stays very still. There's only silence. Safety. And he’s more comfortable than he’s been in a _long_ long time even though he’s still sleeping on floors.

He's on his back, the book still open on his chest. The flashlight is off, weighing the blanket down between them. He doesn't have to look over to see if Ryan's still sleeping because he can hear him breathing soft and even, and for a while, Shane just lays there and listens to him, eyes closed, until he’s thinking about birthdays and clean clothes and the mug at the bottom of his bag with the camping scene on it. He’s thinking about the bottle of antiseptic in the treehouse where they found it, and he’s trying not to worry.

He felt safer last night. Now he wants to get a move on, get home, in case...

Maybe they can leave early. It’s not far to home, now. He’s walked this distance before, when he didn’t have change for the bus. There weren’t zombies, then, and it was a nice autumn day but still… he’s walked it before, and it took less than six hours and maybe…

Shane sits up, and he’s careful, despite the energy rushing through him, flushing through his veins like a drug. 

God, maybe.

He looks down at Ryan and for a moment, everything goes still, in his mind, in his body. He relaxes, eyes on Ryan’s face, Ryan's fingers curled almost delicately, palm up. He looks so tired. He looks worn out and hungry and sort of sad. Shane wants to take all that way, just crumple it, crush it, keep it away from Ryan’s healing bones, from his dark-bright eyes.

As carefully as he can, he gets out from under the blanket. He slept in his glasses, and, yawning, he's surprised when he reaches up to rub his eyes and knocks them. 

After a moment, Shane reaches out and touches the pipe, chewing his lower lip, thinking.

 _Yeah_.

“Ryan." It stutters out too long, correcting that nickname again. He touches his shoulder through the blanket. “I’ll be back in a minute, okay?"  
  
~  
   
Ryan hears him—like muffled music outside a party. It’s not unpleasant, but not particularly necessary. But it is necessary. Because it’s Shane. He knows that. Shane telling him something he needs to know. He tries to say, “yeah, sure.”  
   
It comes out all smushed together with sleep, more “ _mmh_ ” than anything else, and like he’s annoyed with it—with the effort, the execution—he rolls over and tugs at the blanket.  
  
~  
  
"Okay,” Shane says, half smiling, but his eyes are distant, he's already only halfway here. He doesn’t think too hard about it before he pulls the blanket higher over Ryan’s shoulders, but hesitates a little before he places the hammer close enough to him that he can reach it if he needs it. (God, Shane hopes he doesn’t, but he doesn’t plan on being gone long.)  “I’m closing the grate behind me.” He grabs the pipe, rolls to his feet and, very quietly, slips out.

It’s super surreal walking through the mall like this. Shane always thought he was used to places when no one was there. Graveyard shifts at crappy part time jobs, empty buildings… but it’s completely different when there’s no promise of things going back to normal at opening time. Opening time doesn't even exist anymore.

It’s completely different when empty buildings stop being liminal spaces and start just leeching that liminality into the world moment by moment, spreading spreading spreading.

His footsteps barely echo. He does actually go to piss, which was his planned excuse in the first place, checking every stall again before he does, and then he washes his hands because he can, and avoids his own eyes in the mirror.

On his way back, he doesn’t need to look at the Directory sign as he bypasses the bookstore Ryan’s still sleeping in. He remembered it from yesterday. Thankfully, it’s the opposite direction of yesterday’s zombie supper. He doesn’t want to see that again, doesn’t want to know if it’s attracted any more flies. Or dead diners. He hopes they stay there.

The store, of course, is a bitch to get into. It’s even more of a bitch to get into because he’s trying to be quiet. In the end, he settles for using the pipe to bend one of the bars enough that he can fit his lanky body through with some maneuvering. It’s not as dark in here. There’s a battery powered neon light behind the cash that’s somehow still working. It’s for the Chicago Bulls and it casts a weird, bloody light over everything. Shane hates it.

He stands there for a moment, totally lost. He’s surrounded by jerseys and outrageously expensive shoes and a plethora of other things he’s never even bothered to fucking glance at, ever, in his entire thirty-one years.

And so here he is. In the middle of a zombie apocalypse. In a sports store.

This is his life now.

The red light makes it harder to discern colours but he knows what he’s looking for. Hangers click together as he digs through racks and it takes him way too long to realize that he’s looking at football teams and _not_ basketball teams and he curses softly, turning away. Shoes, water bottles, keychains, pens, shorts, sweaters… There’s nothing there, either. 

“What the fuck?” Shane whispers to himself, “Are you serious, come on…” he’s pleading with the universe to at least give him, Ryan, this one little thing.

He sees them across the store then. Basketball hats: Bulls, Cavaliers, Mavericks. Rockets _Seriously?_ Shane thinks. Pacers, Clippers. _Lakers_ , yes, brilliant, yes.

He moves fast, wends his way around running gear, bike helmets. He reaches up and takes the hat off the shelf. It feels like a video game, like Zelda, where you find something cool in a chest. Great. Beautiful. He’s delighted. He spins around to get the fuck out of there and back to Ryan and literally comes face to face with a guy. 

A very, very dead guy.

He’s tall, jesus. His glasses are hanging crookedly, cracked, and they’re spattered with blood or black, Shane can’t tell in this light. He’s also missing half his cheek.

And he just… stands there, and Shane’s suspended in this horribly still moment, and his eyes get wider and wider, practically swallow his face. The guy’s name tag says _Keith_. And Shane’s heart starts beating again just as the zombie lunges.

It’s almost comical. Shane kind of goes “Yaghh!” and steps back. He crashes back into a rack of t-shirts. The zombie claws at him, just barely brush Shane’s hair as he falls into the display. Shane’s lost the damn Lakers hat, and one hand swipes out across the floor to find it. At the same time, he kicks and catches the zombie in the shin. Obviously, it feels nothing, but its leg kind of snaps awkwardly and it stumbles. Shane finds the bill of the hat, clutches it, and detangles himself from shirts and rack as fast as he can and bolts past Keith the zombie. It make this awful rumbling sound that seems like it’s drudged up from some dark, bubbling swamp, straight from the hollow, dead center of its chest as it turns to follow him.

Shane makes for the exit, but he knows there’s no way he’s getting out of here if he has to wedge himself through that little opening he’s made in the grate. Shit. Stupid stupid stupid.

He wheels around but he’s too close to the zombie to pipe it so he dodges again, beneath an outstretched arm, panic screaming up into his throat. Shit, this was so reckless, so poorly planned, and if he dies now, before he gets back to give this fucking hat to Ryan, he’s going to kill himself. There’s nowhere to go but up and over the counter so that’s what he does, somehow makes it. The keyboard crashes down after him, dangles from its cord.

It seems like, by disappearing from view, he’s actually confused it, Shane tosses the hat beneath the counter, grips the pipe in both hands and stands. “Hey! Come try it you zombie fuck!” It screams and lunges and Shane brings the pipe down two-handed, and slams its face into the desk. Something cracks. He shuts his eyes and hits again and again and then he’s pretty sure it’s dead. Completely dead.

For a moment, Shane just stands there, panting. There’s blood spattered all over his sweater. He takes a deep breath, then wipes his blood-flecked hands off on his pants because they’re ruined anyway, and ducks down for the hat. It’s free from gore. Fucking good. He blows a couple of dust-bunnies off of it, and then circles the cash.

“I wouldn’t normally steal from stores,” Shane says to the zombie’s body as it slowly, slowly slides its way towards the floor, leaving a trail of sludgy brains behind. “But this time, since you were _so_ rude, I’m making an exception.” He grabs a handful of sports bandanas — the kind for your neck or your hair or ten million other things, according to the sign (15% off!), and Shane figures that includes guarding your mouth and nose against zombie debris. He’s watching it in his periphery as though it might move again, but Shane knows it won’t. 

“You weren’t using it, anyway,” he says, eyes falling on the zombie, voice strange and too low in the red-lit darkness. It’s freaking him out in here. He brightens his tone. “Sucks to die at work, man.”   
  
He turns and struggles back out into the mall proper as quickly as he can.

He checks the hat for blood again as he walks, but there’s none at all. It’s this obnoxiously bright purple colour, and suddenly his breath and his heartbeat are all tangled up, because God, he hopes Ryan likes it, and what if he doesn’t? What if he’s not a hat guy? What if that was only Jake?

Back at the bookstore, it’s pretty quiet. Shane says “Just me,” calm — like he’s just popped out for milk or something — before he rattles the grate to slip inside, holding his ill-gotten gains half behind him in case Ryan’s up.  
  
~  
   
Ryan is up. Somehow, the silence—the absence of Shane, dragged him up pretty quick. He panicked at first, this bone-grinding horror plunged into him, and then he remembered, vaguely, Shane saying something. Leaving.  
   
And then he had another round of panic, potentially worse, until he saw all the stuff was still there. Shane wouldn’t have left his stuff. Ryan just wishes he hadn’t gone off by himself. Hadn’t seen Ryan as more trouble than he was worth. He shakes that off with the sleep. Tries not to get down when he just woke up, but he kinda is, because he just wants to be valuable to Shane. He doesn’t know how to make himself _valuable_. Useful.  
   
He glances at the hammer Shane left, and when Shane takes too long to come back, he rubs his eyes and stretches. God, this was easily the best sleep he’s had in weeks. His eyes crackle with newness. Like they haven’t been fully alive in ages. He stands up, shakes out his leg. Then he picks the hammer up and holds it in front of him, practice swings a bit. It devolves quickly. He starts swinging it like a baseball bat. He’s midway through one when he hears something. The grate rattling. And then Shane’s voice.  
   
He lowers the hammer frantically. Wants to put it down but doesn’t have time so he wriggles around with it. In front of him. At his side. Behind him. Finally stuck in his hand as he crosses his arms like it’s totally normal to be holding a hammer.  
   
“Where’d you go?” His eyes widen. He’s scanning Shane, like he always scans Shane, and there’s absolutely blood on his sweater. “Jesus—is that blood?” He unfolds his arms, still holding the stupid hammer. “Are you okay?” He looks okay, and Ryan’s saving the complaints about Shane leaving without him like he’s fucking dead weight for later. After he makes sure Shane didn’t almost die.  
  
~  
  
Shane takes him in and kind of cocks his head and laughs. "What're you doing?" 

He doesn't answer his question, yet, just ventures further into the store, keeping a shelf between them. Yeah. The blood. He should’ve thought of that. He glances down at his sweater, thinks _Damn it_. 

"Yeah, I uh— had a run in with some bro at a store." Shane shrugs one shoulder and says "Kids these days, you know. Someone oughta put them in their place. Think they can just eat your face whenever they get a little bit hungry."  
  
~  
   
A laugh bubbles into Ryan’s throat, but he clamps down on it. “No, that’s—don’t make me laugh about that!” But he already has. He hates that Shane does this, goes off and does something awful, something dark, and comes back and tries to hide it. Tries to shield Ryan from it.  
   
 _You don’t need to see any of this clearly anyway._  
   
Ryan sighs. He doesn’t know how to turn this switch off in Shane. This need to protect. He wonders if he’s like this all the time. If it’s always been like this. Hopefully it isn’t personal. Isn’t about Ryan being fucking useless. After all, Ryan’s got it too, had it with Jake. How many dark things did he hide from Jake? And he has it with Shane too. He’s hidden the pain in his leg—when he can. But Shane’s so _good_ at it. So good at seeing through it.  
   
Ryan glances at the hammer, clears his throat. “I wasn’t—it was… you know, just…” He waves his hand, trying to physically dispel any weirdness. But, well, he’s waving the damn hammer so it does the opposite. He drops it to his side again. “Doesn’t matter. I don’t have zombie splatter on me.” Shane’s keeping his distance. Jesus, Ryan hopes he isn’t hurt. He’d tell Ryan—wouldn’t he?  
   
He tries to stay light. “So did you get a—a hankering for some food court pizza or somethi—” He snaps a finger up to point. “I swear if you went and got new pants without me, we’re done.”   
  
~  
  
He's startled into a laugh, and he comes around the shelves, eyes on Ryan's, holding them. "I didn't get new pants." 

He reaches up, this quick flash of colour, and sort of gently slaps the hat onto Ryan's head, tugging the bill of it down over his forehead so it sits right. It's a little big but it can be adjusted and something uncertain flickers in Shane's eyes, even as he breathes a laugh, because he thinks it looks kind of goofy. All sports stuff is goofy.  
  
~  
   
Ryan almost uses the hammer as a sort of shield, a reflex, when Shane moves forward. And then Shane’s putting something on his head and Ryan’s face is messed into total confusion. “Wh—?” A hat. It’s a hat. Ryan hasn’t had a hat on his head in ages, but he remembers what they feel like. He wore them all the time… before.  
   
He shoots Shane a look of bewilderment as he reaches up and tugs it off his head. It smells like a new hat. It smells like a _sports store_. Ryan turns it in his hands, and the gold and purple on black flashes through him like a bolt of lightning. The gold ball and the capitalized font. So familiar. On a thousand jerseys left in his closet.  
   
He looks up at Shane, meets his eyes, and Ryan’s are huge, massive—just screaming in a thousand colors. Just like he is. “What?”  
   
He doesn’t know the expression on his face—maybe awe. And, for a second, he’s breathless. He just ceases to breathe—ceases to have lungs. Because this is incredible.    
   
He looks back at the hat. He’s thinking about Kobe Bryant and eighty-one points and 2009 and 2010 and beating the Celtics and the Magic. He’s thinking about jumping off his couch and screaming when Lamar Odom hit two fucking three-pointers to seal the championship series. He’s remembering all this bright light and screaming fans and the buzzer. Remembering Jake’s trash-talking texts when they went to Game 7 with the Rockets.  
   
And then it’s all rounded back, back to Shane. Like he’s what they were screaming for. Jesus, when was the last time Ryan even mentioned the Lakers to Shane? He did, he thinks, in the beginning. Did he see a Lakers’ hat or something—what was he even doing in a sports store? Ryan doesn’t remember seeing one.  
   
It’s so funny. Because hats were everything to him. He once spent an entire day with his dad looking for a specific Lakers hat. And now Shane’s brought him one out of the fucking blue. He doesn’t know that. Doesn’t know any of it. He just brought this here and he’s got zombie shit on his sweater because he fought one and made a joke about it—for this. Or, at least, this was part of it. And Shane’s not holding anything else.  
   
He lets out a breath. He’s not crying. That would be stupid, but he feels like he could. There’s all this heat in his throat. He smiles in this hesitant, strange way, because he can’t believe it. He can’t believe this is happening. He can’t believe he’s about to lose it over a hat, but of course he’s about to lose it over a hat.  
   
But he wants to be normal. To calm down. A laugh shakes free—it’s bright and sparkled in these tears he’s not going to shed. Loud in the muted bookstore. He meets Shane’s eyes again, and he smiles again, broader this time. He half-shakes his head. There’s so much rushing through him, so much he wants to say to Shane. Excuses for why he’s acting like this. Comments on how stupid it was. Gratitude. So much fucking gratitude. Because he never thought he’d feel this again. Like a kid on fucking Christmas. Surprised. Pleasantly.  
   
He didn’t think that happened anymore.  
  
The hammer falls out of his hand in a clatter muted by the blanket.  
   
He doesn’t know what else to do. He just slams forward and rings his arms around Shane’s neck. He hugs him. It’s the weirdest response, well, besides the wild-eyed smile he gave him a second ago. This is the second weirdest. But he doesn’t care because he doesn’t think he can say thank you without crying or making it even crazier, so he hugs him with the hat still clutched in one hand. He squeezes Shane with everything in him, up on his toes, until he’s pressed into his chest.   
  
He hugs him with a heartbeat screaming:  
   
 _Thank you. Thank you. Thank you._  
  
~  
  
It's amazing, it really is incredible, watching Ryan's face, his eyes, work through everything, and after a few seconds Shane stops feeling uncertain and starts feeling fucking jubilant. He's starting to smile when Ryan hugs him, and it's so sudden, so startling that Shane has to catch his breath and fix this sudden imbalance of weight. He breathes "Whoa, okay," and then, "You're gonna get zombie shit _all_ over you—" but he's already got his arms around Ryan, and he's holding him there, close, tight, against his chest, and he can't tell whose heart is racing so fast. Maybe it's both of theirs.

And Shane is so fucking deliriously happy. He pushes his fingers into Ryan's hair and exhales against him. All the fear and anxiety shudders out. He's left with this, he's done this. It's ten thousand times better than anything he could have imagined.  
  
“It’s—” even like this he feels like he has to say something. “Sort of a birthday…”   
  
~  
   
Ryan is holding on, and he knows he should let go. He thinks very seriously, _Ryan, let go before it’s awkward._ But he holds on after that. Pulls into it as much as his body will let him. Fingers digging so far in that they crash into Shane’s shoulder blades. He doesn’t hear anything about zombies. Doesn’t hear anything but the roar of his own head and his heart and a word—a word he can’t let himself think or feel but a word nonetheless.  
   
It takes him too long to hear it, finally, _birthday_. His eyes go big. He hasn’t even thought about his birthday, probably wouldn’t have until months later when he was bored and his mind was wandering. He forces himself to let go, peels himself away, because he knows Shane and he knows he’ll probably want him to. Might be disturbed.  
   
His face doesn’t look it, though. He looks happy. Ryan’s still smiling, even trying to work it off, but he can’t get it off his face. “Oh, that’s—jesus.” He doesn’t know what day it is. Has absolutely no concept. Probably, maybe, his birthday has passed. “You didn’t need to…” His mom’s in his head telling him to _have some manners_. He should say thanks, but he’s so wound around this moment.  
   
“I didn’t even think about it. I forgot, I…” But Shane didn’t. Shane didn’t forget. And, fuck, Ryan’s overwhelmed again. He clenches his jaw because he is an adult person and is not going to cry. “I forgot.”  
   
He looks at the hat, pulls it back on to give him a chance to collect himself. He adjusts it on his head so it fits. Perfectly.  
   
“I love,” he says, his voice breaks. “I love hats. I like—like hats.” He needs to fill this space and needs to get all this feeling out of his chest before it breaks him. “I had a lot of hats. They were… I was…” He bites his lip, clenches his hands. “I like hats.”  
  
~  
  
"Okay," Shane says, "Good, I wasn't sure—" he can't let Ryan cry about this, but he can see it, and Shane knows Ryan would hate it if he did. He reaches out and touches his cheek, slides his fingers over the edge of Ryan's jaw, this impossibly intimate touch, before he pulls away. "I realized, uh— that I can't tell basketball teams from sports teams," he offers. "It was confusing. I would have embarrassed myself if there was anyone else in there, so—"

He'll just embarrass himself in front of Ryan, he guesses.   
  
~  
  
Ryan laughs. It breaks up the tension. Even the way he flutters against Shane's touch like a flag in a breeze.   
  
“From _sports_ teams?” Ryan asks softly. “Basketball is a sport, Shane. Maybe it's a good thing. You probably warded most the zombies off because they were like look at this poor idiot. Sad. Not even worth it.” He softens, smile fading to something like sunset. “Anything would've been fine, though.”  
  
He waffles. “Except the Clippers. Fuck them.”  
  
~  
  
"Yeah," Shane says, in this voice that says he's absolutely unclear on what he's talking about, and thinks it's all ridiculous. "Definitely. Fuck the Clippers."

He smiles at Ryan then, for a moment, then sort of shakes himself out of it and drops into a crouch, he holds up a bandana. "Here, use this. Less fun present. This is the— the apocalypse equivalent of like... razor blades or batteries."

He doesn't even know where his banana has gone. He thinks he remembers tossing it when it got too stained with brains and blood. But there's a few here. What they don't need can be made into something else.  
  
~  
  
Ryan exaggerates excitement. “Wh—really?! Now I get to be a cowboy too?!” He bounces on his feet. Some enthusiasm lingering from before. “You're the best, Mr. Madej!” He's doing a voice that's not his.  
  
He falls to a smirk and grabs the banana. Works for a while to tie it, has to bring it around front and do it there. Then he pulls it over his mouth and draws his fingers into pistols. Fires twice. Pretends to put them away.  
  
“You're dead now.”  
  
~  
  
Shane gives him a look for a second, then drops back to fall against the floor, all legs and arms, playing dead. He's still got his glasses on, he realizes, and breaks the act to take them off. He's lucky he didn't break them fighting zombies.

Glasses in hand he lets his arm fall over his head. "Damn. I was really looking forward to that last tin of Vienna sausages. I guess you'll have to eat them in my memory." He makes a pretty good death-rattle sound. Or maybe it's strangulation, then goes quiet.

It's funny, but he can just lie here, eyes closed, and feel pretty safe. Just knowing Ryan's nearby. It's nice. He wants to hold onto it. He also wants to get home, to see… to see if maybe— anyone’s waiting for him there.  
  
~  
  
Ryan watches Shane for a bit. He's still coming off this adrenaline rush. Trying to settle back into his body. The world's too bright, everything's so loud in the best way. Like they aren't standing in a dead mall.  
  
He laughs, hears himself quietly. He wishes he'd thought of it, wandering off and finding something for Shane. It's not his birthday but it's not like he doesn't deserve something. And he spent his birthday alone in this hell.   
  
But what would someone like Shane want?  
  
Ryan slides to the floor next to Shane. He seems so happy, so much better than he's been until now. And Ryan doesn't want to leave. He doesn't want to go back to Shane's house, curious as he is.  
  
He's afraid of what's there. Of the nightmare it'll dredge up in Shane. He's so afraid of losing this softness to all that pain again. He would do anything to stop it. To save Shane from it.  
  
Because if he went back to his parents’ place it would be nothing but nightmares. Corpses and cracked cupboards.  
  
He tugs the bandana down so its bunched around his neck. “Nah, I'll bury you with them.”   
  
~  
  
Shane recoils, laughs so that it’s just this soft, wheezing breath. “Fucking _don’t_. I’ll come back to haunt you forever. I’ll breathe Vienna sausage breath on you until the day that you die,” he says, punching the last four words as though they’re all capitalized, as though they’re separated by periods. It’s so Ryan knows he’s serious, but when Shane looks over at him he’s smiling and his eyes are less clouded, less troubled than they have been in a while.  
  
He rolls up to sitting so they’re more or less beside one another, facing opposite directions. “Should we get moving?” he asks.  
  
~  
  
Jesus. It’s like Shane heard him. It’s like Shane heard the anxiety and decided, yes, _we have to go right now._ And Ryan knows this is dangerous because this is Shane’s home. He wants to get there, for some reason, Ryan has no idea why. But he does. And Ryan doesn’t have the right to take that from him, to postpone him going home. Hell, Ryan’s taken enough from him as it is.  
   
He pulls the hat off his head and looks at it. He uses it to keep his eyes off Shane. “Are you sure? It’s actually warm here… we could stay.” He knows how this might end. How it will probably end. But something’s got his stomach in knots. He’s got to try. And it is pretty crazy that Shane wants to leave already. This has easily been the safest they’ve been in weeks—really, where are they even going if not here? “At least for another night or whatever.” He runs his fingers over the Lakers emblem. “We still need pants.”  
  
~  
  
“Yeah, we do,” Shane says, agrees. “And a coat. You need a coat, something…”  
  
He’s torn suddenly. He wants to give this to Ryan, this safety, warmth. He wants to give Ryan’s leg some time to heal. But time is precious, and he can’t help but feel like he’s wasting it here.  
  
“We could come back,” he says. “It’s close. You know, like half a day. We’ll just go and come back. Figure out— what we’re gonna do after this.” He looks at him, and he’s trying to keep the urgency out of his eyes because he knows that it might be nothing. He knows that, but it’s been so long since he hoped for anything and he just— he can’t shake this one. He can’t.  
  
~  
   
 _Come back._ Shane says come back. Which confuses Ryan even more. Like he’s on a time crunch to get somewhere—get where they’re going. Get home. But his parents are dead. Ryan is confident he was not making that up for shits and giggles. That story was real. His parents are dead. Ryan can’t fathom what it is Shane thinks he’s going to find. He wants to argue, push back, but it feels like this personal space. Like if he pushes too hard… he’ll hit a nerve.  
   
“That’s…” He hedges. “Sure, okay, sounds good.”  
  
~  
  
Shane hesitates a moment, second guessing himself again, but then he nods. "Great. Okay. You want to find some clothes now, then? Let's try to avoid any more retail zombies." He reaches forward and grabs one of the bandanas, tying it up around his  mouth before he pulls it down. 

He tries not to think about when this started to feel normal. 

They venture out together, taking all their things, closing the grate up behind them, even though it doesn't lock. Shane feels better leaving with Ryan with him, he hadn't liked leaving him, but he thinks Ryan would probably hate it if he knew that. _Maybe_ , Shane thinks, _I should let him do his own thing_ , but the thought scares the shit out of him. Not having Ryan within shouting distance scares the shit out of him.

He doesn't like not knowing. Not knowing whether or not Ryan is safe.

They kind of wander. Turns out finding clothes is just as hard in the zombie apocalypse, but for a million different reasons. Clothes for normal everyday people were only good months ago. Now they're too thin, too tight, too easy to grab. Nothing looks warm enough, nothing is practical.

"All right," Shane says after they've gone back downstairs to the department store part of this ghost mall. Shane's starting to get spooked by the silence surrounding them. It feels like it's waiting... or like they should be. "I think this is the best we can do, Ryan."

He says it in part because it's already been broken into. Someone else had the same idea. But there are sweaters and jeans and coats. It's a fucking department store with skeletons of displays, things ransacked and cast about, and it's filled with spring clothes, but it'll have to do.  
  
~  
   
Ryan’s fine with this. They wander, and he isn’t sure what Shane’s looking for. He’s displeased with almost everything. It’s not for looks, obviously, so maybe because it isn’t warm enough. Ryan’s just looking for some kind of clothes. He wasn’t exactly thinking about the durability. He wasn’t going to get a silk button-down, but he didn’t have a ton of standards. Shane does. Like he always does.  
   
They end up at the department store, and Shane’s resigned to this. Ryan casts him a glance. “Sorry we couldn’t find Apocalypse’R’Us for you.” Ryan wonders how long he can drag this out, how long he can walk around. Take ages. But then, if he does—is he going to keep Shane from finding this thing he’s waiting for?  
   
He walks through the aisles, finds one with jeans on them. They seem the most practical—they’re more durable than sweatpants. Well, maybe cargo pants would work better. Ugh, he doesn’t know. He apparently missed all the Apocalypse Training classes that Shane seems to have taken.  
   
Okay, yeah, cargo pants are better—right? He has no idea, settles on the one thing that he does know he needs and grabs some boxers. There’s also jackets. Some of them have been looted, but there’s a denim one left, and a leather jacket. God damn it. He doesn’t know which one of those is better either. He eases over to see what Shane’s doing. Maybe he can take a cue from him.  
  
~  
  
Shane just walks along the racks, running his hand over all the fabrics, sliding the material between his fingers trying to assess if it's actually going to be warm and good or if it's just going to try and look that way. 

He's already shoved whatever else into his bag — underwear, socks — in case they have to make a fast getaway. He's not making the same mistake now as he did with food in the cabin.

He looks up like he senses his gaze and catches Ryan's eyes. "I still hate shopping," he says, drags a flannel shirt off a hanger as he starts shedding his own sweater and shirt to pull the new one on. It fits, mostly. The sleeves are a little too short but then sleeves are always too short, leaving too much wrist exposed. He sighs softly. _Whatever_.

What've you got there?" He tosses the bloodied clothes away, starts buttoning the shirt.   
  
~  
   
Ryan scratches the bridge of his nose because he doesn’t know what to even say. He doesn’t have anything, really. Just underwear, and announcing that feels ridiculous. So he doesn’t answer, instead decides to just admit his failings. Well, one of them.  
   
“I have no—what’s better for the apocalypse? There’s a jean jacket… are jeans good for the apocalypse or are they just for looks?” He runs his eyes over the flannel Shane’s just gotten on—maybe lingers on the slouch of his shoulders a bit long. “That seems warmer.” He pulls his attention back to the clothing racks and finds a brown jacket with fleece lining. He runs his hands over it and glances back to Shane. “Are we bringing the old stuff with us?” He starts tugging the jacket off the rack. It looks warm. It seems like a good idea. “Should we just grab a bunch of shit to use for blankets? Oh…” He’s rambling. He knows it. “We could just take the blanket from the bookstore. But that’s… we’ll probably still need extra. Too bad this isn’t one of those malls with a mattress store.”  
  
~  
  
"If I laid down on a mattress right now, I would _never_ get up again," Shane says, coming around with a new sweater in his hands. He meets Ryan and sort of looks him over, considers the other things. "I don't want to carry too much," he says, but... "Maybe the blanket..." he's already got _Harry Potter_ tucked away in his bag, and he'd insisted Ryan take the _Goosebumps_ book. "Let's toss anything we won't use or can replace. Here," he says, taking the coat away from Ryan and just holding it for him. Like he fucking works here. He hands him the new sweater instead. "See if it fits."

It's the best one he could find, warmest. He's sick and tired of shivering until his bones ache, and he's sure Ryan is, too.  
  
~  
   
Ryan rocks back. His brow kinda quirks, and his mouth does too, so it makes it look like he’s raising on eyebrow higher than the other. Shane’s just holding the jacket like he’s Ryan’s freaking butler, or a parent. He meets Shane’s eyes to let him know how weird he is. But Ryan’s smiling so it doesn’t have the impact he wants it to.  
   
He unzips his jacket and tosses it aside. Shane’s complaining about space after his tirade about the books. It’s incredible, and so endearing, and Ryan almost wishes he had another excuse to hug him. He slides one arm into the jacket.  
   
“So you’re saying I can’t bring the Pokemon themed monopoly game?” He sighs and slides in his other arm, pulls it around his shoulders. God, it’s warm. It’s so warm. “What a jackass.”  
  
~  
  
"Convince me you need it and we can take it," Shane says. "But only the first 150 Pokémon are allowed. After that it's just ridiculous." He tosses the jacket he's holding over the top of a rack and then sort of reaches out and fixes the collar of Ryan's.

He does it completely without thinking, and then it's like he catches himself. He blinks, meets his eyes looking a little startled, then turns away. "I can't find anything in my color," he jokes, starts just pulling jackets off the shelves at random for something to do with his hands. " _Oohh_ , Ryan." He turns with this obscenely flowery raincoat held in front of him, meant for someone about five sizes smaller than he is. "I want this."  
  
~  
   
Ryan lets Shane adjust his collar. For some stupid reason. He lets it happen, and he’s starting to think he’s letting it happen because Shane does it so much. Maybe it makes Shane feel better, and maybe Ryan doesn’t mind it. The raincoat startles him into laughter. It doesn’t fit here, with all the death, it belongs on a 6-year-old girl who is going to hate it in four years.  
   
Ryan thumps it with two fingers. “You know, when I first met you, after all the catastrophe and pipe-swinging, the very first thing I thought was why does this guy not have a flamboyantly colored size zero raincoat? Absolutely made for you.” He glances around and sees a pair of equally ridiculous pair of boots a few feet away. “Look, it has _matching boots_.” He grabs them. They are definitely children’s boots. “Here, you can…” He’s laughing at the idea of Shane in these boots, of the fact that his fucking pinky toe wouldn’t fit in them. “Put them on your fingers.”  
  
~  
  
Shane laughs. " _You_ could probably fit into those, why don't you try?"

He glances over his shoulder, into space and darkness. He hates this exposed feeling. It's like standing in the middle of a field during a storm. He knows they're being too loud.

He sees a sweater, blue maybe or black, he can't tell in this light, and somehow manages to fit miles of arm into it, pulling it down over his head. The hood stays up. It doesn't zip up, but it's warm, it covers his wrists. "I'm going to look like a bank robber." He drags the bandana up, too, so it's just his eyes and affects this boogie-man pose. He looks like the illustrations at the beginning of The Babadook. Then he makes a sound between a hiss and a snarl and lunges at Ryan.  
  
~  
   
Ryan clamps down on the shriek that rises in his throat. Only because he knows there were zombies here yesterday, today, because Shane had to get rid of one. He stumbles back and half-yelps anyway. “Jesus Christ! And you were complaining about the zombies this morning!” Shane _should_ look like a horror movie villain, but he’s got these soft eyes so he just looks like a very cold, very tall child. Ryan peers up at him. He throws the boots away and snatches a red scarf off the rack next to him. Drapes it around Shane’s neck.  
   
“Now you’re a sophisticated bank robber. Gotta complete the outfit.” Ryan wraps a black one all around his neck so his voice is muffled in it. “You know, I think I’m smarter than you—these work better than bandanas. They’re _warm_.” He draws out _warm_ like he’s won a contest and he’s rubbing it in Shane’s face. “Also, Hamburglar, you didn’t answer my question.” He tugs on the still-hanging scarf around Shane’s neck, brings him forward a bit, holds his eyes like this is hugely serious—because it is. “Are jeans apocalypse friendly?”  
  
~  
  
Shane's breath catches somewhere in his chest, and he doesn't resist as Ryan tugs on him, but he does tense a little, even as he steps closer. 

"Maybe," Shane says. "Maybe if you get jeans that aren't skinny jeans or artfully _shredded_. I bet you'd be into those. You seem like that kind of guy." He steps closer still, so he looms over Ryan, and reaches up to twist both darks ends of Ryan's scarf in one hand, winding it around his fingers, his wrist, so it tightens around Ryan's neck, keeps him there, close to Shane. "Scarves are dangerous," he tells him, and he's not joking anymore, because he can imagine dead hands grabbing at Ryan's throat. "They're easy to grab." He tugs him a little, bodily, and lets go.  
  
~  
  
Ryan’s breath hitches and his body draws to attention, then Shane lets go. He takes long breath to calm the way his heart trips and staggers into the front of his chest cavity. He tries to keep himself together but feels like he's got his hands around a grumbling bunch of popsicle sticks.  
  
He laughs to pull himself out of it. “I dunno about you, but I've never seen a particularly dexterous zombie. I might give you it could get caught in a bite, but you…” He flicks Shane's forehead. “Should chill.” He only slightly directs it inwards.  
  
“And you would say _artfully_ ripped, why do you think I'm into artfully ripped jeans?” He scoffs. “You're the hipster here.”  
  
But he did have some ripped jeans. Some that he will _never_ admit to now.  
  
~  
  
He makes a face and swats Ryan's hand away like it's a troublesome bee.

 _Chill_ Ryan says to him, like Shane's worried about dressing for a job interview or something, and not about how like sixty percent of the population is actively trying to kill them. But Ryan's brighter today, smiles easier. Shane lets it go.

"How am _I_ the hipster?" He asks, and tugs the red scarf from his own neck. Still, he holds it in his hands for a moment like he doesn't want to give it up. "And anyway, I said artfully shredded, because it's ridiculous to buy anything that looks like it had a fight with a cheese grater.

Speaking of jeans, though, he finally sets the scarf down, and starts to drift in that direction. "I don't actually... I don't know, I just want something that will fit me."

He stops at a table that's been completely fucked up, and starts digging through things, dropping most of them to the floor as he goes. There's corduroy or something. Soft. He wants fucking armour, but they won't find it here.  
  
~  
   
It hurts. The pang of frustration that runs through Shane as he says _something that will fit_. He is tall. It’s probably a nightmare to find anything, and damn it, Ryan wishes he knew how to sew. He’d make him a pair of damn pants that fit. He grabs some jeans and cargo pants in his size and walks over to Shane. “I’m sure there’s something.” He looks through some of them. They all look so short. He’s never noticed. It’s not like he hasn’t had taller people in his life, but he’s never noticed how the whole store seems wrong for them. Tall people.  
   
“Maybe we can just tie two pairs together.” He’s trying to make light of it, because it’s frustrating. Just one more fucking thing he can’t do. Shane can’t have. When Shane’s breaking his back to do things for Ryan. “Tall people kinda get ignored, don’t they? They have plus size stores and stuff, but they don’t… really…” He grabs a pair jeans and holds them up against Shane, closes one eye like he’s aiming a gun. “…do much for tall people. Man, you have a lot of leg.”  
  
~  
  
"Tie two pairs together?" Shane laughs. "Maybe I just need pants and uh, some knee high socks."

He looks back at Ryan as Ryan's trying figure out size against Shane's height and he breathes a laugh. They're at least five inches too short. "Don't be cute," he says. He thinks he means it, but he tries to spin it back into older language, even though it doesn't really even work that way, in that context. "I'm basically all leg," Shane says, taking them from Ryan and tossing them onto the floor. He spots something, leans over the table and grabs the corduroy pants again and holds them up. They're his size and not quite his length, but they'll have to do. Really, it's not like he's going to find a tailor. "Okay," he says. "Let's change. And let's find you a coat."  
  
~  
   
“Let’s find _you_ a coat.” He shoves Shane lightly and says it like he’s casting back an insult. Scarce with the touch because he’s still thinking about the way the scarf tightened against his neck. Fuck him for ever showing that weakness to Shane. He’s pretty sure he is intentionally exploiting it at every given opportunity. He’s pretty sure he likes it. “I don’t need a coat. I have _density_ , unlike you… I bet if I banged on your arm it would echo.”  He does think he has more body heat than Shane, and damn if Shane isn’t unaware of his own needs.  
   
He looks around for the changing rooms, since even he isn’t keen to change in the middle of the store. Shane would shit himself at that much vulnerability. He sees them near the back and edges towards them. “I thought Slytherins were supposed to have a strong sense of _self_ preservation.”  
  
~  
  
Shane automatically moves to follow him, like Ryan's got some kind of gravitational pull. "You can't expect me to know everything there is about these houses, I only watched the movies!" Shane reminds him. "As far as I can see, everyone in Slytherin is just an asshole."

"You go first," Shane says, when they get to the rooms. "I think one of us should keep watch."  
  
~  
   
 _You would._  
   
Ryan’s laugh is soft, almost a scoff, but not quite. He can’t seem to bring himself to do anything but smile at Shane. Even when he’s being impossible. Even when he’s too good at looking out for them, for Ryan. And he definitely dodged Ryan’s entire argument by making it about Harry Potter.  
   
“By that logic, you acknowledge you’re an asshole.”  
   
He doesn’t wait for the response. Just slips into the changing room, leaves his bag outside of it. He has to sit on the floor to take his shoes off. He hisses as the pressure changes on his toe, squeezes his eyes shut and takes a few calming breaths. He leaves his socks on because he still doesn’t want to know what it looks like. He fumbles and has to scratch at the wall to get himself upright. His pants slide off a little too easily, and he glances at the mirror. Jesus, his legs look scrawny, or at least, scrawny compared to what they used to look like. And the left one is all yellow and brown with bruises. It’s not crooked or swollen, though. Definitely progress.  
   
He slides his hand along it. It’s sore in a weird way, almost as if from disuse. He rolls his eyes and fights with the package of boxers he got. He pulls too hard so it kind of explodes and three pairs go flying. He winces and grabs one. Slides off his old, ruined pair and into the new one. He debates between the jeans and cargo pants and eventually decides on the cargo pants. Just for a change of pace. He pulls them on. They’re so nice compared to the stiff cut of his old jeans. No dirt. No grime.  
   
 _That won’t last._  
   
They have a shit ton of pockets that he’s sure he can find a use for. But they’re too big—way too big. Jesus, he’s lost weight. They try to slide over his hips. He grabs them and slides his belt out of his old jeans and wraps it around his waist. He struggles to pull it far enough to get it through the hole that has a chance of keeping these pants around his waist. It’s the furthest one.  
   
“You know, I don’t think those Vienna sausages are all they’re cracked up to be.  I’m definitely losing weight.”  
  
~  
  
"You all right in there?" Shane laughs to himself at the noise of things flying around, but he doesn't think Ryan hears him.

He winces when Ryan says he's lost weight. Fuck, if the zombies don't get them, starvation or cold will and there is just so _much_ to worry about. Shane squeezes his eyes shut, then opens them again.

"Yeah. We should find some McDonalds. I hear they're 24 hours now. Even on Christmas." He cocks his head a little as if he heard something, but maybe it's just his ears. "You done? Let's get a move on, Ryan."  
  
~  
   
Ryan snorts. “Oh, I’m sorry, am I taking too long trying not to _rebreak_ my leg?” But he’s hurrying. He gets the belt done and slips back into his boots so fast it hurts worse than taking them off. He picks up the rest of his mess and walks out.  With the belt, the pants fit pretty nicely. He didn’t have a chance to look because Shane’s being a jackass, but they feel like they fit and they aren’t dragging the ground around his heels.  
   
He exaggerates a little bow and gestures towards the door like an usher on the Titanic. He jams the underwear and extra pair of jeans into his bag. Then grabs the hammer he’s zipped into a separate compartment so only it’s head sticks out. It slides out. He tosses it so it spins, and catches it by the handle. “I’ll try not to let any zombies…” He tugs on the scarf he’s still got wrapped around his neck.    
  
~  
  
"Better not," Shane says, trying to be serious, but he's fighting a smile. He hides it, grabbing his bag and passing him. 

Like Ryan, he gets all of the annoying packaging off with some difficulty. New socks, underwear, pants. Yeah, they are definitely too big. They hang off of his hips and he doesn't have a belt. "I need a... _definitely_ need a belt," he says. He adjusts everything, runs his hands through his slightly wild hair, feeling... clean. It's strange to feel almost normal. He wants to hang onto it.  
  
~  
   
Ryan’s back to practice swinging. Shane is like eighty feet long he’s going to need some time in there so he decides now is a great time to swing the hammer around again. Since it went so well last time. He even pretends to take out a couple phantom zombies. Bounces around a bit. He’s about to mockingly tell Shane to hurry up when he hears it. A far-off thud. His head snaps first towards the dressing room door. Shane doesn’t react, but Ryan can hear it then, the muffled sound of what might be voices. He swallows, suddenly afraid of making enough noise to alert Shane. Suddenly afraid of making any noise at all.  
   
He keeps a grip on the hammer and semi-jogs to the front of the store. It doesn’t take him long to see them—two people, no, three. One’s on the ground, being helped up by one of the others. Ryan crouches, trying to keep himself out of sight as he assesses. One of them is a girl, small, with short hair. And she’s laughing.  
   
“Jesus, Jen…” He thinks he hears one of them say.  
   
He’s tall, sorta self-possessed, with weirdly immaculate hair given they are in a zombie apocalypse. The other’s a smaller guy, maybe blonde. With glasses. Ryan can’t tell much from here. They seem normal, but then the first one turns. And he’s got a gun. This huge gun, and Ryan’s back to the gun pressed to his jaw. Panic licks across his shoulders. He tries to step back and trips, thuds against the grate.  
   
 _Fuck_.  
   
He ducks back into the store quick enough, but not so quick he doesn’t see that gun turn towards him. But they’re people. Maybe he should…  
   
“You guys hear that?” the first guy asks.  
   
“You gonna blow the head off another living, breathing person, Eugene?” asks the other guy.  
   
Bile rises in Ryan’s throat until he almost gags on it.  
   
“Shut up, Zach,” the first one, Eugene says, but Ryan doesn’t hear the rest because he hears the _footsteps_. They’re coming this way—towards the store. They probably want clothes too—they, oh fuck, they are definitely coming.  
   
“I’m pretty sure it came from over here,” Eugene says.  
   
Ryan sprints back to the dressing room so hard his head spins. His leg quivers like it’ll break again, but he slings the dressing room door open. Grabs his bag and closes the door behind him. Shane’s midway through a sentence so he clamps a hand over his mouth, slams him back against the far wall of the dressing room.  
   
Wow, these rooms are small. He did not realize how small they were, or how dark they were, when he was changing, because now he and Shane are in this small space with one of Ryan’s hands pressed against Shane’s mouth so he feels his breath and the other over his on lips. Eyes wide in the dark. Trying to indicate that they can’t make noise. Can’t move.  
   
Because he hears it again, the footsteps, outside. And he looks at Shane, because he knows he hears it too this time.  
  
~  
  
Ryan hasn't even been gone long enough that Shane's noticed his absence and suddenly he's crashing into the room with him, and Shane's body just coils and screams with tension, like a rusted spring winding tighter and tighter.

He reaches for the pipe but can't reach it before he's being pressed to the wall, with Ryan's fingers over his mouth. It takes a second for his eyes to adjust, and he's staring like he can best the darkness in a staring contest, but really he's just fucking terrified.

He makes out the edge of Ryan's cheek in the dark, then a glitter in his eye from somewhere light. It's certainly not in here. Christ, it's dark.

Then he hears the footsteps. It's not a zombie. It's almost worse. It's a person. It's fucking _people_.

Shane's halfway through wondering why Ryan didn't try to fucking help them, because he would, when he hears the unmistakable sound of a gun cocking.

A wave of terror sweeps over him, and he inhales sharply through his nose because he feels almost sick.

Until now, he's had both hands pressed to the wall, half supporting his weight, but he steadies himself now and fists one hand in Ryan's sweater, at his waist. _Don't go anywhere_ , he thinks. _Don't make a sound._  
  
~  
  
Ryan waits. Doesn't take his hand off Shane's mouth. He's afraid the movement will be enough. That they'll open that door and point the gun at them, at Shane. The gun cocks and he closes his eyes. Begs this hell spawn universe to show mercy. Just this once.  
  
Ryan feels Shane clutch at his waist. How desperately Shane wants him to stay still. As desperately as he wants Shane to be quiet.  
  
“No one's here, dude, chill,” the girl, Jen, says.  
  
 _Please_.  
  
“Well, someone's been here,” Zach says. “There's shit everywhere. Should we grab some clothes?”  
  
“Hold on,” Eugene says. “We should check the dressing rooms.”  
  
Fuck.  
  
 _Fuck, fuck, fuck._  
  
Ryan hears the footsteps get closer, closer. He pushes off Shane and faces the door, dragging both hands along the hammer. If someone opens this door and shoots, he's going to give Shane the best chance he can.  
  
~  
  
Shane loses his grip on Ryan's sweater. No. _Nope_. There's no way Shane's letting Ryan do this. The footsteps are getting closer and Shane's too scared to reach for the pipe unless it scrapes the wall, unless he fucking drops it. He hears one of the dressing room doors crash open. Like it's been kicked.

 _Good fucking going, idiot_ , Shane thinks. _You’re gonna draw every zombie in here right to us._

And Ryan's still facing off with the door, and he's going to do something stupid and Shane is not letting that happen.

Shane reaches out.

Another door gets smashed open, closer. It shatters all the way through Shane’s spine, making him wince.

Also, Ryan's going to get his skull cracked open by the door. Maybe this person outside has the right idea. If he and Ryan were zombies. Which they're not.

He gets his fingers around both Ryan's arms and pulls him back against his chest. It's only about a step back. He gets his arm beneath Ryan's — the one holding the hammer, and wraps it tightly around his waist.

"Shh," he breaths against his ear, eyes fixed on the door.

"Shit!" There's a clatter, a huge one. Metal smashes against something.

"Shit!"   
  
"Fuck!"

"Mother fucking--"

"The sign!" a girl cries. "I hit it!"

"Are you okay? Oh God, are you _bleeding_?"

"Oh, I think that's old," she says. She sound young, like fourteen. Shane keeps his hold on Ryan tight.

~  
  
Ryan almost yells when Shane grabs him. He does an odd kind of jump-twist. But Shane gets him back anyway. Ryan crashes into him but Shane's tangling all his limbs and dragging one arm back.  
  
Ryan hardly hears him shush him. He's so fucking pissed. He writhes against the grip. He thinks about stomping his toe but Shane would probably scream and they'd both die anyway.  
  
Something is clattering around outside and it hikes Ryan's fear to ten. He presses back into Shane until the wall behind them pushes back. Damn if Shane isn't the biggest asshole. It's like he thinks Ryan isn't capable of _anything_. He's got the hammer pinned so it'll be useless if they open the door. And he's got a _damn_ good grip.  
  
Ryan can't say anything or risk being heard so he slams his head back against Shane's chest as an expression of dismay.  
  
But the footsteps recede.  
  
“You don't think they'll miss it, right? Zombies don't need signs. It's all good.”  
  
“You're gonna give me a fucking heart attack,” one of the other guys says.  
  
“I can't help it! This is who I am!” A beat. Shane's breath is curling around Ryan's ear, stealing his attention from the door. Trying to.  
  
“Who you are is a nightmare.”  
  
“Whatever, did you find any kids having sex in the dressing rooms?”  
  
“What? That's…”  
  
“Pretty sure that's not what kids do in dressing rooms!”  
  
“Well, not now because they're all dead.”  
  
“Jesus, Jen!”  
  
A sigh. “Whatever, let's see if there's anything here worth taking before we go.”  
  
Ryan lets a pained breath pass his lips. He wriggles against Shane, feels the way his chest slides along Ryan's shoulder blades. The breath between their hips. Everything Ryan shouldn't feel, shouldn't notice, with that gun outside.  
  
Maybe they should just go confront them. They seem okay, except the comment about killing someone. Ryan twists against Shane, but can't do much in this ironclad grip.  
  
He tilts his head up and eases onto his tiptoes so their bodies press too tight together, and he says in a whisper torn by held breath and almost too low to hear.  
  
“Should we just go out there?”  
  
~  
  
Ryan tries to squirm free, and Shane tightens his fingers. He’s got his arm wound so far around Ryan’s waist that he’s gripping his sweater just above his opposite hip.  
  
Ryan’s head slams back into Shane’s chest, pushing the breath from his lungs momentarily, and Shane blinks and presses his lips together and keeps his annoyance buried deep. It’s not worth it to let it out this time.  
  
The strangest thing is that the voices outside sound like normal people. They sound like the kind of people Shane might talk to, if he didn’t think they’d put a gun to his head. Now, their conversation just leaves him tense, redoubles his grip on Ryan’s wrist until he can feel his pulse pounding there, matching its speed in his own gripping fingers.  
  
And Ryan’s wriggling against him again. It’s like holding onto a kitten that doesn’t want to be held. He braces himself harder because Ryan is strong, stronger than he is, but not pinned down and back like this, and not if he doesn’t want to make a lot of noise which Shane is praying he won’t.  
  
And then he’s sliding up along Shane’s chest, and there’s a drag of shoulder blades and warmth. Shane’s shirt rides up slightly with the movement, and then Ryan whispers in his ear, and there’s a crackle to it — to his voice, to the sudden spread of heat in Shane’s chest. He lets go of Ryan’s sweater only long enough to catch tight hold of his hip which now fits exactly, precisely, against Shane’s palm.  
  
He feels like his mind can’t handle this. This kind of emotional one-eighty. For a moment, it’s just the two of them, and Shane is suddenly aware of how much tension doesn’t know if you’re frightened or wanting because it’s worse now. It winds up and down his legs and arms until he’s quivering where he stands, despite how tightly he’s still holding.  
  
 _Should we just go out there?_  
  
When he lowers his head, like he always has to to whisper to Ryan, he finds himself speaking against the edge of his jaw, his throat, because of the way Ryan’s pushed himself up. “Do you want to get your head blown off?” Shane whispers back. He doesn’t think those people _out there_ sound like the type to think before they shoot.  
  
And he can hear them talking still, footsteps and voices getting further and further away, but it’s taking forever. Shane has this image of Ryan wanting so desperately to be around other people, to be around a group, to _help_ them, that he just bursts out there and doesn’t think about how he looks — eyes intense with everything in him, that fucking hammer. How the way his leg puts a skip or a limp into his step could look like a zombie’s shuffling if you saw it in the corner of your eye, if Shane wasn’t so used to it by now — used to every little motion Ryan makes — he might have thought so too. He’s not letting go.  
  
~  
  
 _Do you want to get your head blown off?_  
   
It skims down Ryan’s throat to land in his chest. Shane’s all jammed against his jaw, his throat—Ryan’s doing. But it doesn’t change the effect. Doesn’t change the sketch of Shane’s lips drawing ripples through his bloodstream. The way his voice thrums beneath Ryan’s skin so he hears it bouncing off his bones seconds after Shane’s stopped speaking. Ryan inhales hard, clenches his fists. This is _exhausting_. This kaleidoscope of emotions Shane’s funneling through him. Irritation, anger, want—so much want.  
   
He wonders if Shane would let him go if he just said, yeah, he would like to get his head blown off, thanks. If it would get him free of this prison Shane’s got him in—fuck, he might take it. His chest heaves, and he feels the way it drags and draws Shane with it. Every move he makes cascading into Shane like there’s a string tied between their ribcages.  
   
The voices drift in and out again, but Ryan isn’t listening to them anymore. He’s just listening to this jagged breath that comes out of Shane every now and then. He’s listening to the slide and scrape that creeps up his back every time Shane’s fingers move along his wrist. The frenzied pulse that crashes into Shane’s hand like he’s beckoning it.  
   
Energy spikes. He can’t help it. He squirms again. Twists where Shane’s hand is nestled so perfectly against his hip. So precisely suited to all Ryan’s crests and valleys. The movement yanks it to over to Ryan’s thigh, and truly, that is much worse. Because Shane’s fingers are already clenched—they dig into the softer skin, panging this tension all along his leg, pooling beneath his waist. His grip tightens so hard on the hammer his skeleton shakes.  
   
Heat has beaded sweat along his jaw, his throat, where Shane clutches his wrist so there’s this charged friction so hot Ryan starts to expect steam. He’s suddenly coated in it, so he bends his head all the way back to speak—trying to get air, to get… something. All he gets is the jut of Shane’s shoulder.  
   
“Maybe they won’t—maybe.” He pants it like Shane’s killing him. “You stay here, just… let me go.”  
  
~  
  
Shane feels it, feels something pulse through Ryan, or maybe through them both. He's twisted by Ryan's words, and his throat is so dry and he doesn’t know if it’s fear for Ryan’s fucking life or something else. He digs his fingers harder into Ryan's thigh, kind of drags him back against his body, against the sharp press of his own hips. He feels them drag against Ryan. "Stop," he says, and his voice is just above a whisper, but pitched low. "You're not doing this."  
  
~  
   
Shane isn’t letting go. And Ryan doesn’t have the angle to get away, to get free. He closes his eyes. He closes his lips over his teeth and stops. Because he can’t take Shane digging in any further. He can’t be any closer to Shane without turning around—without… doing something they can’t do here. Maybe something they can’t do ever. Stillness locks in place through his limbs. He doesn’t breathe for a long time. Just says in this silent space and lets Shane breathe in his place.  
   
They aren’t in immediate danger. And even if they were, Ryan is in front.  
  
~  
  
Shane's breathing fast. It takes him too long to realize he's pissed, kind of. No, he's a lot pissed. Ryan's gone still and Shane doesn't know if he's just playing dead, so to speak, or if he's relenting, but he doesn't loosen his grip.

He turns his face and speaks against Ryan's skin, against the slight roughness of his cheek because they both need to shave again. Should. It's not a need anymore.

The world's ripped so much away from Ryan, so many simple things, and he still wants to throw himself headlong into it, and hope for the best, and Shane _hates_ that he can't let him do it. That he can't let Ryan _trust_. He thinks he's probably pissed at the universe mostly and only a little pissed at the man he's clutching against him, but it doesn't matter.

"I need you here, not out there, you idiot."  
  
~  
   
His breath comes out all at once. Because Shane says _I need you_ , and Ryan thinks he’s taking it wrong—thinks his brain is running away with this phrase. This fragment. Shane’s just talking, not making declarations. Not meaning anything, but it draws Ryan’s teeth over his lips. It looses the tension so he sags against Shane. Not hard, but enough that their bodies touch in easier ways. Quieter ways.  
   
He swallows at Shane’s voice on his skin, the way his mouth beats there. It wells in his chest until he thinks he might burst. All this touching. All this Shane. He doesn’t know how he’s going to keep living with this. All these fireflies Shane lights inside him.  
   
“I’m not an idiot, _idiot_ ,” he says.  
  
~  
  
He lets him go. Almost. His fingers loosen against his thigh and he hooks his fingers through Ryan's belt-loop instead, fighting for space against the drag of his belt, and he lets his wrist go to reach up and press his hand over Ryan's mouth the way he'd done to Shane, earlier, holding his head back against his chest. "You're sometimes an idiot. Shh.”  
  
~  
   
Ryan shakes out his wrist, like he can break some of the heat, the steam, that’s gathered in it under Shane’s fingers. Then Shane’s got a hand on his mouth, his lips, and all that heat floods back into him tenfold. His breath comes way too hard, which makes it worse because there’s all this hot air stuck as the only buffer between his mouth and Shane’s hand.  
   
His hand flails like it can’t seem to settle on Shane’s. He finally latches it onto his wrist, holds on. The words _let go_ get caught in Shane’s hand, and the vibration makes it worse. His lips skip along the cracks in Shane’s fingers and it’s all wet fire boomeranged between their skin. And he hates this. He hates that he _doesn’t_ hate this at fucking all. That Shane’s half-protector half-tormentor and Ryan’s just… letting him do it. He’s letting himself be tortured or protected in whatever dosage Shane wants, because that’s what Shane reduces him to.  
   
Ryan brings the hammer up in front of both of them and brandishes it, going for menacing, but it looks a bit like he thinks it’s a maraca.  
  
~  
  
Shane's eyes flicker up and he laughs softly, he relents, pulls away from his lips. "Look at me," he says, tugging at Ryan's belt to turn him, free hand skimming over his arm, because he's still not planning on letting go. Because if he can see Ryan's eyes, even in the dark, he can see what he's planning. What he's thinking. What he wants. 

Shane braces himself against the wall again, but he's still shaky. It's these microscopic tremors all through his bones, all this tension. His hands are soft but he’s not letting go.  
  
~   
  
Ryan turns on Shane's tug so they're chest to chest. He swallows, but his throat is bone dry. His eyes flick up to Shane's in the dark. His eyes have adjusted but Shane's still mostly a sharp jawed silhouette.  
  
He huffs quietly. More at himself than Shane. Aims his eyes at Shane's chest. It's safer. “Why?”   
  
~  
  
Shane considers, then says, "So I can see your devious expression," Shane says, and he readjusts his grip on Ryan's belt — had to let go as he turned. He holds his arm with his free hand.

"You shy, now?" he asks, ducking a little — half sliding down the wall — to try and catch his eyes, and it comes out almost on a laugh, but he’s still listening for those people. He wants to get the fuck out of this mall. He wants to get home.  
  
~  
  
Ryan raises his eyebrows and meets Shane's eyes. “More like trying to annoy you.” He shifts at Shane's hold on his arm. Even that feels like too much. Shane has this fucking touch that makes Ryan forget guns and irritation and everything but what skin feels like.  
  
“I don't actually have to listen to you, you know.”   
  
But some part of him responds, _oh, yes you do._  
  
~  
  
Shane's eyebrows knit together. He's trying to gauge what he can from Ryan's eyes in the darkness and he figures, for now, if he can just distract him, until he's sure it's safe, then that will be enough.

But he isn't sure how to respond to this, because no, Ryan doesn't. And maybe Shane shouldn't be trying so hard to keep him safe, to keep him from doing anything stupid.

"I'm _asking_ you," he finally says, and his voice is soft. "Why are you— why do you do this?"  
  
~  
  
Ryan squints up at him. He focused on the perfect line of Shane's nose. His face is almost abstract sometimes, hazed like he's behind a film. But then he's sharp as a fly over shot of a cliff face. Thoughts battering like waves against its face.  
  
“Why do I do what?” It feels heavy, so he shunts it sideways. “Annoy you? Because you're wound up so tight I think your head might pop off.”  
  
~  
  
"No— _what_? No," he says. "I meant—"

_I meant I can't lose you. I meant why do you scare me so much?_

"You're reckless, Ryan," Shane says. "You don't— you're reckless. And I hate it."

He swallows, sighs, lets him go completely. He straightens up so he's taller than before, which was still taller than Ryan. "I think they're gone," he says, something simmering below the surface of this statement.  
  
And then he thinks that maybe Ryan would rather other people to do this whole apocalypse thing with. That Shane was just the first good thing.   
  
Maybe, Shane thinks, he should have let him go with them. And he could probably still make it home on his own.  
  
The thought twists something in him stomach. He feels suddenly sick. Taking a shallow breath he moves to slide around Ryan, towards the door.  
  
~  
   
Ryan tosses a head over his shoulder back to the door. He hasn’t heard anything for a while, but he’s not done here. He looks back at Shane, and steps almost aggressively in front of him, blocks his path. He crosses his arms. Shane always seems bolder in the dark. Just like his silhouette.  
   
Ryan scoffs. “I’m reckless? How am I _reckless_? I came in here and hid…” He’s already thinking it was the wrong choice. “I’m not reckless, dude. You just freak out any time I swing my head too hard.”  
   
He uncrosses his arms, rakes his fingers through the back of his hair so it stands up. It feels cleaner, nice, after the shampoo. But then he’s thinking about the sink, and…  
   
“I’m normal. You’re the reckless one. You wandered off on your own this morning to get a _hat_ and some _bandanas_! You’re the one that’s doing everything!” His voice is escalating, so he tries to wrangle it back to a whisper. “I’m not doing anything!”  
  
~  
  
Shane looks at him, makes this singular jolting movement before he goes completely still again. It looks strange in the dark. "Jesus Christ," he whispers, but his voice is shaking slightly, on the verge of something that really doesn't want to be whispering. "It's not a fucking contest. Who are you trying to fucking impress?"  
  
~  
   
Ryan rocks back. This is going to get ugly fast, he thinks. Shane looks like he’s ready to fight. This has been good recently. He doesn’t want to fuck it up. Maybe he can pull back. “I’m not—I’m not trying to impress anyone, Shane.” He steps back so he’s almost against the door. This is not a good time for this. He knows it’s not. But he’s already started it.  
   
And maybe he is. Maybe he’s trying to impress Shane. No, he _knows_ he is. He wants so badly for Shane to rely on him. “I just…” He shoves his head into the heel of his palm, scrubs hard. “I don’t know—I just worry this is all you. Any time I try to do anything even halfway for you… you call me reckless.” He definitely can’t look at Shane now. “I want you to feel safe around me…” He knocks at the floor with his feet. Anything, anything to not focus on what he’s saying.  
   
“Maybe charging into a group of strangers isn’t the best way to do that, but you… I’m not trying to be reckless. I’m just trying to help.”  
  
~  
  
God, Shane feels like he's going to get emotional whiplash. He's quiet for a long time, too long, sinks into the safety of that, but his mind is running almost faster than he can keep up.

Finally, it's just: "Ryan." The name lingers there between them.   
  
Finally, he says, "Man you really—. You are helping. You're— fighting off zombies with a broken leg, do you know how far we've walked?" It's not like Shane hasn't noticed. "You do more than most people would be able to, I'm not _annoyed_ by you. Or I wasn't until a few minutes ago."

Shane's eyes flicker over him. He looks like a kid. Shane wants to protect him, and maybe he shouldn't. "Just— I _do_ feel safe around you."

And it's true. It sort of hits him all at once. "I feel safer with you than I did with some people before _this_." He gestures in this restricted, tight movement towards the walls of the dressing room, but he means everything. The world. "So... so. Yeah."  
  
~  
   
Ryan doesn’t know if he believes it. But it sounds sincere. And maybe he’s got to figure out how he feels about himself before he can push it on Shane. He crosses his arms again, and he thinks he might be doing it to protect himself. From whatever is going on between them. With him.  
   
Shane’s said some nice things. About killing the zombies. But his broken leg was his screw up, so he’s not taking credit for being able to walk. That seems like such a tragically low bar he refuses to accept it as part of his contribution.  
   
“My leg’s fine,” he mutters, knows he probably shouldn’t, but it’s instinctive.  
   
He’s just scared. Scared of so many things. They’ve all lodged in his throat like a mass, and he’s struggling so hard to breathe around them—to exist around them. Because he doesn’t feel safe. Not really. Shane is here—and he helps Ryan feel _good_ , but this world—this is the kind of world that made him run from what could have been totally normal people. Hide in a dressing room, scared shitless. It’s all hollow here. And Ryan feels like he needs to expand, move into it, so it feels like something real. For him and for Shane.  
   
Shit. He doesn’t really want to leave this cramped dark space. He likes it, the excuse to be close to Shane. But he’s got to move because Shane wants to go—go home. To god know what’s waiting for him there.  
   
“But okay,” he says, but the air shreds it to pieces. He’s still definitely not looking at Shane. “And… I’m here. It’s not all you.” He twists halfway, glances back at Shane. Still not at his eyes. Kind of at his knee caps really. He has very pronounced knee caps, even under the clothes. “You need a belt.”  
  
~  
  
"I— I know," he says. Maybe that Ryan is here, maybe about the belt. 

He _does_ know Ryan's here. He thinks he's more aware of Ryan than he's been of anyone else he's ever met. "I— got used to being alone," he says, like this is somehow his fault, and maybe it is. "I know you're not just sitting back like 'Hey man, pipe a zombie for me would ya?'" For some reason he says it in an accent that sounds like he's stepped out of a black and white Hollywood film. “Maybe I’m just not good at people.”  
  
Not good enough. Like always. Like before, every time he tried his best.   
  
Ryan had said he didn’t have to, that he was already enough, but… why does he still feel like he isn’t? Like he isn’t trying hard enough? Christ, maybe he doesn’t even know how to try.  
  
~  
  
“This isn't about you.” It's sudden, like a whoosh of air thrust out from an impact.  Almost harsh. He doesn't want it to be. “Jake's—my brother's dead.” It sounds off, wrong. Cold in his throat. It's the first time he's said it.  
  
“I've… I let my brother die.” Oh Jesus. He feels himself start to backslide, start to break again. “Both my parents. I… couldn't help anyone.”   
  
He raises his chin, tries to fill more space. “I told you before. Death doesn't scare me as much as losing… someone else.” He looks at Shane. “Losing you.”  
  
“I've spent my entire life wanting to do things for people. I was a film major. All I wanted was to make someone feel seen, happy, safe. Like they could… like they weren't alone. I measured things by what my freaking mom would say. And now she's gone.”  
  
He rubs at his face again. He's saying too much but it's dark and he's scared of what happens when they open the door. “So you being so good at this, at saving my sorry ass… it's hard.” He laughs but it's too hard too. “Even if you were good at people, you can't… fix this, fix me… so don't… it's not about you. It is, but it isn't. This shit isn't yours. It's not your fault. It's my thing… sorry you're the only person who gets to experience it.” He smiles, and it's crooked, but it's a little easier maybe.  
  
~  
  
Shane never takes his eyes off him, just listens quietly, when Ryan finishes, he catches a hint of that smile, and it makes him ache a little, sitting heavily in his chest.

"Yeah." He’s agreeing. To part of it. It's _not_ about him. He doesn't know why he's twisting himself all through this.

"I wasn't trying to fix you," he says, softly. And he wasn't, he was just trying to make him happy. 

"And, yeah, I _know_ I should let you do your own thing, I just... what makes you think I'd be okay with losing _you_? Like... it's your choice, Ryan, but. Sorry, I just don't think throwing yourself in front of some strange gunman is something anyone would want you to do. Because if something happened, something bad, then it _does_ become my thing."  
  
~  
  
Ryan squirms, physically, to match the way his heart and chest react to this. To Shane. To all this talk about losing.  
  
“He could have been a nice gunman.” The air is so tense. God, there's so much between them. He's never felt this, like everything in him is being reflected back. Like someone is as present as he is. Swinging as hard as he is.  
  
“You don't have to let me do my own thing. Your things tend to be smarter, anyway.” He wants to step toward Shane, but it's such a small space—it'll be too much.  
  
“And I didn't think you were trying to… fix me. I just mean… you sounded like you were blaming yourself for me feeling useless.” He meets Shane's eyes in the dark and it's bright and quiet. “You’re, well, I kinda thought good things didn't happen anymore… before I met you… so… you're good.”  
  
~  
  
That's all— a lot. It's a lot. 

_I kinda thought good things didn't happen anymore before I met you._

Shane raises a hand and sort of brushes it over his own nose, like he means to adjust the glasses that aren't there. He pushes his fingers through his hair for an excuse to look down, drop Ryan's eyes.

"You wouldn't be saying that if I didn't bring you something that reminds you of your precious Kobe Brent or whoever," he says, because he knows, he hopes, it will break the tension, and Ryan will jump to Kobe's defense, and everything will be fine. He doesn't know what to do with this charge between them, when it's all made out of words. He hardly knows what to do with the overwhelm of touch.  
  
~  
  
Ryan rolls his eyes and sighs. Shane’s trying to side step this and Ryan's keen to let him. Even if some part of him wants more, wants Shane to…  
  
He doesn't know.  
  
His response is quiet, but he says, “It's Kobe Bryant and you know it.” He can't be the one pushed away again so he turns to the door and pushes the handle.  
  
“Moving the fuck on.”  
  
~  
  
"Oh, okay," Shane says, like it wasn't his idea all along. Why is he such a coward? What's he hiding from? It's the goddamn apocalypse.

He lets Ryan open the door, grabs his pipe from the wall, and follows him out, right on his heels. Like always.


	9. Part 9

Part 9

 _Okay_ , the bags are heavy. But really, Shane thinks, he shouldn’t be complaining. They split the last protein bar once they’re out of the mall and on their way.  
  
Truthfully, he did feel sad leaving the bookstore behind. The bookstore had been… nice. Safe. Comfortable. The bookstore had been where they read kids books to one another, where he had fallen asleep with Ryan’s head on his chest, where Ryan had hugged him for finding a hat.  
  
It was so simple. As soon as they leave, Shane’s missing it. But now there’s new things to contend with. Part of it is what they’d talked about in that dark dressing room. Loss, failure. What they were trying to do, what they were trying to achieve with one another.  
  
But it’s so convoluted somehow, so murky, that Shane can’t even begin to start sussing it out. It’s all— they’re important to each other. The things Ryan says set his mind, his heart, on fire, and yet…  
  
And yet.  
  
There’s always something in Shane telling him _back up, pull away._  
  
So he does.  
  
Maybe because it seems like Ryan is. Maybe because the intensity between them builds to such a fever pitch Shane thinks they can’t both possibly keep breathing beneath all that suffocating heat. And yet, somehow, it’s the only time he feels like he’s really getting any air at all. Or, no. It’s the only time he’s ever really understood what it meant to breathe. To be… not just living, but alive. But should anyone be allowed to be so alive surrounded by so much death? He doesn’t know. No one’s written a guidebook for this yet. Maybe he should. Maybe there will be money in that, or at least food.  
  
He brings this up to Ryan as they venture further and further into the suburbs — that someone should write a guidebook to the zombie apocalypse. A real one, not just _Zombie Haiku: Good Poetry for Your… Brains_ or all those books that were for sickos who wanted to imagine this shit actually happening, where they could imagine the disease from the comfort of their own sunlit offices, fresh food, electricity, and hot water at their disposal. Oh, and no possibility of death by infected next-door-neighbor.  
  
Shane kind of envies those people.  
  
Or maybe he envies that time period. “You know,” he’s saying, scanning the street as they walk. It’s a sunny day — weirdly, and with last night’s rain, it’s melted off almost all of the snow that’s fallen since the beginning of winter. He’s given Ryan the pipe because if they flip it, the electrical tape muffles the sound of the steel on the pavement and it’s kind of like a cane. It’s up to Ryan whether or not he wants to use it. Shane’s been passing the hammer back and forth from hand to hand, but it never feels right. Not like the pipe does. He’s got to get over his pipe-attachment, he thinks. “I’ve always kind of felt like I was born in the wrong century. I bet I would have been a _great_ uh— courtier in the 1600s. I could have played the lute. I could wear a— a ruff.”  
  
They’ve both been careful. They’ve been talking about things that are easy. Light. Shane’s anachronism used to feel significant somehow, and confused, because he loved technology but at the same time, he always felt out of place. Out of time. It feels absurd now, in the light of the destruction all around them — the smashed in windows, the cars left just open and abandoned in the middle of the road.  
  
Shane doesn’t even recognize this place, but he does. He grew up here. He’s trying to look without seeing. Be aware of what or who is around them, without taking any of it in.  
  
Sometimes, there are bodies.  
  
Still bodies of the dead variety are better than animated ones, and they haven’t seen any of those for quite a while. Shane’s wondering if they’ve all just migrated further East towards the city. Towards Chicago proper. Chicago was never turned into a strike zone, and somehow, that’s worse. Now. It means there’s more of the undead.  
  
But it seems like people had been taking things into their own hands. There are piles, charred black remains. Someone had taken this zombie apocalypse into their own hands. That, or they just tried to get rid of some of the bodies— the ones that were too destroyed to reanimate.  
  
Shane wonders how they choose, why they choose, or if they even choose at all — who becomes a zombie and who dies from their wounds, from being consumed, before there’s even a chance? He doesn’t mention this to Ryan.  
  
Why would a virus not continuously spread? Is it something intrinsic in each living person that defines whether they live or die? Is there a zombie gene that’s just been dormant in some people, for all these centuries, waiting for a bite?  
  
Why do some people die freely, without losing their speech, their minds, to this sickness — and with their speech and their minds, their free will.  
  
To Shane, that’s the scariest part. Not death, but the idea of perpetual mental absence. The absence of purpose. What happens if all the people disappear? What happens to zombies then? Would he just stand somewhere, immobile, forever while he decayed little by little? What happened when a zombie decayed?  Could zombies even die natural deaths? How long did it take? How long would the lost have to endure this hell?  
  
What was the point of any of this?  
  
Why won’t Shane’s mind just shut the hell up?  
  
“When— when would you live? What time period?”  
~

Ryan is trying not to be weird. Something after the department store has him riled up. So he has to be careful. There’s this anger in him now, this wild, violent thing that he’s almost scared of. Maybe that’s what happens when you kill your parents. It’s why he treads more cautiously now. Works so hard to pull back before fights escalate. He’s scared of what he’ll do. It was self-defense. Jake had said that, after. He’d told Ryan not to blame himself. It was _self-defense_. Maybe if he’d just closed a door, gotten out of sight. He could’ve spared them… he didn’t have to kill them.

Dad was different. Maybe he could’ve justified what happened. They’d slammed into the window so hard it’d broken. The momentum had startled his dad—what was left of him. Ryan pushed him, and he’d fallen… onto one of the jagged pieces. Straight through his eye.But his mom was his choice. It wasn’t enough for him to hide behind the cupboard. He had to push it over. He killed her. Didn’t leave her somewhere, didn’t run off like Shane did… and the worst part is he doesn’t remember what he was thinking. He doesn’t know if maybe some part of him was trying to be merciful, if he couldn’t live with the thought of her lumbering around like this. If he couldn’t stand the thought of someone else killing her.Or the worst possibility of all: if it was anger… anger at what she’d said to him. If he’d done it vindictively.

His own fucking mother.

That’s why it bothers him that there’s this itch beneath his skin. This frustration with Shane. It’s impossible to shake the image of himself over the cupboard, soaked in his dad’s fucking blood. Shane called him reckless. Maybe he’s right. Maybe there’s something horrible in Ryan that this apocalypse has brought out. Maybe he’s _not_ safe.

He threw his glasses at the wall and broke them, and they aren’t nearly as vital to him, as important to him, as Shane. Even if Shane can’t give Ryan what he wants. Shane’s still _everything_ , and apparently Ryan’s good at hurting important people. Either lets them die like Jake or kills them outright.

And now they’re going back to Shane’s house. Where whatever history he hasn’t told is waiting for him. He’s trying to get there. He’s got a sense of purpose he didn’t have before. He’s expecting something, and Ryan’s afraid of what it is. He doesn’t know what this will do to Shane. He wants so badly to protect him from it. There’s so much guilt and horror in Ryan’s head—all tied back to his parents’ house. And that’s where they’re going. To Shane’s parents’ house. All he wants is for it to be _okay_. For it to be what Shane expects.

So he’s trying hard not to be weird. Not to sink below all this fear. It’s all he is sometimes now, fear and anger. He’s angry because he’s useless. Scared because he’s angry. It’s awful. So he tries to stay outside of his head, in the moment. He makes conversation with Shane when he can, when he doesn’t feel like he might yell at him.

Shane gives him the pipe and Ryan uses it in spurts. He should just use it—consistently—Shane’s given it to him. But he doesn’t like needing something like it anymore. It hasn’t been long enough to heal. He knows that, but it feels like it’s been forever. He’s tired of being the broken one. He even tries to convince Shane to take it back—he misses it, it’s obvious in the way he fidgets with the hammer—but he won’t. That makes Ryan angry too.

Shane’s rambling on about time periods. Ryan’s trying so hard to listen, even when he says words like ruff and courtier and Ryan only barely knows what they mean. Because Shane is a refuge from the rest of Ryan’s bullshit. No matter how much he tends to cause it sometimes.

“Time period? Like what era?” he asks when Shane leaves the air open for conversation. “I dunno. I haven’t thought about it… generally, I was cool being in this generation, but maybe not now.” He looks around. “Maybe during Roman times, be a Spartan or something. Kick ass—make some heroic sacrifice like in _300_ and be immortalized as a badass and played by Gerard Butler.”

It’s sad, how much he wants it. To be in a movie, to know, indisputably that he was _good_ —that he was valuable. Even if it meant being dead.

~  
  
Shane pulls a face. “Not Gerard Butler. You? No. And now I’ve had to change my mind, I think I would like to be a pirate. Somewhere warm. There would be sea shanties, that would be nice. Hey, listen, if zombies can’t swim, we could be pirates.”  
  
_Wow, tone it back_ , he thinks. This isn’t some glitch in the matrix or something, it’s real. He’s gone too into his head, and the world’s faded a little bit, and he’s almost forgotten. Foolhardy. Too dangerous.  
  
He shakes himself out of it, and glances over at Ryan. He’s talking, but his heart’s not in it. Shane can tell. He doesn’t know how he knows, but he does. Ryan’s off, has been since the department store, and Shane wonders again if he should have… if maybe _they_ should have tried to join up with those other people. Those other survivors.  
  
Still, he doesn’t like the idea. They were loud, careless. They set Shane’s teeth on edge, and no matter how cocksure that one guy had sounded, the one kicking in dressing room doors, Shane knows he wouldn’t have been able to handle that day in, day out, not like he can with Ryan.  
  
And he thinks that Ryan adjusts his silences and his conversation around Shane, and Shane doesn’t know how else to tell him that he doesn’t have to. He’d tried once, already, but he thinks that they were at odds, then. Talking around something that, probably, is different for both of them. They aren’t so much on the same page as he’d thought, at that time…  
  
Maybe he’d just wanted it, back then, for the two of them meeting to somehow, by some beautiful coincidence, be… on purpose. Meant. Because that means that there’s still some point to all of this, that the whole world isn’t just descending into chaos, a literal living hell, pandemonium. Pan-daimōn: all demons.  
  
God, he still wants that… that purpose. He wants those moments in the dark where he feels like he and Ryan can reach out and _understand_ , wordless, whatever it is… whatever they are, whatever they’re supposed to be doing, even if it’s all in fragments.  
  
But now he’s thinking about Latin, and he realizes he’s drifted away from Ryan again, and fuckssake, Shane thinks, if they were pirates, he’d be liable to just hop onto a raft or something for a nap in the sun, and just drift away. Away from Ryan, from the… the ship.  
  
Jesus, why does he always end up thinking about boats? He’s thinking about boats and Latin and they’re walking down a fucking death tunnel — a main street in the suburbs — and he’s not paying attention.  
  
Maybe he’s tired. Maybe being here in this familiar place, made uncanny over the past nine, ten months, has lulled him into a false sense of security. Maybe Shane’s mind’s just made to work around this, but Ryan’s _isn’t_.  
  
Where _is_ everyone? There’s not even any zombies.  
  
A soft squeak and rattle catches his attention and Shane’s heart tries to escape past his fucking teeth, and he looks over in time to see the metal gate of a chainlink fence drift gently open and shut again. It’s a basketball court, the one outside the rec center that does summer camps and things for kids. Did.  
  
“Hey, Ryan,” Shane says, reaching out to stop him. He kind of grabs at his hood near his shoulder.  “Look.”  
  
He nods towards the court. It’s fucking eerie. There’s a ball that’s rolled all the way over to the corner, surrounded by paper McDonalds cups and other miscellany that’s been blown there by the wind. It’s like the people playing here just ran. Left everything, the ball, their food. There’s even a hoodie on the ground, like someone just shrugged it off to play — like they were going to go back for it.  
  
But maybe he can… maybe he can swing this. Turn it around. Maybe he can make it good. They didn’t even shut the gate.  
  
He moves towards the court, something swelling up in his chest because if he can just— he wants that smile, the one he got in the bookshop. He wants Ryan’s eyes to light up again. He wants to… do something right.  
  
_This isn’t about you._  
  
_It is though_ , Shane thinks. _It is._  
  
“Come on,” he says, turning to walk backwards. It’s all fenced in, he thinks. They’ll be… they’ll be okay. He turns away, trying to ignore the way anxiety _grates_ up his spine as soon as he can’t see Ryan in his peripheral. “There’s a ball here, look,” he tells him, glancing back at him over his shoulder.  
  
~  
   
Ryan is fantasizing. He’s thinking about him and Shane as fucking pirates. Because wouldn’t that be hilarious? They’d be awful pirates. Ryan, for one, has no idea how to steer a boat. Doesn’t know anything about boats really. Maybe Shane does. Surely he does, if he’s recommending they be pirates. He looks like a boat guy, kinda. And Ryan could learn. Pirates would be fun. He could wear a hook on his hand—which might require losing a hand, so… that could be awkward.  
   
But, no, he’s changed his mind. He would be a _great_ pirate. He’ll have to get over the whole feeling bad about stealing things, since it’s in the name. But he can do it if he gets one of those cool hats, and a boat. He tries to picture Shane in pirate gear and has to swallow a laugh. But it’s good. It’s better than thinking about everything still swirling beneath, like squalls tossing the ship.  
   
He’s still coming up with ideas when Shane grabs him. Ryan glances back at him. “Hm?” He follows the nod and holy shit it’s a basketball court. It’s a fucking creepy basketball court. It looks how Ryan always imagined the rapture, minus a few articles of clothing. But there is a discarded pullover. Holy shit. It’s the rapture. The zombie rapture.  
   
It’s awful, because this is it—basketball, this sacred thing that he and Jake used to do, that Ryan played every chance he could, that he watched every night on TV, but it’s marred in this new life. It’s dead like the department store. A graveyard. A portrait of everything he had, but stained and splatted in blood red paint. Ruined. A mockery.  
   
There’s even a ball, and some part of him, a stupider, simpler part of him, desperately wants to play. Wants to feel the ball under his palms. It won’t bring back Jake. It won’t change anything, but he wants it like he used to crave old video games. For the nostalgia.  
   
Shane starts walking towards it, and Ryan’s features twist into confused concern.  It’s like someone’s flipped a switch in Shane’s chest. He’s present, brighter than he’s been in hours, with a purpose. Ryan tails him because he’s worried Shane has potentially lost his mind.  
   
“Yeah, I see the ball. What’re—” Surely Shane doesn’t plan on _playing_. The noise alone would send him into a near-malfunction. And hasn’t Shane repeatedly said he hates sports? At the very least knows nothing about them.  
   
Ryan skips a little to keep up. It hurts his leg. His leg is _broken._ They can’t play basketball. But his body it coming alive, like he’s the one with the flipped switch. It’s basketball. It’s his favorite sport.  
   
“Are you…?” He might be misreading this, so he shields himself, makes it into a joke. “What’re we gonna just have a little… one-on-one in the middle of the zombie apocalypse?” He laughs to cover what might be hope in his voice.  
  
~  
  
_There it is_ , Shane thinks, that little flicker of _Ryan_ in his voice, that thing that is so fundamentally him — sunshine, not unguarded yet, but getting there. Shane wants to tear down every wall Ryan’s ever put up, he wants Ryan to not even _need_ walls. He wants to see him stripped of everything he’s ever tried to protect himself with. Like liberation. Like something sacred. He wants Ryan to not need protection, around him.  
  
“What?” Shane asks, “You scared ‘cause you know I’m going to beat you? It’s gonna be— gonna be fifteen to nothin’!”  
  
He picks up the ball, wipes some wrapper or dead leaf or something off of it. He bounces it. It looks like he’s never bounced a ball in his life and he has to catch it two handed when it comes back up. “Lock the gate,” he tells him.  
  
   
~  
   
Shane really wants to play basketball. This might be crazier than the apocalypse itself. “Fift—” He laughs, wheezes on it. “Wow, fifteen whole points! How’re you ever gonna get that high?”  
   
He isn’t sure how this is going to end. He almost thinks it’ll make him sadder, in the end, the way that chasing nostalgia always does. But Shane’s here. He’s excited, kindled like a low-burning flame, and Ryan doesn’t want that to go out. And hey, basketball with Shane isn’t necessarily chasing nostalgia. It’s chasing a fucking _train wreck_. But also chasing something new. It’s something sacred to him that he can share with Shane. Something that doesn’t have to end how what he said ended at the department store. With Shane closing down like an office building at five on Friday. This is less vulnerable.  
   
Shane tries to dribble, or Ryan guesses he doesn’t actually try to _dribble_ nor even knows what it means to dribble a ball. He looks so uncoordinated. Ryan has to take a second to marvel at how he can look so graceful sneaking around to clobber a zombie and then look like a gangle of free-flying limbs trying to bounce a basketball.  
   
Ryan locks the gate because it’s the only thing that still sounds like Shane. For a second, he just stares at the world beyond it, at all this silence and sadness. He feels separated from it, like the gate’s blocked him off. The court’s alive with this energy thrumming through Shane, the excitement churning in Ryan.  
   
Ryan slides his bag off and lays the pipe against it. It’s in front of the gate. It’ll make it harder for anything to get in, even though they haven’t seen anything for miles. Ryan guesses it’s miles, anyway. He works his leg into the bit of extra weight and crosses the court. Shane’s still got his hands around the ball like he’s holding a damn dinosaur egg.  
   
“That’s not how you hold the ball, here—” He moves slow at first like he’s going to show Shane how to do it, then snatches it from between Shane’s hands. It’s so easy. _Pathetically_ easy.  He bounces the ball down the court, has to put a little extra behind it because it’s deflated. Not bad, though. He dribbles once, twice, and then shoots—flicks his wrists. He fades back as he lets go, pushes away from the basket with his good leg. He hasn’t shot in months, but his hands remember the motion. Leap into it like a pool in summer.  
   
The ball clatters against the rim and sinks through a very ragged net. He spins back to Shane, raises his eyebrows with a smile drenched in self-satisfaction. Because he is. He hasn’t shot in months and made it from three-point range. He takes a couple steps backwards, towards the ball.  
   
“C’mon, it’s your ball.” He scoops it up, spins it between his palms, back against his chest. He gestures like he means to throw it, but he’s honestly afraid of what it’s going to look like when Shane tries to catch it.  
  
~  
  
Shane's shrugged his pack off, drops the hammer on top of it, but he's watching Ryan shoot. And okay, he has to admit that it's sort of... well it's cool. Not basketball, not _sports_ , but how natural it seems. Even favoring his leg, it looks right on him. Looks good."

Wh— oh, are we playing already?" Shane asks, and his voice is pitched higher, fighting down a laugh, and the realization that he's already been duped. He starts to cross to him, but slows when Ryan turns around with the ball, sort of hunches into himself, like Ryan's going to chuck it at his face.  
  
~  
   
Ryan laughs. “You look like I’m about to shoot you.” He shakes his head, but the smile sticks. It feels better. Like all the fears are staggered in the spotlight. Their shape is smaller and more fragile than in the dark. Less substantial than the shadows.  
   
“I’m gonna bounce it. Please don’t hurt yourself.” He tosses it so it rebounds off the ground between them and arcs, strong but slow, towards Shane’s chest.  
  
~  
  
Shane catches it, somehow. “I’m not going to _hurt_ myself. Look, I bet I could reach that net without even jumping,” Shane says and takes a step towards the net that is presumably the one he’s supposed to score on. “Wait— how many? Is it three steps? I can take three steps holding the ball? Help me, Ryan.”  
  
~  
   
Ryan isn’t sure if he ever stopped laughing before, but he’s definitely picked it back up again. “Jesus Christ…” He advances. Shane’s right. He could reach the net pretty easily without jumping. He could’ve been a great basketball player if he wasn’t made of wobbling tooth picks. “You can’t take any steps unless you were already moving when I passed you the ball, otherwise you have to _dribble_.” He positions himself between Shane and the net. “You are a tragic waste of height.”  
  
~  
  
“You’re just resorting to petty insults because you know I’m going to destroy you.” Shane does dribble it. He’s… well basically, it’s _fine._ He knows he doesn’t look anything like Ryan did. He probably looks like an idiot, and even despite his height, even despite being practically _at_ the net, he still somehow misses the basket and almost hits himself in the face with the ball. He ducks and it goes bouncing off towards the center of the court. “Jesuschrist,” Shane manages.  
  
~  
   
Ryan’s let Shane go. He can’t—he cannot grab the ball, it would be too mean. Shane’s… almost adorable with the way he’s flailing, trying to control the ball, his limbs, anything at all. Impressively uncoordinated. Ryan crosses his arms as Shane… well, shoots wouldn’t quite be the word. More like violently flings the ball at the backboard, using every bone in his arms and nothing else. It ricochets off the board and Ryan is full on cackling. He doubles over and slams a hand into his thigh because Shane asked to play this and he’s so bad. He’s worse than Ryan thought he was going to be. And that was bad.  
   
Ryan jogs over to scoop the ball up. Laughing hard enough that his vision blurs with what might be tears. “That’s… honestly, that was the worst shot I’ve ever seen in my life. Hands down. I’m impressed.” He dribbles but doesn’t move, bounces it between his legs a couple times, it’s half idle movement half showing off.  
   
“You okay, big guy? That looked traumatic.”  
  
~  
  
Shane laughs, sort of shakes himself out. Shakes off the tension. He’s never thought that a ball against tarmac could sound so loud, but it does. But nothing’s coming. Nothing—…  
  
He shuts it down as best he can, that thought, and goes over to Ryan, sort of stalking around him. “Worry about yourself, Bergara.”  
  
Ryan’s lit up. It lights something up in Shane. He makes a quick lunge for the ball the next time he thinks he can reach it, and he’s too tall. His fingers brush the ball and fuck up Ryan’s rhythm, but he can’t contort his body to be that small, either. He sort of tumbles into Ryan and tries to steady them both before they get hurt, and his laughter, all breathless, breaks into something audible. His hands brush up over Ryan’s waist as he sort of steps around him. The ball’s rolling away and Shane leaves Ryan to run after it, scoops it up, hop-skips to a stop so that he doesn’t take any steps while he’s holding it. He has no idea how to do this, but damn, he’s fucking trying.  
  
~  
   
Shane fucking runs into him. Just full-on crashes into him pretty much. He grabs Ryan’s waist to keep him upright and it drags a streak through him, like a record scratch. That touch. Shane eases around him, bounds after the ball like a Great Dane, all bumbling and wrong. He’s chasing the ball like he didn’t just push Ryan’s reset button. His limbs are too heavy at the joints. It’s ridiculous.  
   
Ryan snorts because Shane shouldn’t have been able to get the ball from him, doesn’t think he would have if he hadn’t just wind-milled into him like a tornado. “Okay, that’s it.”  
   
He is over being nice to this walking goal post. He darts forward and snatches the ball from Shane again. He has almost no grip on it. This time he runs all the way to the basket until he’s almost directly under and lays it up. It hits the backboard and slides in and Ryan’s beneath the net to catch it.  
   
“It’s 5-0, and quite frankly, that was a foul because you aren’t allowed to _touch me_ while I’m holding the ball.” He reminds himself of a particularly smarmy twelve-year-old, but it’s fine. This is his game. And he lost the ball to _Shane_.  
  
~  
  
“That wasn’t in the rulebook,” Shane says, “I think you’re cheating. You’re shaking in your ah— your little sneakers there.” He doesn’t know what to do. He doesn’t know the first thing about how to get a ball from someone.  
  
He tries anyway, tries to make use of his flailing limbs, and tries to get the ball back, or at least hit it away from him so that he can chase it down.  
  
~  
   
Ryan takes two steps back. He doesn’t dribble, in case Shane notices, and sighs. “Stop, stop! Shane, it’s your ball! I scored. It’s your ball.” He’s laughing in spite of himself. Because he wants to take this seriously. “Okay—what’re you even?” He swats Shane’s hands and extends the ball. “Every time someone scores, it’s the other person’s ball.”  
  
~  
  
“That makes no sense, that’s stupid,” Shane says, and he probably shouldn’t be shitting on Ryan’s game, but he absolutely is. “Give it to me,” he says, and holds his hands out like an honest to god child asking for their bear back before he snatches it from Ryan’s fingers. “Ha,” he says, like it wasn’t just _handed_ to him, and takes off for the other net. He really is bad at moving and fucking bouncing the ball at the same time. How do people _do_ this?  
  
~  
   
Ryan rolls his eyes. He’s kinda glad Shane responds like a child. Makes him feel a little more in charge. He raises his chin and gives Shane a head start. Because, dear lord, does he need one. Then again. On sheer height, if he gets far enough, Ryan won’t be able to do much.  
   
He takes off and rounds in front of Shane, half-jogging backwards as he watches this circus act Shane calls dribbling. Or he probably doesn’t call it anything. He’s probably calling it a lot of bad names. Ryan grins and swipes, catches the ball in his hands, panting because, okay, he hustled more than was entirely necessary to get in front of Shane.  
   
He bounces the ball in a sort of challenge. “Had enough?” he almost coos it, waves it around in the air like a flag Shane can accept. “Too bad!” He side steps Shane and dribbles back to the free-throw line. “Here…” He uses his free hand to usher Shane in front of him. “Get under the basket. Try and block me.”  
  
~  
  
He’s laughing, because Ryan’s fucking merciless but he sort of likes it.  
  
“Get under the basket. Try and block me.”  
  
“What?” Shane says, and he almost sounds nervous, but he does as he’s told. He reaches up and curls his fingers in the ragged netting but he knows that’s probably not allowed. “Okay, let’s see what you’ve got,” he says, and there’s something in his eyes, like he’s trying to take all this in, like he wants to memorize it. He likes this, this confidence in Ryan, this assuredness. Shane wants him to keep it. He bites his lip, ducks his head down a little, eyes dropping from Ryan’s to the ball.  
  
He’s still going to try and stop him from scoring.  
  
~  
   
Ryan’s sigh is long, drags across the court. “You can’t—what’re you doing? You can’t touch the net!” He’s astounded at how little Shane knows about basketball. It’s one of the biggest sports there is, in America, anyway. He must have gotten saddled with the least knowledgeable person ever—at least about basketball. Shane knows a lot about other shit. He doesn’t wait for Shane to stop. He dribbles forward, meeting Shane’s eyes as he leans right and left. Trying to decide where to go.  
   
He’s drawing this out. He could shoot. But he wants to see if he can get around Shane’s giant frame and score on him. He knows he’s faster than him, but he needs to know if he’s good enough to get around.  
  
~  
  
Shane lets go of the net, sort of collapses his height a little, brown eyes so focused on the ball because he really does want to try. He thinks maybe he could be a sports person. He thinks that maybe Ryan won’t think his height is wasted, then. He thinks that maybe Ryan will think better of him if Shane can stop him scoring this fucking shot and he thinks that that’s the most ridiculously infatuated thing he’s ever thought and he doesn’t know what to _do_ with it so he pushes it aside and tries to focus. “Ooh, I think you’re stalling,” he says, because he can’t shut up, apparently.  
  
Maybe that’s something. He can’t fall back on stored knowledge here, he can’t hide the fact that he is _bad_ at this from Ryan, and so he’s resorting to sarcasm, cattiness, how _smart_ he is. It’s all he’s got. Maybe it’s all he can impress with.  
  
Maybe it’s about time he admit that he’s been trying to impress Ryan for a while now.  
  
~  
   
Ryan rolls his eyes. He likes this. Shane being so absolutely clueless. Ryan moves towards the net, slow, then fast. He backs into Shane, still dribbling. Shane doesn’t know what to do with his arms. He just has absolutely no clue. It’s endearing. Endearingly stupid. But it’s that he’s trying. He genuinely wants to do something. He can’t, though.  
   
That drags a smirk across Ryan’s mouth.  
   
He spins. His body presses Shane back, it’s lithe, a gentle bodily shove, that gives Ryan enough space to throw the ball up. It circles the rim once and falls through. Ryan can’t even feel properly triumphant, but this thrill runs through him anyway. Something untamed, the gust at the beginning of a hurricane. He just offers Shane this smirk, this somehow arrogantly sympathetic look, and he feels the flicker in his own eyes. He catches the ball on the bounce.  
   
“You’re _killing_ it, Madej!”  
  
~  
  
“Oh, you don’t have to tell me,” Shane says, in this parody of absolute arrogance that he one hundred percent is not feeling.  
  
“I’m just going easy on you, you know.” He steps closer, reaches out. “My ball. _You_ go stand there, I want to see if I can get it around you, if you’re so great. You’re the next Kobe Bryant, blah blah blah.”  
  
Shane thinks he might actually be able to do it. Ryan’s little. Ryan’s jumping ability is hindered by his leg.  
  
~  
   
“That’s…” Ryan doesn’t know that he can stop Shane. Not if he’s at the net. Granted, he also doesn’t know that Shane will be able to put the ball in the net. But he’s not going to back away from the challenge. He jogs across the court to stand under the opposite basket. He almost shouts something, then thinks about it. Thinks about Shane and the way he hates noise. The way he’ll worry about zombies. Ryan holds his hands out and waves his fingers in a come on gesture.  
   
He’s going to be so pissed if Shane scores. He ought to be able to figure something out. He could meet him halfway. He should, even though he knows that’s not what Shane thinks. Shane literally stood right under the basket, because that’s what Ryan specifically said. Ryan will give him a little time to get to the basket. All he needs to do is get the ball away from him before he shoots.  
  
~  
  
Shane shakes his head at him as he follows him across the court. He bounces the fucking ball and only has to catch it two handed _once_ so that’s an improvement. He eyes up the hoop, eyes up Ryan. Or he tries. He has to keep looking back at the ball so it doesn’t escape from him. “All right,” he says, dribbling it messily. “Get ready to have your mind _blown_.” He catches it up to shoot it, eyes narrowing at the hoop. Maybe he can just blame all this on his eyesight. Right?  
  
~  
   
Ryan _can’t_ let him shoot. He tries to convince himself to just let it happen. Shane probably won’t make it, but Shane issued this challenge directly to _him_. He even dragged Kobe Bryant into it. Ryan lunges and slams his hands hard into the ball. It slips out of Shane’s hands and bounces in a wide arc, away from both of them. Ryan doesn’t wait. He chases the ball and does this leap to tip it back before it goes outside the white line at the edge of the court. He lands, and it slices up his leg. He ignores it valiantly and changes direction, runs back to catch the ball again.  
   
Shane probably has no idea—who is he kidding?—Shane obviously has no idea why Ryan’s trying to keep the ball inbounds. Ryan could bounce it off the fence and Shane would have no idea that was anything but perfectly acceptable. But he’s panting, chest heaving, and grinning at Shane because he likes this. He likes this game and he likes that he’s out of breath and he likes that he feels _okay_.  
  
~  
  
Shane curses and takes off after him, but if he’s being honest he’s kind of scared of the ball, like he’s going to get clobbered with it. It’s a throwback to junior high school P.E.  
  
Then Ryan shoots him this grin and Shane’s fucking hit by it, it stops him in his tracks, and he has no idea what he’s doing, fuck, he half forgets which net is his (is it his or Ryan’s if he’s scoring in it? Wait, what?) Ryan grins, and it’s so lit up that Shane just stops. He pushes both hands through his hair, leaves them there, tangled, and kind of spins in place as Ryan passes behind him with the ball, and then he’s laughing because holy shit.  
  
Holy shit.  
  
He moves forward again. He feels like he has to throw his whole body into it to even more forward. It seems so easy for Ryan. He’s just darting all over the place like an overexcited puppy and Shane has to will movement through every bone and joint of his body to get moving at all. He almost reaches him as Ryan sort of hops up, flicks his hands forwards at the wrist in this way that just fucking _gets_ Shane because it’s almost delicate. It’s hardly even a movement, but the ball goes soaring through the air and into the hoop. It’s a perfect shot — Shane doesn’t even think it skims the sides of the tattered netting.  
  
“Wow,” Shane says, dryly. “This game. It’s a nail-biter.”  
  
~  
   
The adrenaline probably doesn’t help, but it’s so fucking funny. Because it’s _not_ a nail-biter. Shane hasn’t managed to get a single point and the only time he tried he fucking cowered as the ball came hurdling back at him because he has no concept of how to use a backboard. Shane’s so obviously overwhelmed with this game and how he doesn’t know how to play it and how badly he’s losing. It’s all hilarious. It’s all _amazing_.  
   
Ryan is laughing so hard he has to hold onto the post to keep upright. He’s gasping and panting and trying to make sure he doesn’t suffocate on his own laughter in the middle of the apocalypse and that’s even funnier, so he laughs even harder. He takes in a gulp of air. He pulls upright and leans into his arms on the pole before he glances sideways at Shane who’s still standing where he left him. Ryan’s still trying to stop laughing.  
   
It doesn’t look like Shane regrets this, which is odd, but it doesn’t. Ryan wraps his hands around the pole and does this half-swing around it until he’s got one arm looped over it. He pushes into it where it separates him and Shane, using it like it’s holding him back.  
   
“Wanna call it?”  
  
~  
  
“No,” he says, “What do you think I am, a quitter? Do I look like a quitter to you?” His heart is just pounding away in his chest in this strange half-skipping way. He kind of laughs and says “Look at you.” He says it like _aren’t you confident_? but really… really, Shane can’t take his eyes off of him.  
  
_Look at you._  
  
“You’re just scared that I’m gonna win. I’m gonna turn this game around, baby.”  
  
~  
   
Ryan’s pleasantly surprised. His smile widens, or more, softens into something more genuine—more _with_ and not _at_. “That’s it. You got me. I’m terrified. Waiting for even an ounce of skill to come out of your giant skeleton.” He shakes his head and grabs the ball again. Tosses it back to Shane. Who fumbles but catches it. Ryan has to gently inform him that he gets to try again.  
   
He does, but Ryan takes it. Faster, this time, because he likes having to move, to run to grab it away from Shane. The skill it takes to grab Shane mid-motion instead of waiting until he’s stopped and trying to muster up the strength to shoot. Poor Shane. It takes so much concentration to do anything with it. Ryan’s really doing him a favor.  
   
He lingers in front of Shane, dribbling the ball, like he’s worried Shane’s going to steal it from him. Then he pivots and slides around him and towards the net. It should be boring with how easy this is, but it’s not. It’s like it is a nail-biter. The way Shane’s looking at him. The way the world feels alive and not dead. The way Ryan feels alive, more alive than he has in a long time.  
  
~  
  
Shane spins to follow, and he thinks that maybe he could reach around him and knock the ball from his hands, his arms are certainly long enough, but he doesn’t. He’s actually not even confident he could do that.  
  
Ryan’s just about to line up the shot. Shane sees it in the curve of his spine, the way he tips his head up, and before he can shoot, Shane catches him around the waist with both arms. He sort of tugs him sideways away from the net, and the momentum sends his long body over Ryan’s so they’re both nearly doubled over.  
  
~  
   
The motion throws him completely. He might make a sound, something like a squeak, but not much more than that. There’s a shriek somewhere, caught in the surprise that bubbles into his throat. His center of gravity shifts completely, tilts, so he’s flung to the side. Almost in free fall. It takes him ages to figure out what’s happened, and it’s weird because he’s laughing before he puts it together. Before he gets that Shane’s got him by the waist, yanking him away from the basket.  
   
“Foul, _foul_.” They’re touching again, and it’s amping up this adrenaline in Ryan to nitrous. Spinning him out like a car in _The Fast and The Furious_. Shane’s all forearms folded over his abdomen, fingers nipping at Ryan’s skin through his shirt. Shane’s all touch and Ryan’s all fire. He clutches the ball to his chest, throws his head over his shoulder, still bent at the waist where Shane’s got him. He’s panting, choking on a giggle. “You can’t just grab me!”  
  
~  
  
“It’s the apocalypse, Ryan, there’s no rules!” Shane says, and he’s breathless against him, sort of fighting back laughter, and sort of overwhelmed.  
  
Really overwhelmed.  
  
He’s got this little collection of all these smiles that Ryan’s directed at _him_ , he’s practically high on the fact that they’ve gotten away with this much without zombies clamoring at the gates. He’s caught up in it, they’re still kind of moving, finding a balance, and Ryan’s laughing, and it reverberates through Shane’s chest, and gets all wound up in the erratic beating of his heart, and he just— he doesn’t want to let go. So he doesn’t.  
  
And it’s in that moment, where they’re both laughing, breathless with it, that Shane ducks his head down against Ryan’s, kisses his neck. It’s not disguised under the pretense of anything else. It just is. He just lets it be… this.  
  
~  
   
Ryan’s still laughing, trying to find the footing to free himself from this hold. That’s the thing with Shane, when he grabs on, he usually doesn’t like to let go. Ryan wants to be annoyed with that. Wants to hate it. But he likes it. Likes being able to sink in to the touch. Even as he twists like he’s trying to get away, he sinks into it, and…  
   
_Oh_.  
   
It’s warm, this impossibly soft brush of silk-soft skin. Every cell, every molecule in Ryan sharpens until he’s a saturated sunrise and the world silvers into misted dawn. His neck hums so the swell of muscle under Shane’s lips morphs into a pulse point. Like Ryan’s sensation, his ability to feel, is clawing out of his body and into Shane. Like it belongs to him. Because Ryan isn’t sure he’s ever _felt_ like this before, ever been so aware of how breath warms the place where lips part, how the flakes of skin where they’ve have chapped tickle, how smooth it makes the skin around them, how saliva dampens this sliver where it pushes too heavy into Ryan. How skin feels. How lips feel. How breathing feels.  
   
He doesn’t know what to do. He’s paralyzed. He knows he’s shifted his head to expose his neck. Like a fucking instinct. But he doesn’t know what to do now. He’s _paralyzed_. If he moves, he’s afraid he’ll turn and kiss more than Shane’s neck. And he’s too scared to break this. His hands squeeze Shane’s at his waist, thumbs brushing over the gaps between his thumb and index finger. Ryan closes his eyes and tries not to lose his grip on gravity.  
   
Tries to say, _Shane_.  
   
But it comes out, “Sha—” swallowed in a gasp.  
  
~  
  
His name like that makes Shane want to pull back because it feels like a warming, or maybe it doesn’t. It contradicts the way that Ryan’s hands close warmly over Shane’s, contradicts the way he’s tilted his head. And Shane thinks of ten million reasons why he’s done this, why he keeps doing this, and he doesn’t know which one to say. Which one will be right, for Ryan.  
  
So in the end he doesn’t say anything, just straightens a little, keeping Ryan against him, but his hold isn’t as tight. He drops his mouth to Ryan’s shoulder, the feeling of fabric against his lips so different from the pulsing heat of his skin a moment ago. He fucking aches and a sigh shakes out against him. When he breathes in, it’s just new-clothes smell, chemical dye. He wants to tuck his face against Ryan’s throat and breathe him in. He wants to taste the salt of his skin.  
  
He wants all these things when he doesn’t even know how to push past all these little beginnings. Every time it’s happened before seems like an impossibility, now. Like a fever-dream.  
  
~  
  
Ryan did it this time. He said his name, like he could bring him back to reality. Because as much as part of him wants it, he's been shoved back so many times when he initiates or tries. He's a lit candle and Shane is burning him lower and lower. Giving Ryan just enough but not enough.  
  
Ryan stopped him. But he would've stopped himself anyway, Ryan reasons. And Ryan would be just dizzy and hurting. Maybe. He tucks himself back into Shane, into all the gaps. Head again his collarbone. Hands still holding his.  
  
_I want you too._  
  
Shane asked him what he was waiting for once. And Ryan told him.  
  
_But I can wait._  
  
~  
  
_Okay_ , Shane thinks. And he adjusts his arm a little, where Ryan’s hip digs into it. He holds onto him, but doesn’t kiss him again. _Okay._  
  
They’re still for a moment, and Shane keeps his head tucked down, eyes closed because maybe he can just will some of this away. Like the zombies part, that would be nice. He takes a deep breath, in and out, feels all the places his body fits against Ryan’s, how they’re so close even when his lungs empty.  
  
“Guess I’ll give you this game,” Shane finally murmurs, too soft. He hasn’t opened his eyes yet. “It was pretty close though. You have to admit.”  
  
~  
  
Ryan's answering laugh barely breaks his lips. More breath and hum than laugh. “Yeah,” and it's just as quiet. He tilts his head towards Shane. “Came down to the wire.”  
  
He needs this as just as he needed basketball. Shane's hands on him. Shane's head bent close his neck. His voice casting echoes of that kiss.  
  
“You're incredible.”  
  
It's not as sarcastic as he wants it to be.  
  
~  
  
Shane makes this little noise like he doesn’t know _what_ the fuck to do with that, because it’s more nuanced than it should be. His mind kind of judders to a halt, then goes static and he hears himself say “Even more incredible than your precious Kody Bramble?” He raises his head a little, and his cheek skims Ryan’s. He catches his breath softly.  
  
~  
  
Ryan presses his lips together. His eyes keep closing, especially when the scrape off Shane's cheeks glides over Ryan's. He turns his head with this close mouth smile that tips higher on one side of his face.  
  
He opens his eyes to look at Shane, and he's not looking at Ryan. But Ryan feels himself settle into something gentle.  
  
“I will murder you.”  
  
~  
  
“Aw,” Shane says, like he’s just spotted a cute dog. “Thanks, Ryan. Gosh, you’re just the nicest.” He blinks. The sun’s brighter than he remembered it being. His eyes find Ryan’s, and something jolts down through his stomach. God, he’s so fucking beautiful it hurts. Shane starts to let go before he does anything stupid.  
  
~  
  
Ryan lets Shane's hands go and slips free. He does it fast, and like a bandaid, his body wants to cling. He turns and faces Shane. He stings all over at the absence but smiles anyway.  
  
“This was fun. Thanks for…” He sounds like he's ending a date. “Thanks for being terrible. Boosts my ego.”  
  
He takes a breath and almost wants to grab the ball again. Because the end of this means the beginning of something else. The beginning of going to this place Shane’s been waiting for, reaching for, and Ryan just hopes it does what he thinks it will.  
  
“I wasn’t terrible,” Shane says. “I totally almost beat you. It’s okay if you can’t admit it, some people are just sore losers.”  
  
But they leave the ball, they collect their things. They step back out into the real world and, like they’re protecting some sacred space, they close the gate behind them so that the lock clicks into place.  
  
  
They approach such familiar territory that Shane couldn’t even pretend it looked unfamiliar, even in this strange Afterwards landscape. And still everything is quiet, quiet, quiet. “That’s my…” he begins, eyes on his old junior high school. It takes a moment for his eyes to focus, because there’s something— there’s all these things wedged up against the doors and, across them, someone’s spray-painted _Keep Out, Infected Inside_ and jesus, _jesus_ were there _kids_ in there? He thinks the apocalypse started around supper time… at least here. It wasn’t even dark yet when they ran for the car. It had been unseasonably warm for March. He thinks, he hopes that the dead in that building aren’t children.  
  
No. He’s sure school was out by then. Schools let out at like 3:30 or something. Didn’t they?  
  
He shakes it off, they keep walking, a little faster than before.  
  
And then it’s his street. They wind their way around a couple cars that are just stopped on the sidewalk and Shane checks them for keys, but there’s never keys. “Maybe we should break into the library and see if we can research how to hotwire a car,” Shane says, and it’s almost a joke.  
  
Almost.  
  
“I bet these have gas, though. Maybe we could…” Shane doesn’t want to carry a jug of gas around just on the off-chance they find a car. It’s so heavy. But at the same time, he knows he’d hate it if they found a car and had nothing.  
  
And then it’s… it’s his house. They come upon it almost suddenly, but then Shane’s standing at the end of his driveway, looking up at it… he can’t remember if they closed the door or not, when they ran. He hopes no one’s inside.  
  
Either way, the door’s closed, now. If he shuts everything out of his peripheral, eerily, it almost looks… fine. Untouched.  
  
~              
   
This is intense. Ryan doesn’t recognize any of it. It’s more rural than most the stuff he and Jake passed through to get to… well, Illinois apparently, he guesses. God, they had no idea where they were going. But this isn’t that different from what they saw. Boarded up houses, signs about infected—on churches, on hospitals, on schools. Usually they started as safehavens and then the virus broke out inside, so the people who got out tried to warn…  
   
God, he doesn’t know what happened here, at Shane’s school, in Shane’s hometown. Ryan doesn’t know, but he wishes he could turn it off. Turn back time so Shane was walking into something safe and warm. Not a haunted hellscape.  
   
Because Shane is the difference here… Shane is reacting, looking around more, breathing heavier, more animated. His eyes are crackling with what they see. It’s _bothering_ him. More than the rest of the world. In a way this seems to slide off Shane, usually. It’s not. It’s bothering him—these cars and houses. Ryan isn’t quite sure if Shane’s joking about hotwiring the cars. He, for one, thinks it’s a great idea. But he’s being careful. Like if he speaks it’ll shatter this hope that’s brimming in Shane’s chest.  
   
So he doesn’t, not until they’re outside a house. And Shane’s stopped, and… it’s Shane’s house. It must be. The dread in Ryan creeps through him like an ichor, drawing the blood in his veins to black. He’s so afraid. Afraid for Shane. He has to clench his fists to keep from grabbing his hand. He takes in air, tries to be quiet about it but maybe he’s been holding his breath. It’s hard to draw in silently.  
   
“This is…” Ryan looks from the house to Shane, squints. “I can totally see the resemblance.”  
  
~  
  
“What?” Shane asks, breaking out of whatever thought he was in, feels it shatter and fade around him as he looks back at Ryan, almost smiling. For a second it’s in his eyes. “Okay, let’s… food. Clothes. Maybe, I think there was a first-aid kit in the bathroom, still.” He can’t remember, they never used it…  
  
He takes Ryan in, then turns to him, very softly slips the pipe from his hands saying, “Here,” and gives him the hammer in its place. He can’t— he can’t go in there without it, and he doesn’t know if Ryan gets that, if he’ll understand, but Shane hopes he will. He takes a long moment, eyes on Ryan’s fingers around the handle of the hammer, on the way his hoodie sleeve is half-poking out from beneath his coat. Shane resists the urge to reach out and fix it, just for something normal and human to do with his hands. He meets Ryan’s eyes, then turns away.  
  
He starts up his driveway, kind of lopes up with his head down. It’s like coming home from school in the rain, but it’s not raining. There are no cars here. Not his parents’ car. Not anymore. HIs heart’s beating really hard as he reaches for the doorknob, adjusting the pipe in his right hand. It’s not locked. He doesn’t like that. He wishes it were locked because that would mean that maybe someone…  
  
He bites his lip, chokes the thought off. It doesn’t mean it’s anything _bad_. It’s the apocalypse, who knows how things work now?  
  
Shane steps through the front door, and it’s so quiet. He stands aside for Ryan.  
  
They’re in the little entry hallway. And— oh jesus, his father’s raincoat, his mother’s shoes — all their things are still hanging there, still lined up, like someone’s still going to use them.  
  
He looks away, tries to be aware of sounds. He almost— like he almost— takes his shoes off, because that’s what he would have done, before. It’s a weird, jolting little moment. “Okay, let’s…” he whispers and kind of waves Ryan forward.  
  
They step into the living room, and it’s so… fucking lived in. It’s uncanny, somehow, because it’s no one’s been in here. Or at least no one’s ransacked the place. And somehow it’s _so_ lived in. But, there’s… dust, on everything. Shane’s glasses case is on the coffee table and he absently picks it up and pockets it. To the right is the kitchen, the downstairs bathroom where the first aid kit is. Food. Bandages.  
  
And… he’s trying to remember if all this stuff was in the same place, before. Was the book resting on the couch like that, spine up? Was the house phone left off the charger? It’s dark in here — _oh_.  
  
Shane sucks in a soft breath.  
  
The curtains are closed. That’s not how it was when they left. He remembers how calm it had looked outside. The sun setting pink and orange. And then that one figure, stumbling out from between the two houses across the street… and then, how it had started to run, inhuman and wrong, until it was out of sight.  
  
Someone’s closed the curtains, since then. He looks over his shoulder, but it’s just Ryan, and Shane’s heart’s just drowning out every other sound. He needs to chill out, he needs to be able to hear. He needs to not start calling the name of someone who might not even be here, who might never have been here. He can’t be reckless. He can’t. They can’t afford to be reckless.  
  
~  
   
Ryan’s glad to have his hammer back. Partially because it’s obvious Shane needs the pipe. Has grown attached to the pipe. In fact, Ryan thinks if given an option, Shane would readily let Ryan be consumed by zombies to save the pipe. It’s that kind of relationship. And Ryan’s too stubborn to use the thing properly, anyway. The hammer feels powerful in his hands. He’s glad to have it back.  
   
He follows Shane up the driveway, waits while he goes in first. The entryway feels alien to Ryan, so much dustier than his old LA apartment. Even the house his parents lived in. Everything was stacked together, boxed to fill the limited space. But even this entry way is lazy in the way it sprawls out. There’s a raincoat on the coat rack. It’s an honest to god rack in foyer—not one of those little rows of hooks to stick up on the wall.  
   
Shane glitches on something. Starts and stops. Ryan doesn’t ask him about it, isn’t going to ask him about anything because there’s such a vibration running through them he’s afraid the extra push from his vocal chords will kill them both.  
   
The living room is the same. The contrast is even more obvious. All muted beiges and dusted reds. A small space, an old one. A perfectly crafted set. A dated couch, newspapers on the coffee table. Ryan was joking, but he _can_ see the resemblance. If he were going to design a set to represent Shane, this house would be a piece of it. It’s like an old library book with a worn spine and creased pages. Separate from the world outside of it. It’s muting the colors but making them brighter. Hushing the sounds, but making them sharper.  
   
Like Shane.  
   
A slip of the kitchen catches his eye and he bends his neck to look into it. It’s still all beige and brown. Monochrome and patchwork colors. Like someone put an Instagram filter over the whole house. Shane belongs in here, with his long legs and ancient eyes. This is his home. A ghost of it. Yellowed and torn at the edges like an old photograph. But his.  
   
But Shane is looking too hard. He reminds Ryan of a child expecting a surprise birthday party. Peeking around corners for a sign of movement, of presents. He’s looking for something. Ryan doesn’t know what, and he isn’t going to ask. He doesn’t touch anything, adjusts his grip on the hammer a few times.  
   
It feels wrong to do anything but whisper, “What should we look for?”  
   
_What are you looking for?_  
  
~  
  
Shane looks back at him, and it’s like he has to pull himself around to the question. “Uh, food,” he says. “Anything useful.” Shane moves into the kitchen. He doesn’t look at any of the pictures on the mantelpiece, on the walls. There’s a cup of tea, completely dried out, with a teabag growing something in it, set on the kitchen table like it’s been placed there for someone’s photography portfolio. Shane reaches out in this automatic motion and picks it up. It feels strangely delicate, like it might turn to sand between his fingers. He sets it carefully in the sink, like anyone’s going to fucking wash it later.  
  
There’s a smell — like a green, rotting food smell. The garbage, maybe, or the fridge. Shane goes through the cupboards first, being very quiet. He doesn’t know why he doesn’t just go check the house, check all the rooms _first_. Something’s holding him back. He doesn’t want to know. He doesn’t want to know who closed the curtains, but didn’t lock the door.  
  
There’s food. Cans of stuff. Soup, beans, tuna, crackers, cookies, cereal. Some of it’s gone bad, but — the cookies definitely. Shane leaves what they aren’t taking on the counter, sets the rest on the table so he can figure out how to efficiently pack it. They’ll have to wrap the cans so they don’t rattle, they’ll have to take things out of boxes.  
  
“Ryan,” he says, looking for him before he starts, opening drawers. It’s so strange. He knows where everything is, but it feels like he shouldn’t. It feels like he should open this drawer and find something rotting, maggots squirming. Not… tea towels. They’re familiar, soft. Something’s very tight in his chest. God, he _misses_ …  
  
He shakes himself a little, stands and tosses some tea towels on the table. He’s pretending this is not his house, that he didn’t grow up here, that it doesn’t hold his childhood in all these nooks and crannies, in all these emptied places. “Let’s… can you?” He indicates the food they need to pack. “I’m going to check upstairs.”  
  
~  
   
Ryan’s trying to mind his own business. Trying not to look at the pictures. He resolves to help Shane look through the cabinets. He wants to be what he’s supposed to be, but he doesn’t think he’s supposed to be anything. He doesn’t know if Shane even knows he’s here, or if he does, it’s such a peripheral awareness that Ryan could stand on his head and Shane wouldn’t notice.  
   
Ryan helps gather food, tries not to be too worried about how mechanically Shane does this. Recognition flickers across his shoulders occasionally, but he won’t let himself react. And Ryan is scared, scared, scared. He keeps swallowing, telling himself they’re going to leave this house and it’s going to be fine. But something in churning in his stomach, whirring like a meat grinder. Lurking in every shadow of this house like twisted smiles at the edge of a nightmare. It threatens to tear through him.  
   
Shane didn’t tell him what he was looking for. The answer isn’t food or anything useful. You don’t look for food like that, like you’re scared of the answer—like it’s a question you’re afraid to ask. That’s how you look for…  
   
Ryan shudders out a breath. Shane announces he’s going upstairs. Ryan holds back a wince. He doesn’t want to leave him alone, but he thinks he has to. He can’t trample on this space any more than he has. Ryan doesn’t belong here.  
   
He knows that, so he just nods his head and shoulders off his bag to start loading what they’ve gathered into the bag. “Yeah, sure. Go ahead.” He wants to say _be careful_ , but even that feels like an answer Shane might not want, and Shane knows. If anyone knows to be careful, it’s Shane.  
  
~  
  
Shane’s eyes flicker between Ryan’s for a moment in the dimness, and then he nods. He shrugs off his bag and leaves it with Ryan, so they can share the burden of all these cans. Then he slips past him. He goes back through the living room alone. He can hear Ryan in the kitchen, just soft little sounds. Shane reaches out and touches the bannister, feels the dust slide beneath his fingers. It sticks to his palm. His hands are sweating a little. They leave tracks in the dust. The stairs creak as he moves up them.  
  
The upstairs hallway stretches out into darkness, and he grips the pipe hard as he pushes open the door to his old bedroom. There’s nothing in there. Nothing other than what he expected. It’s like looking into someone else’s bedroom. He takes it in almost clinically, eyes flickering over bed, dresser, lamp, books. His phone charger is snaking across the bed, still plugged into the wall. There’s clothes and things on the floor. He’d packed so quickly.  There’s the bag he’d tried to fit things in that wasn’t big enough, jeans, a sweater spilling out of it, in the middle of the carpet. Mouth dry, Shane turns away, continues down the hall. In the upstairs bathroom, he automatically flicks on the light, but of course it doesn’t come on. There’s a lot here, in the drawers. He thinks, maybe, he’ll come back to this. He’ll see if the water runs… Maybe they could use the bath tub, fill up the water bottles they’ve emptied.  
  
Next is his parents room. The air feels wrong strange up here. He knows he’s not alone, but it’s a peripheral sense. It has nothing to do with Ryan downstairs. The door is wide open. Their room is like his — there’s things scattered across the unmade bed, the closet door hangs open, like someone’s going to come back to it, keep packing up.  
  
There’s one room left, at the end of the hall. As a kid, he’d coveted this bedroom, and he’d never gotten it. It was always…  
  
He pushes the door all the way open, and it doesn’t really register right away. It’s like a horror movie, a first-person video game. The world fractures, all muted. It’s like he’s underwater. Shane steps inside in a kind of suppressed dread. The wall, that’s what he notices first. The wall’s all marked up with Sharpie or something, big letters, each at least a foot high.  
  
_Scott Finnigan Madej_  
  
And then, beside it, slightly smaller, his parent’s names, his name: Shane’s. The letters start shaking out, getting wobbly. His name trails off into illegibility.  
  
But Shane’s not looking at that anymore. His eyes are on the tall silhouette, the back of his brother, hunched like he’s looking at something on the ground.  
  
“Finn,” Shane says, it comes out of his mouth as cracked and dry as the tea coating the mug in the sink downstairs. And he knows. He knows it’s _not_ Finn. He knows.  
  
But he wants it to be.  
  
The creature that straightens, like it’s shaking off pieces of something caked around it, moves slowly. And turns around and has Finn’s face, Finn’s body. It turns to Shane and Shane meets eyes as white as bones. And somewhere in his mind Shane is screaming _nonono no NO!_ but in this moment he’s silent, and still, and he doesn’t move. He doesn’t step back.  
  
Behind Finn, the writing Shane couldn’t see:  
  
_Bitten oct/3/17_  
  
Shane can’t look away from those eyes. They are so familiar, their shape, but they’re empty, empty, unrecognizing. They stare at one another like a mirror. And then the zombie lurches forward, lunges. It screams, and the bed movies with it. It scrapes along the floor.  
  
It’s fucking— it’s tied to the bedpost, ziptied. There’s a non-bleeding gouge digging its way down to bone.  
  
Shane’s breath rushes out of him but he doesn’t move, just watches the zombie throw itself again and again against the tie. Throw itself towards Shane, teeth-first. The bed’s moving inch by inch, scraping paint off the wall, scraping the drywall free. It’s unrelenting. The ties dig and dig into its wrist but it doesn’t feel anything.  
  
It doesn’t feel anything anymore.  
  
~  
   
Ryan finishes the packing fast. He moves through it three and four cans at a time. Puts about a third of them in Shane’s bag. Zips both bags up. Then he stands, brushes his thighs off, and drifts. It’s not intentional. It’s not like he’s trying to snoop, or not consciously, anyway, but he’s back in the living room. Eyes on pictures he’d thought he’d seen. Something he hadn’t quite let himself think about.  
   
It’s a hodgepodge of frames. Organized in it’s chaos. School pictures with the splotched blue background. But there’s a lot—a lot of pictures for one kid. At first Ryan’s looking at the one’s Shane is in. Just Shane. A college-graduate picture. An overly smiling picture, maybe from elementary school. Shane was such a weird-looking kid. Jesus. Not that he isn’t weird looking now, but still… Ryan almost smiles. But the one on the edge looks like something else—someone else. Not Shane. Ryan gives in. He tugs one off the mantle, and woman, a man, and… two boys.  
   
Two of them.  
   
He glances at what looks to be a senior picture on the end. It’s not Shane. It’s definitely not Shane, but there’s fingerprints of him, splashes. Like Jake looked like Ryan. Like… Ryan drops the picture in his hand and it shatters. Glass spills and glitters the floor like rain. Fractures this frozen space. Ryan doesn’t have time to think about the fact that Shane never mentioned a brother, never mentioned anything, really.  
   
He doesn’t hear anything, not yet, but he knows. He _knows_ what that scratch in the back of his head is. He knows how this ends.  
   
He whirls and takes the step two steps at a time. He hears that awful, blood-curdling scream halfway up. “ _Shane!_ ” He gets to the top and jerks his head one way, then the other.  It’s so obvious now. The way Shane was looking for things. The hope in his eyes when Shane talked about his house, about going back to the department store.  
   
Was that mug his brother’s?  
   
It’s three doors down at the end of the hallway. Swung wide open so Ryan can see Shane’s silhouette even across the dark hallway. He runs and staggers in the entryway. It’s all these things all at once. Shane, frozen, barely inside the room—the wall marked up in black. With names. Ryan notices Shane’s first—and then he notices other names all ending in the same word: _Madej_.  
   
And the figure. The walking corpse of Shane’s fucking brother tied to the bed, dragging it across the room. Eyes on Shane, who still isn’t moving. They’re close. Too close. Ryan grabs Shane by the elbow and wrenches back.  
   
“Get back, come on!”  
   
All these fears dancing at the edge of him come roaring to life—bringing everything into bright, undeniable focus. These things he’s known he was afraid of, new things he’s afraid of—things he can barely understand. The way Shane has shut down so it’s almost like he won’t come back. Doesn’t want to come back.  
   
Ryan shoves Shane into the hallway and slams the door shut, back against it. Shit, what does he do? The hammer shakes in his hand. Shane’s brother could’ve killed himself. He chose to _live_ , to accept what the virus was going to do to him—did he think they might cure it? Did he not have it in him to die? Ryan can’t kill someone who _chose_ this. Can he?  
   
The bed is still scraping the floor, because it knows they’re here now… it knows. Ryan looks at Shane, at this shell that could pass for another one of them. This is the second family member that’s tried and kill him, and god, Shane thought… Shane _hoped_. This is so much worse than what Ryan imagined it would be.  
   
“Shane,” he says to try and bring him back.  
   
They should run, shouldn’t they? Fuck, what if Shane doesn’t want to go? What if he just… Ryan doesn’t know what to do. There is no making this better. There is no fixing this. It’s whatever Shane wants to do, and Ryan is terrified what it’s going to be.  
  
~  
  
Shane’s eyes meet Ryan’s when Ryan says his name, but he’s not seeing him. He hears the bed scraping along the floor, almost rhythmic, and that sound. It’s making those sounds that Shane _hates_. Finn is making those sounds. For a moment, he doesn’t even know how he got out here.  
  
And he’s thinking ‘ _eight weeks, two months. Two_ months.’ He takes this strange, dry breath and coughs, already twisting to the side, already trying to get his limbs to cooperate, so he can stand up. He reaches for the door before he’s even straightened his knees.  
  
He can’t just… he didn’t see a bite. He didn’t even see a _bite_. He reaches the doorknob just as something scratches at it, claws at it, from the other side.  
  
~  
   
Ryan pushes Shane back. He’s alone. Shane’s not here, he’s somewhere else, and Ryan is scared if he missteps, if he looks away. It’s going to be Jake all over again, but worse, but Shane—god, at least he trusted Jake was _there_. Was trying with him. He doesn’t know what Shane’s doing. Where he is. All his windows and doors are pulled tight like the curtains downstairs. It’s this black box Ryan’s been afraid of since he saw the way Shane looked into the distance.  
   
“Wait,” he says. “What’re you doing?” The words barely come out because his jaw’s clenched so tight. The door thumps behind him. Thumps because, oh god, Ryan wants to close his eyes and get away from here. But he can’t. He can’t because he’s got to look at Shane. He’s got to make sure he doesn’t disappear.  
  
~  
  
Shane sort of grabs at Ryan’s jacket, at his shoulder, he grabs his wrist, the pipe messily held between his palm and Ryan’s skin. He tries to move him, and it’s gentle somehow, even as he tries to push him aside. “I’ve gotta… Ryan, move. _Move_.”  
  
It’s like all the strength’s just sapped from his limbs. He feels vacant, empty. It’s not even autopilot, it’s further than that. He hears himself, he sees everything, but nothing’s real. Nothing’s real.  
  
~  
   
Ryan shakes his head almost violently. He’s stronger than Shane, he doesn’t have to move. He braces his back against the door. His teeth are gritted, all of him is gritted. Bones pushed together until they _grind_. He grips the hammer so hard he tastes blood.  
   
“Stop—are you gonna?” He gets it now. He sees a little of what Shane wants, and it’s not to go back in there and die with his brother. Ryan doesn’t think. He hopes not.  
   
He flashes back to the pipe across Jake’s skull. The way it crunched. The way it shot through Ryan like a blinding pain, a cracked rib. How different it was from the collapse inside him after his parents. The separation from everything—a split down the middle of his world that tore him from everything he’d liked about himself.  
   
Shane isn’t having a conversation. They aren’t going to talk about it. This isn’t a debate. Shane’s gone. Shane has his thoughts and that’s it. There’s not room for anyone else’s. Ryan has to try, though, Ryan wants so desperately to keep him away from this one thing. This one thing he hasn’t had to do. But Shane might need this—Shane isn’t Ryan.  
   
“You don’t have to do it.”  
  
~  
  
Shane can’t, he _can’t_ be a fucking person right now and Ryan is dragging him down into it, into feeling something, Ryan is talking to him like he cares.  
  
Ryan says, ‘You don’t have to do it,’ and Shane can’t look at him because if he does, he’ll need him more than he’s ever fucking needed anyone, and he can’t do that right now. He can’t do that to Ryan.  
  
Why didn’t Finn just fucking stay in New York?  
  
“I can’t leave him for somebody else,” Shane says, grits it out through his teeth. Like he left his mother when his dad told him to run. Like he left his dad in that car.  
  
~  
   
Ryan sees a flicker of something in Shane. Recognizes it. His mouth quivers like his fingers around the hammer. This is a risk. There isn’t communication here. Not out loud. But Shane’s not taking it how Ryan meant it— _you don’t have to do it_. This could break them. Ryan’s been okay about Jake, because he didn’t know Shane when it happened, but if it was now—he doesn’t know… maybe it would be harder. It’s terrifying. His teeth stay gritted as he watches Shane’s face. He hurts so much, his skin wrapped around his bones too tight.  
   
Shane won’t look at him, but Ryan’s looking at Shane. He’s looking at Shane like he’s never looked at him. He pulls in a breath of air like he’s slicing a knife across his throat. He doesn’t say anything else, just sets his jaw.  
   
“I know.”  
   
He shoves Shane hard—so it breaks the tentative grip Shane had on him. Gives him space. He twists the door knob and bashes it open. Feels it explode across the body on the other side. Thank god it opens in and not out.  
   
He gets inside the room and slams it shut. He twists the little latch on the knob that locks it. This thing— _Scott Finnigan Madej_ —his body stumbles, sways from the impact of the door. Those clouded eyes find Ryan, and this sick kind of twist runs through him—this other life where it’s Shane. Where Shane’s looking at him like this—looking but not seeing. Because it could be. They run the risk every fucking day. Ryan was so sure Jake would make it, so sure he would always have Jake—and then he didn’t.  
   
Now he doesn’t.

~

Shane doesn’t expect to be pushed. His legs aren’t working right. He stumbles back, and he’s scraping at the wall to catch himself, but Ryan’s already out of sight, already pushed himself into that room and shut the door and—  
  
“Ryan,” and he’s locked it. He’s locked Shane out. He’s locked himself in.  
  
Terror moves through Shane like a tidal wave. “Ryan! _Ryan_!” Shane’s screaming it, shoving his shoulder into the door and it cracks and bends, but it doesn’t open. And then it’s just— he can’t fucking do anything but listen, and his fingers are holding tight to the door handle, twisting it in this one long pull to the right, but he’s not… he’s not trying.  
  
He’s going to lose everything.  
  
He can’t even breathe.

~  
   
It could be Shane. He’s there, in the features beneath the decay. This was Shane’s _brother_. God, Ryan doesn’t want to do this. He doesn’t want to kill something else that he felt _live_ —that he saw in the pictures. All the zombies hurt, every time—it hurts to kill another person, someone who had a whole history, memories, a life… but to have read that name, seen that picture. Smiling at the camera. Holding a goddamn diploma. Thinking he had a whole life to use it.  
   
To kill someone who wrote names and dates on a wall. Who zip tied himself to the bed to protect whoever found him. Who stood beside Shane, with a hand on his shoulder, in a family portrait.  
   
But at least it isn’t his brother.  
   
The thing growls and lunges again, Ryan draws back, waits until it’s off balance from the swing. His breath tumbles across his lips, shakes them. He has to grip the hammer impossibly tight to keep himself steady. He whispers, “I’m sorry,” just before he swings the hammer in an arc, two-handed, that bursts into the side of his—its—skull. The noise curls around Ryan’s veins and squeezes. Debris flies, nothing but black like wet coffee grinds and brittle bones.  
   
The body crumples immediately, doesn’t move, because Ryan’s destroyed one side of his head. He stares down at him, shaking hard enough to fall apart. The cupboard flashes back to him, and he thinks he’s too good at it. At breaking people’s heads open. At crushing them.  
   
_Bitten oct/3/17_  
   
It burns into the back of Ryan’s eyelids when he closes his eyes. He raises his head to find the ceiling, eyelids fluttering closed, jumping and bouncing around the tears trying to form. It’s not his brother. So why can’t he stop seeing him touch Shane’s shoulder, stop seeing his hand tremble as he wrote Shane’s name? As the virus sunk its teeth in like another bite. Why can’t he stop thinking about _Scott Finnigan Madej_ —about all the things he must have done for Shane for him to have been so desperate to get back here. Back to his brother.  
   
Back to this.  
   
He looks back at the door. He needs to unlock it. He doesn’t know how Shane’s going to react to this. He wants to keep him away from it, but Shane’s not Jake. Ryan doesn’t know what he’s allowed to do. Doesn’t know if he’s already stepped so far over the line that Shane will come through the door and kill him.  
   
But for a second, he doesn’t care.  
   
Because it’s not his brother.

Reality comes back and it occurs to Ryan that Shane’s screaming on the other side of the door. Potentially his name. He collects himself, because he’s not going to cry over Shane’s brother that he doesn’t know. He’s not taking this from Shane. He takes the two steps to the door and unlocks it. He has to use a decent amount of grip strength to turn the knob, but he does. He tugs it and has to make sure Shane doesn’t topple into the room where he’s holding onto the door. He looks half-dead and frantic at once. It’s an art form. How Shane executes so many contradictions all the time.  
   
Ryan stays in the doorway and watches him. Like a gazelle watches a lion. “Sorry,” he says. “I didn’t want you to have to do it.”  Then, feeling and pain and fear leak into his voice. “I’m so sorry.” He means _all_ of it now. And it’s so hollow and useless in the face of it.  
  
~  
  
Shane meets his eyes, and there’s confusion in his own, there’s overwhelm, so much of it, and something else, like betrayal, turning all that soft brown to black. He twitches a little, hitches slightly like he’s trying to get past this moment, this apology, but he can’t quite look at Finn yet, either.  
  
But he has to. He should have _been_ in here. He pushes past Ryan, and it’s rough this time, it’s not careful. He just moves past him and drops the pipe with a clatter because he doesn’t need it now, and falls, almost in slow motion, to his knees at Finn’s side.  
  
But he’s not… he doesn’t look at his face. There’s black leaking out all over it anyway, Shane can see it in the corner of his eye. He pushes him over a little, and his hands are searching, searching for something. He feels it beneath Finn’s sweater sleeve, the left arm, and Shane can’t get the sleeve pulled far enough up, and his skin feels all wrong where Shane’s fingers brush it. He rips the sleeve open, from his wrist, wrenching the fabric apart with these desperate little movements. And there, he’s got it layed open to just above Finn’s elbow. There’s the bite, and it’s infected and oozing and above that, a belt pulled so tightly, like a tourniquet, like he could stop it from spreading. “Fuck,” Shane says, almost shouts it, but it’s tight and hurt. It splinters and blisters all the way up his throat. And now he’s looking at him. Finn’s leg is all wrapped up in gauze and Shane remembers the antiseptic in the treehouse.  
  
There’s a satchel against the bed, one he doesn’t recognize, but the things he can see inside are Finn’s. Patterned button-down, blue-grey stripes, the red of the first aid kit.  
  
He still hasn’t looked at Finn’s face. He moves to the bed instead, to the fucking zip tie and starts trying to undo it with his fingers. It’s impossible, he knows it is, but the razor is downstairs in his fucking bag.  
  
~  
   
Ryan doesn’t move. He lets Shane shove him and stays where he stumbles. Part of him wants to walk downstairs, but that seems wrong. It seems wrong to walk away. _Shane walked away_. But that was different, that was before they knew each other. So instead, he just stays there, saying nothing. Doing nothing. He sees a thousand ways this could play out and hates every one of them. It’s breaking his heart to watch Shane, all these broken, sad movements.  
   
But then, Shane starts tugging at the zip ties and Ryan thinks about the razor. His eyes scan the room for something he can use, maybe Scott had a pocket knife or something, but he doesn’t. There’s nothing in here that’ll work.  
   
Ryan walks out and downstairs, back to where he left the bags, and frees the razor. Everything is mechanical. His feet wobble on the stairs. His leg almost gives. He keeps swallowing but there’s nothing in his throat. He doesn’t think there’s anything left in him, and he knows how Shane feels. Knows he’s probably furious, and sad—god… he thought his brother was going to be alive.  
   
Fuck.  
   
He walks back in and places the floor on the ground next to Shane. It feels aggressive to hand it to him right now. So he just sets it down.  
  
~  
  
He’s so peripherally aware of everything. He can’t let himself be aware of it, but suddenly, there’s Ryan, there’s the razor, and he’s just… he’s just giving Shane what he needs and Shane thinks, vaguely, that he shoved him, and he shouldn’t have. He just goes still, then picks up the razor and cuts the zipties loose and Finn’s hand thuds down to the floor. Shane, razor held tightly in his fist, reaches up and presses the back of his hand to his forehead, eyes tightly shut.  
  
“Now what?” he asks. He thinks he’s asking Ryan. Where’s Ryan? Shane turns his head just enough to get Ryan’s shoes in his line of vision, but he doesn’t look up. What the fuck is he supposed to do now? What do they do with Finn?  
  
Finn’s whole life is whittled down to just this moment, on the wall here. Bitten.  
  
That’s how it ends.  
  
“Ryan…”  
  
~  
   
Ryan presses the hammer from hand to hand. He’s just staring at the date on the wall—two months—two fucking months. He thinks about it, what it was meant to tell them. About what Shane’s brother must have thought when he wrote it. He could’ve just wanted identification—but then why not kill himself? No, he _hoped_. Hoped they could find a cure. Like Shane hoped he was going to be alive. And now Ryan’s taken that away from both of them. He brings the flat end of the hammer to his chin and bangs lightly. Because he’s so angry, so sick of doing this, of killing things, of ruining things.  
   
Shane asks _what now_ , and Ryan doesn’t know if he’s talking to Ryan or Scott or the fucking universe, because Ryan wants to ask it a question too.  
   
_What else? What else are you going to fucking take?_  
   
Then Shane says his name and it pulls him to attention. Startles him so the hammer clips him again, harder, before he brings it down around his waist. He’s so scared to _talk_. He’s afraid of the anger that comes from seeing your brother dead on the ground with his skull smashed in.  
   
“Uh…” Nailed that opening. “Should w—do you want to bury him?”  
  
~  
  
_No_ , Shane thinks. He doesn’t want to fucking _bury_ him, he wants him to be alive.  
  
He’s falling apart, he’s falling apart, he can feel it. And he can’t let himself.  
  
He stands up. It’s strange and uncoordinated, but the movement helps. It snaps him out of it a little. He folds the razor up as he shakes his head, and his eyes are empty. “No,” he says. “I want to…” He looks around like he’s going to find the answer.  
  
“I’m not leaving him like this,” Shane says, and he steps around Finn. He braces one knee against the bed and shoves the comforter onto the floor, then he gets the sheets beneath and, drags them from around the mattress. He doesn’t look at Finn’s face before he throws the pale blue sheet over it. It’s not Finn’s face. It’s not what Shane will remember, he’ll make sure of that. And then he’s down on the floor again, tucking the sheet beneath that body — that decaying body that had been his brother’s once.  
  
And he’s not thinking anything. He gets it half tucked and then rolls him, still covered, all the way onto it, but he’s tall, he’s heavy. “Help me,” Shane says, pleads, because he doesn’t want to touch that skin. It feels so wrong, so foreign. And the sheets will… they’ll hold the flames, he just has to find some gasoline, kerosene, anything. “I want to take him out to the yard.”  
  
~  
   
Ryan pulls back at Shane’s answer. He doesn’t know what Shane wants to do, if they’re not going to bury him… Shane starts in with a sheet and Ryan thinks—oh… oh, and it makes sense. It never occurred to him with Jake, and he thinks maybe it should have. Maybe this is the smarter, kinder thing to do. But he doesn’t know if he could’ve lit a match—even after the rain—and set Jake on fire.  
   
Shane’s asking him for help, and Ryan would honestly rather run out of the house straight off the side of the Earth, but he has to do this. Shane needs him. He hears himself say, _okay_ , in this quiet, detached way and crosses the room to kneel beside Shane in front of the body. The body Shane wants to set on fire. He gnaws at his lip and gets a grip on an arm under the blanket and pushes so he rolls further into it. A flutter of him—of the body—catches Ryan’s eye but he pushes again. Until they get him fully wrapped in the sheet.  
   
“Okay.” He looks at Shane. “You want to look for—maybe there’s some rubbing alcohol or, or nail polish remover in the bathroom. That’s—that’ll catch.” And they still have the lighter.  
  
~  
  
Shane’s just nodding. He’s barely hearing him, but it’s registering somehow. Nail polish remover… fuck. He gets up to look. It’s weird, dreamlike. He cracks his shoulder off the doorframe like he’s not even sure where his own body is, but he doesn’t stop, doesn’t say anything. He just goes to the bathroom and starts digging through drawers.  
  
There is nail polish remover, but it’s mostly empty. There’s not nearly enough. He opens the cabinet behind the mirror and finds an aerosol can of insect repellant that feels mostly full. Shane turns and goes back with it.  
  
He comes back into the bedroom, pushes the can into the pocket of his hoodie and crouches down. It’s all mechanical. They both get their hands, their arms in under the body and lift, and he’s heavy, he’s a lot heavier than Jake was.  
  
The stairs are hard. Shane goes first because he’s taller. They’re halfway down when his foot slips, and he goes down, slams his shin off the edge of a step and tries to catch Finn’s body, tries to keep from dragging Ryan down, and in that split second it’s like a flashbulb goes off in his brain.  
  
There’s Finn sitting crosslegged on his bed when he was eleven and Shane was nine, and home sick from school. And he’s telling Shane about what happened on the TV shows he’s not allowed to watch because he has a fever, making sure Shane stays caught up.  
  
There’s Finn at ten, poking him in the shoulder to annoy him, over and over again until Shane rounds on him and shouts “Finn!” and he goes tearing off into the house.  
  
There’s sandcastles on the beach and the kitchen table late at night when they were teenagers and Finn saying “If you like guys that’s cool,” and Finn’s arm heavy on his shoulder at a party, somewhere, staring down this group of dickheads that didn’t bother Shane after that.  
  
There’s birthdays and boardgames and black and white movies in the basement.  
  
There’s Finn’s steady presence, there’s the calmness of him, there’s the things they’ve told one another that no one else knows, there’s Finn and the way he understands Shane’s solitude, there’s Finn never buckling or breaking beneath the weight of Shane’s silences. There’s knowing that Finn’s gonna understand, gonna _get_ him. There’s this knowledge that his brother is out there somewhere, his friend, his protector, even if Shane hasn’t needed his protection for a long time.  
  
But he’s been needing it. He fucking needs it now.  
  
There’s Finn wrapped up in a sheet between them, his shoulders hitting the stairs, brittle, infected. Dead.  
  
Shane makes this sound, bitten back, frustrated. Lost. He tries to stand again, but his legs won’t fucking work. He’s not even shaking, he’s just— he’s stopped. His chest feels like it’s about to shatter.  
  
~  
   
Ryan’s awkward on the stairs. He’s trying to keep himself minimized. He doesn’t want to get in Shane’s space right now. He hates this for him. He wonders if it wouldn’t have been better to never know, to never come back, or if somewhere down the line the wondering would kill him. If he hadn’t known. He wonders if Scott thought about that, if he thought about Shane coming back to the house and finding him like that.  
   
It almost makes him _mad_ at this person he never knew, and he knows he has no right to be. Knows this guy was dealing with something impossible and he made the best choice he could. But now Shane’s going to cremate his brother outside his childhood home. It just feels unfair. Everything feels unfair. And it’s got Jake back under Ryan’s skin—got him thinking about the fact that he hasn’t thought about Jake enough. That he’s moved on too fast from the little brother that died less than a month ago. The brother he let die.  
   
He’s thinking it when Shane slips. Ryan has to take more of the body’s weight to keep it from toppling onto Shane, because god knows he doesn’t need that. Ryan holds on and winces. He can see him reliving it, thinking about the past, his brother.    
   
“Are you—” He cuts himself off. “Hey, it’s...” Shane is so unaware of himself. He’s already banged his shoulder on the door frame. Ryan didn’t say anything because he’s having trouble speaking over the fear in his throat. But he saw it.  
   
Shane’s stopped. Dead stopped. Ryan’s heartbeat screams in his ears because it looks vacant. He looks dead in the worst way, in a worse way than Jake or Scott or his parents.  
   
“Okay,” he says, and his voice shakes.  
   
Ryan looks at the body, eyes jumping back and forth along the length of it. “Here, just…” Ryan sets Scott down and slides around to Shane. He pulls his fingers away, which isn’t hard with him so despondent. He eases the body onto the stairs in this precarious, delicately balanced way, and looks at Shane. Ryan’s trying to do what he can for him, but he isn’t there anymore. He’s _gone_ , like he had this one lifeline and it’s been severed. Ryan doesn’t know what comes after this. If he can pull Shane back from this.  
   
There’s not enough of him left. Of Ryan or Shane.  
   
He’s going to try anyway. He gets his arms under the body, and holy fuck, this guy is heavy. He lifts him, though, grunts a little. By himself. The extra weight hums through his leg, but it’s… well. He kinda elbows by Shane. Needs him to respond. And somehow, incredibly, gets to the bottom of the stairs, arms around this mountain of a fucking person. He adjusts and hikes the body further up and gets to the back door.  
   
“Get the door,” he says. “Come on.”  
  
~  
  
Shane just does what he’s told. He’s not hearing anything but white noise, but somehow he’s functioning. He’s hearing without hearing. He’s doing things without thinking. He gets the door. Outside, he knows this place. They used to have bonfires out here, they used to cook hotdogs over the flames. S’mores. Ghost stories. He used to sleep here in a tent in the summer as a kid, sometimes with Finn, sometimes without him.  
  
Ryan’s struggling. Shane’s beside him and they get the body down, lay it out on the dead grass. It’s surreal. It’s so surreal that Shane can almost pretend it’s not real at all. It’s not happening. He gets out the aerosol can and just holds it because it feels absurd. They haven’t brought any fucking weapons. The backyard’s fenced, but…  
  
“There’s nothing to light it with,” Shane says, softly. The pipe’s upstairs. Their packs are in the kitchen… There’s a lighter. He remembers now. From the treehouse.  
  
The mug. The treehouse.  
  
Shane feels like they’d just missed him, but he knew… it was days and days ago, now. Weeks. He must not even have been bitten, then.  
  
If he’d just left the cabin earlier. If he’d just… if he’d just gone home to look for Finn the way that Finn had obviously been looking for them. For Shane.  
  
And Shane was…  
  
Shane reaches out fast and catches Ryan’s shoulder like Ryan’s the only thing keeping him fucking upright. He thinks maybe he is, and he clings to him for a moment as the world whites out around him, and God, he would like to pass out. He feels so so sick. He needs to sit down, he needs to fucking cremate his brother.  
  
How did Ryan get through this?  
  
Shane bites the inside of his cheek until he tastes blood. His vision clears. He lets Ryan go.  
  
~  
  
The body’s down and wow, Ryan’s leg is breathing fire into the rest of him. Shane grabs him, and it’s this—it’s so weak. As transparent as Shane feels sometimes. But like he’s trying to hold on, and then he just, let’s go. He nods a couple times, mostly to himself, mostly this nervous, horrible movement to try and move to keep from being destroyed by… everything. He puts his hands on Shane’s shoulders and eases him into the grass.  
   
“Just sit, I’ll… just sit.”  
   
He leaves him there and runs inside to get the lighter. The space away from Shane makes it easier to breathe, but it hurts. He’s scared when he gets back Shane will be completely gone, like his body might start to fade out of existence like Marty McFly when he fucked up the timeline. Ryan doesn’t want him to. Ryan needs him.  
   
He feels more alone than he has in a long time. Even after Jake, Shane was there, in some capacity. But he’s not now, and Ryan hates himself for making it, even briefly, about _him_. He hates himself for worrying that he’ll lose Shane when Shane has lost everything. When Ryan took that from him. Kinda.  
   
He walks back out with the lighter and Shane is still there. Probably reliving every memory he thought he’d forgotten. Ryan just stands there, awkwardly, and every breath he’s inhaling fear and pain and guilt like cotton.  
   
“I’ve got the… I’ve got the lighter… I…” It’s hard for him to do this by himself. This is someone else’s brother. It’s Shane’s. “Here, give me the can…” He takes it. “You need to… get away from h—get away from the body.”  
  
~  
  
Shane looks away from the wrapped white sheet and up at Ryan, and Ryan is so alive, and so steady and he’s the only real thing in this moment. He’s the only thing that makes sense to Shane.  
  
So Shane does what Ryan tells him to. He edges back, pushes himself back in the grass because he doesn’t think he can stand up. His eyes stay fixed on Ryan. He doesn’t look away for a moment, but he’s panting, like he can’t catch his breath. On some level, he understands. On some level he knows that this is it. These are the last moments he’s got with Finn.  
  
But someone, something’s already taken Finn away. And Shane was too late.  
  
~  
   
Ryan glances back at Shane. He scoots back, and Ryan’s just… is he just supposed to set this guy on fire? Set his brother on fire? This feels so wrong. So twisted. Bad. He’s done enough awful shit—he doesn’t want to add burning a body to that list. But, cremation is a thing. It’s not _bad_.  
   
It’s not.  
   
His hands slip around the can of bug spray because he’s nervous, or terrified, or both. He’s a lot of things and nothing. But he’s got a lighter in one hand and a can of flammable liquid in the other. So he guesses he’s doing this.  
   
He keeps throwing glances back at Shane. But he’s not there. Ryan flicks the lighter—it fizzles out. It’s all so close to his hands. How do people do this? Ryan isn’t even good at lighting birthday candles. Jake used to make fun of him for it. He flicks a couple time before it catches and brings the front of the can to the flame—presses, and it’s _so much fire_. He jumps and his hand jump with him. It burns. Or he thinks it does. He stops the flame, stops everything. Shakes out his hand and the can with it.  
   
“Okay, my bad, okay.” It’s the kind of thing he’d say to himself, because Shane’s _not here_. Not really. And as much as he hates it, it’s freed him up for talking to himself. He tries again, and he’s expecting it this time. This explosion of fire like a flamethrower in a video game. He brings it down so it sizzles over the sheet. He doesn’t catch for too long before finally a flame sprouts to life. The sheet looks surreal through it, blurring. The fire crawls along the sheet. He holds it as long as he can, until the heat starts to hurt. He pulls back, but the flame keeps burning, blazing deeper into the sheet. Towards the body.  
   
Ryan’s imagining it burning, imagines the skin peeling and melting away. Bile rises in his throat. He wipes sweat away from his temple with an exposed wrist. He doesn’t have a free hand. It’s still hot so he steps away to stand next to Shane. Shane who’s lost his brother. Who’s lost the hope he was clinging to. Shane who is gone and Ryan doesn’t know if he’s coming back.  
   
And he feels like he’s watching more than a body burn.  
  
~  
  
Somewhere, Shane’s thinking that fire has to be a certain temperature to properly cremate someone. That they need a crematory and the right equipment, but this is cold earth on a winter day, all this grass…  
  
Shane blinks as the fire takes up all of his vision. He’s never smelled flesh burning before. None of this is good or easy. It’s awful. Like burying Jake. Leaving him in a foot of water, leaving Finn in this blaze of heat.  
  
The fire’s catching in the grass and fizzling out, but it’s eating up the sheet, it’s flickering and popping and Shane wonders if, maybe, everything: the backyard, his house, all of it, will just burn right down to the ground.  
  
He thinks he wants it to.  
  
“Let’s go,” Shane whispers, and wonders if Ryan can hear him beneath the sound of the flames. He rolls to his feet as the wind blows the smoke in their direction.  
  
He can’t stay here.  
  
He just needs to get through this. The fire might attract… something. Someone. Right. Survival. Keep going, just keep going. Keep fucking going.  
  
He climbs up onto the porch, steps through the door they’ve left open, into the house. He just leaves it. Leaves it open to the fire, to the coming night. He goes back upstairs for Finn’s bag, closes it up, slings it over his shoulder, picks up the pipe, and comes back down, moving like he’s sleepwalking. Where’s Ryan?  
  
The light from the fire flickers at the corners of his vision.  
  
~  
   
Ryan only hears Shane say _let’s go_ because he’s listening so hard. He’s so tuned in, hoping for signs of life, but this feels like the opposite. He’s startled when Shane gets up and walks towards the house anyway. He scrambles after him. The door is open. Shane left it that way. He shuts it. He’s worried the house is going to catch on fire, and all this, all Shane’s past will just burn down. Maybe Shane wants it to.  
   
A flicker of Shane on the stairs is the only warning he has that he’s gone. Ryan doesn’t follow. He grabs the bags he loaded the food into. He puts one on his back and slides the other over his forearm. He picks up the hammer he left on the floor to grab the lighter. What if Shane just doesn’t come back down?  
   
He does. He comes back with another bag. His brother’s bag. That makes sense. His back’s getting used to the weight of bags anyway, so another one probably won’t matter that much. Even if he’s only got seventy percent feeling in his back muscles.  
   
Jesus, it hits him again. Shane is so gone. Ryan wants to scream, to cry, to do something to make some noise. To shatter the silence. He wants to shake him and beg him to come back. But he doesn’t. Because it wouldn’t be fair to ask him to.  
   
Maybe he will if Ryan just gives him time.  
   
Maybe he won’t.  
   
Shane always seemed so _delicate_. So poised on a string. He fought through everything with his pipe and his cabin. He’s protected Ryan—he buried Jake. But it was like this thin sheet of armor over film. And now the armor’s gone, maybe the armor was his brother. It’s gone now. It’s just the film, and now it’ll just tear apart and float up, up, up until it’s gone too.  
   
He opens his mouth to say something, to ask Shane, but he can’t get it out. He doesn’t know how to respond, but he knows it’s not conversation. And even if it was, Ryan doesn’t have it in him to make it. To say the thing that’ll bring him back. Because he’s worried he’s just film too.  
  
~  
  
Shane really doesn’t know what to do, but he’s always been the one to figure it out. With Ryan, and while he was on his own. He wants to be able to figure it out now, but all he can think to do is keep moving.  
  
He’s too afraid to admit to Ryan that he’s totally lost because… because then he doesn’t know if they’ll have any reason to keep going at all, and Shane just wants to get away from here.  
  
And he wants to get Ryan away from here.  
  
The basketball court feels like another life. He just meets Ryan’s eyes, Ryan under the weight of both bags.  
  
Ryan.  
  
“Okay,” Shane says, breathes it. Exhales it. He’s breathing out all this air until there’s none left to fill his lungs.  
  
They need to go somewhere because then Ryan will be safe, and that’s what Shane’s been trying to do all this time. Keep him safe. It’s what he can keep trying to do.  
  
He won’t fuck up this time. He won’t be too late, ever, for Ryan, because Ryan’s dark eyes are pulling at something in him, Ryan’s small frame is drawing Shane’s gaze, Shane’s thoughts away from this place and towards something else.  
  
It’s not hope. Not anymore.  
  
Shane knows that if Ryan weren’t here, he’d be upstairs. Bitten. Bleeding. He wouldn’t have written anyone’s name on the wall. He knows what he’d use those two bullets for.  
  
There’s no cure, anyway.  
  
“Okay, come on,” Shane says, and goes out the front door. He leaves everything behind. He leaves a part of his heart in flames in the backyard, and he can’t even feel the hurt.  
  
And so they walk.  
  
~  
   
Shane has no idea what he’s doing. He may as well be walking into a wall. He’s trying to be there, maybe, to be a person. But it’s more like a _Sims_ character. He’s giving himself commands, but there’s nothing there. Not really. Not that isn’t pre-programmed.  
   
They just walk. Ryan keeps an eye out for somewhere to sleep because they are losing light fast. They get out of the suburbs and towards a more urban setting. Something Ryan recognizes. Buildings cluster closer together. Grease stains creep along the sides of buildings. He’s floored that it’s so deserted. Is there not a single person left? Have they all gone somewhere? Maybe a memo came out and everyone’s on a spaceship now just watching them like, _wow, look at those fucking fools who missed the email._  
   
He wishes that was true. He wishes there was an end—a stop to this. To the constant fight. Sometimes he still thinks about it, about if he’d let himself die there with Jake like he deserved to. He hates that he lived and Jake didn’t. But maybe it was justice. Surviving is _hard_. Surviving takes more and more until it whittles you down to your skeleton. Until you’re raw and open and every gust of wind bites into you like a razor blade.  
   
But then there’s moments like the hat and the basketball court. Something that almost makes it worth it. But, without Shane, Ryan doesn’t know if there is. But, no, Shane’s still here. Ryan just has to pull him back. Somehow. He can stay alive for that.  
   
He misses Jake more in Shane’s silence. And it’s the worst kind of missing him, the kind that’s gnarled and steeped in guilt. Because he wasn’t missing him enough before. He thought about Jake. Of course he did, but not like this. Not about the way his feet dragged every couple steps on the pavement because he didn’t pick up his feet. Mom used to get onto him about that constantly. She knocked it out of Ryan early, but Jake was the baby. He got away with shit.  
   
Ryan misses his random talk about sports to distract them from everything. He’d name plays or scores from championships and Ryan would try to guess which one. Ryan hasn’t thought about any of that. Not enough. He’s been thinking so much about Shane. He’s still thinking a lot about Shane, but occasionally his mind drifts. It has to. Because as he watches Shane, all mechanical movements and lost eyes, it builds to a breaking point.  
   
He tries to talk a few times, gets enough in him, but Shane doesn’t respond. Ryan doesn’t really expect him to, but he hopes. Quietly. That he will. God, he misses him. He misses the air about him, even when they were silent—this pulse. It’s gone now. And every time Ryan’s attempts are met with nothing, it’s harder to find anything in him. So he decides to be careful, to try and wait for a moment to do it again. To be smart. Like Shane always is.  
   
The sun’s nearly set when Ryan sees a barber shop. It’s marked with a busted sign, but a pair of scissors off the corner gives it away. The brick is as worn down as the last few buildings they passed, but up above it, there’s a window. A window probably means someone stayed up there at some point. Maybe a bed—a couch. Anything that isn’t the road that’s eating through Ryan’s boots and into his broken leg.  
  
“Hey, c’mere.”  
   
He tugs Shane towards it. It’s all brick, save a glass door with paint blotting out any chance to see inside. There are a few graffiti advertisements chipping out of the paint. Talking about weaves and extensions. There’s also one that says _everyone’s dead_. The person who wrote that couldn’t have been, but maybe they were—maybe like Scott.  
   
Ryan walks in. He keeps a hold on Shane’s arm until after he crosses the threshold. The door’s not locked. He doesn’t know why he keeps expecting doors to be locked. They never are. The place isn’t as undisturbed as Shane’s house. There are six chairs and drawers that look like they’ve been ransacked. Hair care stuff is scattered across the stations and on the floor. People don’t care about their hair in the apocalypse, really. Well, except that guy at the department store.  
   
There’s a couple pictures wedged into the mirrors in front of the chairs. Mothers with children, daughters with boyfriends. One of them is printed with _Erin and Jordan, 2012_. It looks like a prom picture. A girl in a butterfly yellow dress and a boy in a suit with a matching tie. Ryan steps further in, towards the little hall towards the back. The floor sticks to his feet, and he glances back to make sure Shane didn’t wander off into the wrong building. Even if he’s taking an extended mental holiday, Ryan’s going to protect him. He’s not about to rob him off the chance to come back.  
   
He can’t take anymore from Shane.  
  
~  
  
Shane does follow him, a little further behind than usual, a little more lost. He’s like a half-feral creature, just following the sound, the little beacon that is Ryan because he can’t imagine doing anything else. Ryan’s the only place warmth comes from. He’s the last time that Shane felt anything good.  
  
He thinks about joking about needing a haircut. _Now’s not the time…_ and he even opens his mouth but it doesn’t come out. He’s so tired. They come to a set of stairs and Shane kind of balks at the bottom. They’re steep, dark. He doesn’t know what’s up there. A hallway maybe. Four doors, lost hope.  
  
Anything could be up there.  
  
“Wait,” he says, and catches up.  
  
~  
  
Shane looks up like he thinks he's about to see his brother die all over again. It's heartbreaking, but he's not wrong. It's dark and the lights won't work. He checks the closet (always) and the bathroom across from the stairs. Ryan clutches the hammer hard, eases out of the bags.  
  
“I'll be right back.” He turns a glance on him. “Give yourself a haircut or something.” And it doesn't hurt because he doesn’t wait for a response.  
  
He takes the steps quick and presses open the door at the top. It creaks and he jumps more than he should. The room is cluttered, but there's space. There's a couch and a TV set in front of the window. A nook nestled into it. The ceiling slopes down. Jesus, he hopes Shane doesn't have to bend down the whole time. In his current state he'll never stop hitting his head. But no zombies. Not yet.  
  
There's another door to the right, cutting a chunk out of the space. He nudges it open with his foot and jerks inside, looking left, right and--he jumps almost high enough to hit the ceiling.  
  
It's his reflection. Fucks sake, it's him. He runs the bridge of his nose and rolls his eyes. He mouths, “you're an idiot” to the darkened shadows of his reflection. He turns the sink faucet, waits, but nothing comes.  
  
He sighs.  
  
He checks the length of the room for more doors. There's nothing else. Just a coffee table in front of the couch, and yes, it's a pullout.  
  
Okay, this seems fine. “Hey, you okay?” He calls without looking up. He shivers. It's cold up here. It's cold everywhere.  
  
~  
  
“Yeah,” Shane says, automatically. He’s just been standing there. He just stands there for a moment longer, then reaches down and picks up one of the bags. Ryan’s. God, it’s heavy. He’s been carrying this the whole time. This and Shane’s. _Fuck_.  
  
Shane shoulders it. It takes a couple tries because it doesn’t sit right over the strap of Finn’s. Then he pulls himself up the steps, going slowly.  
  
He finds Ryan in the room at the top of the stairs and adjusts Ryan’s bag on his shoulder. His own is still down there.  
  
“Nice place you’ve got,” he says, very soft. And there’s a flicker of life there. For a moment, he’s almost Shane. He looks away from the couch, the TV, to Ryan. “What’re we gonna do about that door?” The one downstairs. Maybe they can push something against it?  
  
~  
  
Ryan smiles. It's weak and gone too fast. But it's a maybe. He pulls the bag off Shane, but doesn't touch his brother's. Feels like it might be too close. He sets it down.  
  
“We can put the chairs in front of it. There's six, right?” He's so channelled into Shane right now. He knows exactly what door he means, and he's desperate to give him a semblance of safety. “Zombies have short attention spans. They'd quit after two.”  
  
He walks by Shane to get the other bag downstairs and thumps the wooden door at the entrance to the room. His hand shifts to the golden handle with the latch. “And this one locks too. In case it's something else. I'm gonna get the bag.”  
  
He walks downstairs and grabs it. His body is hurting everywhere. He's trying not to stop for too long because he's on the verge of passing out. He shakes his hands to stop them shaking. It's so much harder like this. Has he been putting all this on Shane this whole time? His knee quivers and he has to grab the wall to stay upright.  
  
Okay, less stopping. He drags four of the six chairs to the door, stacks them in the best way he can. Tries to give them some leverage. He sets the last one in a slope against the middle.  
  
He steps back. Wow, it looks like he just threw them into the air and they landed, not spent five minutes trying to organize them. Oh well.  
  
He runs and grabs the bag and half jogs back to the top of the steps and sets it down. “Okay, I blocked the door. It's very modern art. If they had a lawn contest, we'd win.” He closes the door behind him, locks it, then walks inside. He's creeping into mania so he tries to keep his voice even, slow. “Are you hungry? You should try to eat something.”  
  
~  
  
Ryan’s just this flurry of noise and sound. Shane is not hungry, but he knows Ryan’s right. And he knows Ryan won’t eat, if he doesn’t, so he says “Okay.”  
  
He doesn’t know what to do with Finn’s bag, so he just slips the strap off of his shoulder and gathers it up to his chest for a moment. Finally, he carefully sets it down on the end of the pullout bed. He thinks that he should go through it. See if there’s anything in there — food, water — but he can’t do it yet. He just moves away from it, creates a distance, and goes to crouch in front of his own bag, where Ryan set it down.  
  
“What do you want?” he asks, pulling out tins wrapped like shoddy Christmas gifts in their towels. He can’t even fucking think right now. He doesn’t want to pick a food to eat. He wonders, actually, if he would feel better if he threw up, but there’s nothing _to_ throw up. It would probably just hurt more.  
  
“You want… tuna and crackers?” There’s no utensils to eat it with, otherwise so they need to scoop it out with something. He doesn’t want to use his fingers. “Or… just crackers.”  
  
~  
  
“Uh… what is there even? I didn't look.” He doubts Shane's gonna be able to stomach much. But he needs to. “The crackers are gonna go bad faster. Eat those.” He sorts through some of the food and finds a jar of peanut butter.  
  
“You probably won't eat much so don't open the tuna… here…” He unscrews the jar and sets the lid aside. He drags the crackers to him.  
  
_Just don't stop._  
  
He breaks a cracker in half and slides it into the jar. He uses it to scrape some of the peanut butter toward the lid so it's easier to dip without breaking. He slips the cracker through again to slather as much as he can without snapping it and lays the jar sideways.  
  
He extends the cracker to Shane. “Also…” He grabs a waste basket beside the couch and sets it to the side. “In case this goes poorly.”  
  
~  
  
Shane takes it from him and says this soft, almost overwhelmed “Thank you,” because damn, it’s just a cracker, but Ryan’s being so nice and probably so patient, because Shane doesn’t even know where he’s been the last few hours.  
  
He puts it in his mouth so he doesn’t have a breakdown and somewhere he thinks it must taste good. The peanut butter stops it from turning to ashes in his mouth but yeah, it’s a lot, and he’s glad he didn’t open the tuna just to waste it, because his stomach’s already turning. He draws his knees up and rests his forearm over them, drops his forehead onto it as he concentrates on just getting that down.  
  
He knows he’s starving. He can feel the ache in his temples. They’ve walked so far and he’s eaten half a protein bar, but so has Ryan. He’s pale when he looks up. His eyes are glassy, but he finds Ryan’s. He takes a breath.  
  
“Eat,” he tells him, waving vaguely at the food. “I’ll try not to vomit in front of you while you do.”  
  
~  
  
Shane looks so weak. Pale and fragile and… Ryan’s fingers catch on the floor as he flexes them. Damn it. Damn it, he just wants to fix it.  
  
“You can vomit in front of me, I can take it.”  
  
Ryan expected this. He didn't think Shane would be able to eat much but it hurts that he can't. And then he reminds Ryan he has to eat. His stomach has been scratching at him. His head hurts from it. Or maybe that's something else. He doesn't know.  
  
But he does know that burning flesh smells like barbecue and broken skulls look like eggshells and he broke someone else's head open today. But Shane needs him now and if he can't get food down, he might not get up tomorrow.  
  
He forces down a few crackers, but they don't keep much peanut butter. The first one snaps so he eats it plain and the second is apparently greased in oil. The rest are the same. They taste like ash and dead people coffee grounds.  
  
But they ease his stomach. He grabs another one, but sets it down. “Is your head hurting?” He digs through his own bag and pulls out a bottle of water. “Maybe water?”  
  
~  
  
_‘You can vomit in front of me, I can take it.’_  
  
Shane makes a face, it’s all in his eyes, his brows, but then he looks away, reaches for the crackers again. He gets another one down, this time with less peanut butter than the first, and it sticks less to mouth, his teeth, but the dryness, the slight staleness seems to stick to his throat as he swallows.  
  
It’s all mechanical. Chew, swallow. It’s easier if he does something with his hands so he doesn’t have to think about what his mouth is doing. Ryan asks him if he wants water and Jesus he feels sick. He needs to get this taste out of his mouth so he takes it.  
  
He takes a drink, but his body’s just not having it. His stomach lurches and he holds the bottle away from him quickly as he tries to get a handle on what’s happening.  
  
For a second he’s fine, and then he’s fucking not. He sets the bottle down, miraculously doesn’t knock it over, then grabs the waste basket and retches over it, but nothing comes up. He’s fighting so that nothing comes up, because what a waste.  
  
“Sorry,” he says, because gross, he’s gross, and then suddenly, some horrible, tense, brittle thing in him breaks and he starts laughing. It’s not funny. Or maybe it is. He has no fucking idea. It’s a real laugh, a little wild at the edges. He’s laughing because he can’t do anything else. He can’t just start screaming.  
  
“Ugh, fuck,” he says, reaching up to wipe the tears from his eyes with his fingers. He presses the heels of his hands against them, and as he does, his lungs pump sort of erratically and God, he is so close to just breaking into sobs and he can’t. He clenches his jaw, holds his breath, and after a second lowers his hands. “Sorry,” he says again, and there’s no laughter in it, this time.  
  
~  
  
Ryan's brow furrows. But he doesn't react. He wishes he had a cool rag. Anything to make this better. But he's got nothing but shitty crackers.  
  
Ryan reaches out and brushes a hand across his knee. Shane is refusing to cry, which seems absurd considering what happened. But Ryan can't mention it or it'll make it worse. So he's got his stupid hand on him, and finally he draws it back because it feels worthless.  
  
“Don't be sorry. Just… whatever you need to do.” His voice is soft, almost hoarse. “You can.”  
  
And this is too close to stopping. All the hurt is welling through him. Because he can feel Shane's tearing him apart. The only thing left in the wreckage. Pain.  
  
~  
  
Shane takes this short, shuddering breath and he’s nodding, and his eyes fall on Ryan’s hand — not touching him anymore. He misses it. His fingers were cold.  
  
“You’re cold,” he says. Like Ryan doesn’t know. “Your leg, is your leg okay?” He just needs to turn this around. Talk about someone else, someone who’s not him, and Ryan’s just going to have to carry that if Shane doesn’t want to fall apart.  
  
He can’t fall apart. He doesn’t know how to fix it after.  
  
~  
  
Ryan glances at his leg like he's forgotten it. “Huh? It's fine…” He wants Shane to just get this out from inside of him. Ryan’s pushed a lot of shit with Jake down, stuff that’s still trying to claw up his spine and shred what’s left of his heart. But he let himself have the beginning of it. It’s the only reason he’s bent like a steel rod in a fire but hasn’t broken.  
  
But Shane’s not Ryan. He doesn’t know how to feel things. He’s probably scared of what happens if he does. He’s so broken. So absolutely ruined. But Ryan _misses_ him. Misses him like someone cut a hole in him. Another one. And he scared he’s losing someone else. In a way that’s worse than the sudden crush of a pipe. A family member lost to Alzheimer's—vanishing so slow you don’t notice until it just is. They’re gone, and you have to grieve. And that _hope_ is never wrenched from you. You have to make yourself let go.  
  
He hates it for Shane. Hates he had to see it. See his brother, older or younger, Ryan doesn’t know. But he thinks… older, for some reason. He’s almost sure. It’s something separate from Jake. Like Shane’s lost a support beam.    
  
He can't sit here. He can't… not so close, everything he wants to do feels wrong. Ryan wants to reach out, make this okay. But he’s scared he’ll just make it worse. Make Shane cold. Colder.  
  
He stands up. His leg isn't fine.  
  
He drags the coffee table away from the front of the couch and grabs the strap to pull it out. It's heavy.  
  
Everything's heavy.  
  
“The last time I slept on a pullout couch…” His voice strains. He's back to trying to fill this silence when he knows he shouldn't. It's automatic. Maybe he should be glad he still tries. Maybe it means he's not all the way broken.  
  
“It was me and like twelve friends. We rented a suite in Vegas for this guy's bachelor party. And like six of us tried to fit on it.” Ryan had been so fucking hot. His lungs had been near crushed by an elbow. He misses it, though. All the warmth, all the life. He laughs and it's far away. Back on that bed.  
  
“Anyway, it fucking broke.” He's grunts as he pull the bed out into position. It's ratty but it's a mattress. “They thought we had four people in the room. Good luck explaining that. We got banned. For life. So if we stop by Vegas. Let's avoid Santa Fe Station. Those zombies will probably really have it in for me.”  
  
~  
  
Shane looks up, startled, a little panicked as Ryan stands up, but he just goes over to the bed and Shane doesn’t know what he was so frightened for.  
  
He looks back down at the food as Ryan talks, slowly starts to put thing away, close the peanut butter jar, and then his eyes are back on Ryan and Shane thinks about how familiar Ryan’s voice has become, and how it just washes over him sometimes until he has to remember that there are words, and not just comfort to the sound of it. But he’s listening this time.  
  
And he wants to smile, or laugh or something like he did a moment ago, but wants it to be better than that. Realer. And he can’t seem to work his mouth to do it. “Check. No Santa Fe Station in Vegas.” He casts around in his past for something to reciprocate with, but it’s just this whirlwind of Finn, and friends who are probably dead, too. Instead, he gets up to help Ryan because he has to do something. He gets the blanket from the bookstore, because that’s what’s happening, right? Ryan’s making this bed up.  
  
Ryan didn’t answer him about his leg, so Shane’s kind of watching, checking for anything, but it seems the same as always. Unless he’s just getting better at hiding it.  
  
Shane gently moves Finn’s bag to where Ryan’s moved the coffee table and then looks up. Ryan’s back is to him for a moment and Shane remembers wrapping his arms around him earlier today. He wants to do that now, because he is cold and Ryan is cold, but he’s starting to feel like he’s lost him. Ryan’s been breaking away from him, doing things on his own. Disappearing from Shane’s sight when he can. When he gets a chance. Shane wonders if maybe one day he just won’t come back.  
  
“Here,” Shane says, and steps closer to sort of offer the blanket, because God, he’s _trying_. He’s trying to be here because he can see that Ryan’s trying to make him okay. And he feels awful because all he can get out are monosyllables and confused apologies. Because this is bigger than the apologies he’s tried to make today. He’s sorry that Ryan had to do it. That Ryan had to do another terrible thing. That Ryan felt like he had to because Shane couldn’t get a fucking grip. And suddenly Shane wonders if Ryan’s pissed about that, or hurt, and maybe he should be.  
  
Shane swallows, swaying a little where he’s standing as ribs start trying to knit themselves together — or at least that’s how his chest feels. Shane didn’t want him to have to do it. Kill— kill anything. Burn it. Maybe Ryan’s right, and if they were with more people, all this horrible responsibility wouldn’t have to be split just between them. Maybe if they’d brother those people from the mall to his house — Shane feels nausea at his insides just thinking about it — but then Ryan wouldn’t have to be the one to deal with this all alone, while Shane withdrew. Again.  
  
Shane doesn’t know how to go back to being okay. He doesn’t know how to reach out to people that need or want or expect Shane to need them. So no one’s ever dealt with Shane when he _couldn’t_ need them, and _wanted_ to stick around. No one’s kept giving, anyway. And why should they? Shane thinks.  
  
Finn always knew when to back off, knew when to push. Finn understood the perplexing bits and pieces of facts and moments that Shane laid out over years. Shane’s attempts at being concise when he was trying to figure out what was so wrong with him, why he felt more empty the more people he met, the older he got. And Finn understood it when it was all still fragments, and somehow that helped to turn all this mess into something cohesive that Shane could explain.  
  
_I’m bad at feeling._  
  
And that he makes it hard for everyone else. For the people that care.  
  
And Shane’s never met anyone that feels anything the way that Ryan does and, Shane thinks, if he doesn’t get himself fucking together, Ryan’s going to suffocate in all this smoke Shane’s creating like a protective layer around himself, while he burns alive trying to figure out how to handle the fact that his brother, the one person Shane thought would always be there, even if they were in different states, different countries, is dead. Has been dead. Had died alone.  
  
He remembers the way Ryan gasped, breathless, when Shane kissed his neck today, and that was before. That was before all this. Maybe Shane’s the fire, and he’s just going to pull all the oxygen out of the room until it’s just him, alone, and no one else can breathe in it.  
  
And Shane doesn’t want to make it so that he burns Ryan, too, if Ryan tries to reach him. If Ryan even wants to. Because there’s all this hurt, but Shane doesn’t know how to feel any of it, doesn’t know how to process it, and the flames just feed on his emptiness, all this nothing inside him, because he doesn’t have the enough tears or rage or hope inside him to put it out.  
  
In the end, this thing’s always tried to isolate him, and for the most part, Shane’s let it because, after all, he really believes that solitude’s not that bad.  
  
But loneliness is.  
  
~  
   
Ryan breathes and it comes out thoughtful, just short of exasperated. He’s not, really, not with Shane. He just wishes he knew what to do, and he wishes that Shane could be okay for a few seconds without the world wrenching it out from under him. He takes the blanket. Shane’s so spaced. He’s swaying on his feet.  
   
Ryan can see it in his eyes. Under all the blank. Shane trying to make this work. He knows Shane is trying to come back, trying to… be what he’s supposed to be. He said that, didn’t he? That he was never enough. Ryan wants so bad to tell him it’s okay, wants to make him believe it. But he’s afraid if he opens his mouth Shane might see how not okay Ryan is. How if he pushes too hard he’ll fall apart, and then Shane will know Ryan needs him, needs more from him. And Ryan wants so badly for that not to be true. He wants to be an antidote for Shane. But he’s not.  
   
All Ryan knows to do is touch. It’s what he wants when he’s hurt. He uses touch, but every time he and Shane have… Shane doesn’t _like_ it. Not from Ryan. He tolerates it for Ryan, but he swats Ryan away like a bug when he tries. Ryan doesn’t want to get swatted, because when he wants to touch, when he reaches out—and gets pushed back, nothing hurts worse.  
   
“Okay…”  
   
But words aren’t doing anything. He hasn’t tried to actively give Shane _therapy_ about losing his brother, but… Shane’s not bringing it up. He doesn’t want to talk about it. He wants to process it in this tiny compartment in his brain that’s expanding. It’s going to take over all of him.  
   
Ryan takes Shane by the arms and gently pushes him onto the bed, so he’s sitting up, and Ryan is standing, bent, in front of him. He puts his hand around the back of Shane’s neck so his palms rest under his chin and his thumbs sit against his jaw. He meets his eyes. Hard.  
   
“Shane.” He steadies himself. “I know this is… impossible. And it… I know you’re trying to… overcome yourself and do what you’re supposed to or whatever, but just… you deal with you, okay?” He drops his hands to Shane’s shoulders and tries to keep from shaking. “However you need.” He squeezes. “I’ll be here if you need me.”  
   
_I’m not going anywhere._  
   
He lets go and steps back. He hates this. He always knew everyone’s expectations before. His mom’s, Jake’s, his friends’… He was good at figuring them out, at knowing what people needed from him. He shaped himself around them. But Shane is different. He’s so hard to read, and Ryan doesn’t know that he has what Shane needs in him. Silence. Space. He feels like he’s the worst person alive for Shane—like the universe brought him into Shane’s life to fucking torture him.  
   
His leg quivers to near-buckle, and it’s back to feel like the only outside part of him that matches the inside. But he has to be _together_. If he has any chance of helping Shane, he _cannot_ buckle.  
   
~  
  
For a moment, Ryan had him, completely. For a moment all Shane has is Ryan's eyes, and Ryan's hands in him, and that is all he needs, but then Ryan's gone again, and Shane's left with just Ryan’s words and his own reality, and it hurts. It hurts so much.

He looks away from him as he steps back, drops his eyes. He replaces Ryan's touch in the back of his neck with his own cold fingers. Because he doesn't know how to need people, and when he does he doesn't know how to say it.

Ryan's leg shakes, he's favoring it, trying not to. Shane knows how to protect other people. He tries to put them together: What he wants, what Ryan needs.

"You need to—" _sit. He needs to sit._

Ryan thinks he's bossy. Ryan doesn't _like_ Shane's constant mollycoddling. He's just trying to—  
  
Shane looks up and meets Ryan's eyes for the smallest of seconds before he can't hold them anymore. "Will you just sit with me?"

It comes out so uncertain it shakes. Shane keeps his eyes on the floor because maybe he'll say no. And then Shane's out of ideas, out of options.

He thinks _I do need you._  
  
~  
   
Surprise flits through him. That is not what Ryan expects. Or maybe it is, fuck, he’s tired and confused and he killed Shane’s brother today. He’s not on his game. But it’s pleasantly surprising. It’s what he wanted, and he’d been so sure that being near Shane, touching Shane, was going to backslide them that he’s been staunchly rejecting anything that he wants.  
   
It’s self-sabotaging. Maybe it’s part of this weird survivor guilt, or hell, what do you call it when you were the killer? Is it just regular guilt at that point? Either way, it’s festering inside him. This self-loathing that he’s trying not to drown in. It’s awful. It solves nothing, and yet he can’t stop it pawing at his brain every time he _thinks_.  
   
“Yeah, sure.” He drops down beside Shane. He’s too close, close enough that their thighs brush. He isn’t sure if he should pull away. Touch seems like it overloads Shane usually, but Shane followed his touch with his hand. Maybe it’s… maybe he doesn’t hate it as much as Ryan thinks he does. Or he does and he’s going to short circuit and explode and kill them both.  
   
Whatever, he’s experimenting. And if he’s going to die, he can’t think of anything he’d rather die from than touching Shane.  
   
“Do I, uh… do you want me to be quiet or…?” He smiles uncertainly, tilts his head to watch Shane from the side. “Or talk? Because unless you specifically ask me not to, we both know I’m probably going to talk.”  
  
~  
  
He exhales a laugh, eyes on the place their legs touch. "I— you don't _annoy_ me," Shane says. "Unless you start talking about Kobe Bryant." He's too tired to even make the name a joke this time.  
  
"I like your voice." He admits this to his knees, then shifts, his hand sliding along the bed to behind Ryan, like he might lean into him, but he doesn't. He just makes the motion and goes still there, like he’s scared of what will happen if he completes it. “You could—. Anything.”  
  
~

Ryan laughs. It’s good, that Shane likes his voice, it makes him feel like he’s not crazy for making an effort to talk. Even when he gets nothing back. It makes something in him flutter.  
   
“You’re being really unfair. There’s no reason for you to hate him just because I _like_ him. The guy is a legend. He is essentially my second, unrelated father that I’ve never actually spoken to. But he’s amazing. My single greatest regret in life is that I never got to meet him.”  
   
He flicks his eyes back to Shane’s hand on the mattress. He thinks Shane’s going to lean into him, but he doesn’t, so it’s this half-measure. But it’s a measure, which means Ryan should probably do something with it. He slides his hand back so it grazes Shane’s knuckles. He’s not Shane. Shane always seems to know where to touch or what to do for Ryan, but Ryan is on shattered ground.  
   
He moves his other hand to Shane’s back and lies it there. He doesn’t push. He doesn’t know if Shane wants more, or if he just wants to dance on the outskirts and feel something like normal. But Ryan wants him to know he can. That he’s allowed to do this if he wants to. But he doesn’t _have_ to. He just rubs his back lightly and watches him.  
   
For a second, Shane reminds him of Jake after basketball tryouts. Sitting outside the gym on a curb. He hadn’t made the team. Nothing near the level of a brother dying, but he’d ended up curled against Ryan’s chest, anyway.  
   
“Every time you do anything from now on, I’m going to pitch in with: well, this is how Kobe Bryant would’ve done it until you understand the value of having him in your life.”  
   
~  
  
Ryan's touch almost breaks something in him, but he doesn't move away. He does tense though, because he's trying not to shake, and he doesn't want Ryan to pull away, he doesn't want to ask again.

"I've gotten this far without him," Shane says, "I don't think I need any more standards to live up to, besides you'll never like anyone as much as you clearly— you _clearly_ love him so, I mean." He shrugs. "I'll just keep..."

He thinks, _I'll just keep doing this_ , and it floods him with a cold kind of numbness. And he does start shaking, at the edge of something. Does he jump or not?  
  
~  
   
Ryan feels Shane tense, feels Shane do… a lot of things. He’s shaking, and Ryan’s stuck again. He doesn’t know whether to pull back or keep going. God, what if he fucks up? He tries to focus on what Shane said. Conversation could distract him— _should_ he distract him?  
   
He lets his hand trail down Shane’s back. Contemplating whether to take it back. Whether to pull him to his chest and beg him to let go. He doesn’t know, but he lets it sit for now. “As a role model, I’m not devastated that I never got to _date_ him.” His voice is steadier than he feels, but just barely. “I do like you like… how you are, though, so I guess I’ll keep his life lessons to myself.”  
  
~  
  
"Yeah," Shane says, "but then I'll have to stay like this." He goes all breathless at the edge of that last word and then gasps softly. He doesn't want to keep pushing Ryan away. He doesn't want to keep fighting how he is for how the world wants him to be. He doesn't want to keep feeling as fucking destroyed as he does in the moment.

"I think even if you told me all your Kobe life lessons," Shane says, and his voice cracks all the way up his throat from somewhere deep in his chest as he continues. "I won't ever figure out how to be a basic person, even in spite of my height and my— undeniable skills at basketball. So... what if I'm always like this?"

What if it never gets better? What if not feeling stops him from pushing through grief? What if Shane needs Finn to accept him in place of accepting his fucking self?  
  
~  
   
Oh, this seems like they’re moving in a direction. Ryan doesn’t know if it’s good or going to end in flames, like Shane’s brother. But he brightens. Against all logic and reason. He leans into it like a warm shower. He laughs, even though he shouldn’t, at the basketball bit. Because it comes out of nowhere and reminds him of the game today and just… it’s good.  
   
“Jesus, you _are_ a basic person.” He withdraws his hand so he can look more directly at Shane. “Stop… thinking you’re this half- _creature_ because you don’t process things like most people.” He drops the hand and pulls it around to press against Shane’s knee. “I know it sucks right now. I know it’s making it hard to process this, but it doesn’t make you _subhuman_.”  
   
Ryan has to work to make sure he doesn’t dig his fingers in. Shane doesn’t need any kind of intense physical stimulation right now. Ryan’s probably being too intense already. “Didn’t you just hear me? I like the way you are. You’re weird, yeah, but I’ve never met someone I wanted… I wanted to be around more. It’s scary, seeing you so… seeing you like this, specifically, but today was _traumatic_. No one rolls away from trauma singing showtunes.” He tries not to get too close. “Look at me—okay? Just… stop beating yourself up for being you. You… is _good_. I like you. Maybe more than Kobe Bryant. So just… stop being a jackass, okay? To you.”  
  
~  
  
" _'You' is good_ ," Shane repeats, because that's funny to him, somewhere, but he's feeling kind of like he's been pushed backwards off a cliff, only it's not awful. It's just really disorienting. Maybe there's water at the bottom, like a nice... pond.

He looks at Ryan when Ryan asks him to, but can't hold it for long. "I can't believe..." he swallows. "I can't believe you would betray Carlos Baggins that way, but I... I mean, we can keep this between us, I won't tell him you said that."

He's still trying fucking hard, but this time it's a little bit easier. His eyes keep flickering between Ryan's eyes, to his cheekbones, his lips, the line of his nose. He can't keep looking into his eyes.  
  
~  
   
It feels like Shane’s only half-registering what he’s saying. But it’s okay. It’s enough. He shakes his head and pulls back, so they’re just sitting side by side. Ryan looks up and shakes with this quiet laughter. It’s not easy. Not like it has been, but it’s… it’s laughter that doesn’t feel like a cough.  
   
“Baggins, Jesus—he’s not a freakin' hobbit.” He’s still got the one hand on Shane’s where it’s sat behind him, but that’s all now. “And, by all means, tell him. He’s not insecure enough to be bothered by petty competition.” He touches Shane with his elbow, kinda nudges him, but doesn’t push because he’s confident Shane will just fall over. “Your basketball skills might scare him, though.”  
  
~  
  
He exhales this breath of a laugh in a rush and then says, "Stick with me, okay?" It's not confident, he's _asking_ , pleading, maybe. Because it's selfish, very selfish, and he thinks, maybe eventually, he could get through this without Ryan, but he really doesn't want to.  
  
~  
   
Ryan lets his head fall on—maybe against Shane’s shoulder for just a second before he pulls back. He doesn’t look at Shane, focuses on his fingers, folding all over each other. “I’m not going anywhere.” This feels like progress, but it’s slow. Achingly slow. Ryan wants to lie down, sleep for a hundred years—but this apartment, with Shane like this, he knows he probably won’t. God, he’s still so… he feels like a broken vase someone’s holding together with their hands.  
   
They’re both disasters. Ryan’s barely holding on, and Shane’s not anymore. He’s trying to swim back to something he _can_ hold on to. And Ryan wants to be that. He will stay with him. He’ll be here. He’ll sit with him through this, through all of it—for a thousand years—if it means he can have Shane back for even a second.  
   
“You’re stuck with me.”  
  
~  
  
Shane squeezes his eyes shut, fighting. "Okay," he says. It breaks free almost under his breath.

And he wants to believe him so badly. He thinks, maybe, he does. Maybe. Or maybe he's just too tired to believe anything else right now.

This is what he needs, what he's needed.

He needs to lay down, he wants to sleep and make this horrible fucking day end, but he knows how Ryan is about beds but the idea of not having him—

Shane reaches out because that's all he knows how to do to keep him, and he twists his fingers in his sleeve, and then Shane shifts, maneuvers his legs past Ryan, onto the bed. He doesn't let go once, he's like kid hanging on. He lays down, and the mattress is lumpy and too thin, but he doesn't care. It's not a floor.

"Ry." It's a whisper and if he said the rest of his name, it's lost somewhere. Shane tugs at him, he wants the bookstore again. He'd sleep on floors forever if it meant Ryan tucked against his side, Ryan's head on his chest, fuck he’d take anything, Ryan’s hand on his back again, his fingers over Shane’s. Anything.  
  
~  
   
Ryan laughs because Shane is a child. He’s a little more here, but it’s like he’s having to grow up again. But it’s progress, and it’s fucking adorable—and it should not be because he’s sad and hurting. But it is. Ryan can’t help the things that come into his brain. He can’t even help the things that come out of his mouth sometimes.  
   
“Okay,” he says and he’s still laughing around it.  
   
He’s noticed this thing Shane’s doing. Isn’t sure if he did it just now, but _Ry_. It’s a thing he keeps calling Ryan. And Ryan likes it, wants it to be intentional. It’s not like no one’s called him Ry before, but this is different. This is Shane. And Ryan wants Shane to be calling him something that’s specifically his. Like Ryan is Shane’s. Because… god, he wants to be.  
   
“Hang on…” He reaches to grab the blanket he set aside and kinda drapes it over them as he lies down beside Shane. Shane’s tugging now, so it’s real. Shane wants this. Needs it, maybe. Ryan tucks into Shane’s side and lays his head on his shoulder. He curls one hand in front of him, against Shane, and places the other over Shane’s chest. Shane’s pulse filters through his sweater to tangle in Ryan’s.  
   
The mattress is awful. Ryan is acutely aware of all the ways it digs into his side, his shoulder—the only protection from it is Shane’s body. “Do you not have any people you were—any celebrities you looked up to? What do history people even _like_? Archeologists? What about Abraham Lincoln? You guys have some stuff in common. Log cabins. Both 40 feet tall.”  
  
~  
  
"Um, I always thought it'd be kind of cool to be a DM..." Shane goes quiet, he thinks about this. He hates this mattress."I like— I like Clark Gable. I'd be great in a silent film. I could have a mustache..."

Somehow he's gotten one arm up, and his fingers trace Ryan's side, his shoulder, linger there. It's barely a touch.  
  
~  
  
Ryan grins. Even when he's halfway on another planet, it's the most uniquely Shane thing he's said. Ryan drums his fingers on his chest, but it's not a conscious movement. Idle nerves.  
  
“That was a good answer.” Because it was. Shane's touching his shoulder. He'd forgotten dungeons and dragons, almost has to ask what a DM is. He's glad he doesn't.  
  
“You would look weird with a mustache.” He's got his eyes on the far wall. That's where the closet was. Damn, he's gotta stop. He needs to be _still_.  
  
He wishes he could give Shane this little thing. Be a DM. It should be simple, but it's just Ryan, and he's… it's not enough.  
  
~  
  
Shane doesn’t fight for his right to bad facial hair, but his fingers do shift from Ryan’s shoulder, skim up his neck, and settle in his hair. He shifts until it's comfortable and closes his eyes because it's a lot.

His mind drifts. It's like falling asleep but he doesn't think he does. He has to drag himself back to the surface anyway.

"What you did today was..." Shane swallows.  
  
~  
  
Ryan's too aware of where Shane's hand is. What's it's doing. He's hopeful about it. It seems like it means something. Means Shane does more than tolerate him because this… this isn't for Ryan. Not right now.  
  
Then… Ryan goes so still his blood flow stops. Frozen like a photo in his veins. He coaxes himself to move but he's tense. He's so tense, remembering the way that hammer shattered skill. The debris that scattered under the crunch. The way he fell. It fell. The way it sounded like his Mom…  
  
And he doesn't _know_ if Shane is okay with it. If Shane's digging back through stuff and thinking, _oh hey, this fuck killed my brother._ The next word could be _awful_ , or _wrong_ , or maybe just _hard_. Shane has every right to hate Ryan. Ryan did it for him, but that doesn't mean it was the right call. That doesn't mean it was Ryan's call.  
  
“Yeah…” It comes out broken, hollow, too weak to shake.  
  
~  
  
He can't say 'thank you,' because it's wrong. He's not there yet. But...

"I n— I couldn't have done it," he says softly, and then he takes a deep breath and shifts, turns to to Ryan, faces him. He leaves his fingers in his hair, but rests his palm along his jaw but he doesn't look at him.

Maybe he could've, but only because he had to keep going for Ryan. He knows he couldn’t have cremated him, if he managed to kill him. It.  
  
If Ryan hadn't found him in the first place, at the cabin, Shane knows he'd still be back there. He knows how this would have ended and he doesn't know if it's normal or right that he feels like he's living both stories at once — the one where he killed himself in Finn's bedroom, and the one where he's pacing his heartbeats to the rhythm of Ryan's voice. Ryan who was still a stranger on the day Finn was bitten.

Shane doesn't know if he should or could transfer all this need onto him, or if he should carry all of it again. He's staring at the place Ryan's throat slides into his collarbones. He blinks and a tear slips out, and it feels strangely cold as it slides sideways over the bridge of his nose.

He draws his hand away from Ryan's face and swipes it away, and swallows, swallows.

"I... would probably still be back there, if not for you. So."

And he meets his eyes, and this is the part where he breaks, or it should be, and Shane really doesn't know if it'll happen.

"I'd rather be here." _Where you are._  
  
~  
  
Ryan watches Shane's face. He starts scared and fades into something else. Shane isn't angry. Or, not yet, he's… something short of grateful. Because it's wrong to be grateful about it. Ryan knows that. Knows it well.  
  
He watches the tear slide along Shane's face and misses his hand when he pulls it away to wipe it off. His eyes just flicker over Shane, over the fact that he would've died there with his brother. Ryan would have died with Jake too. In the rain.  
  
But not like Shane. Ryan would've pushed too hard. Ended up bitten, probably tried to end it after. Shane… Shane’s would’ve been quick. With that gun. And god, he doesn't like that world. One without Shane. Even if he didn't know him. It's nice, knowing before all this, Shane was out there, bringing this thing he brings into the world. Like shade off a tree.  
  
A world without Shane would eventually kill Ryan. Somehow.  
  
He presses his lips together. Sadness bites into him like the broken springs in the mattress. He brushes the backs of his fingers over Shane's cheek, back until he gets a grip on his hair, thumb along his cheekbone. Almost a mirror of Shane's hand a second ago. But stronger, more purposeful.  
  
“I'd rather you be here too.”  
  
~  
  
He's shut his eyes at that touch, a little too tightly, and keeps them shut. "Okay," he whispers, and then he pulls Ryan forward and presses his face into his black hair, winds both arms around his back, fingers twisting in his sweater between his shoulder blades, fingers cradling the back of his head, and he just holds on. He's not looking for anything more than that.  
  
It’s sort of strange because Shane is so much bigger than Ryan, but he definitely manages to curl into him, at the same time as he’s all around him. It’s a juxtaposition, almost. Or they are. Total opposites in some ways. And yet, he fits. He slots against him like he’s meant to. It’s the deepest relief he’s felt in a long time. It pushes everything that’s too hard to the fringes.  
  
~  
   
Shane pulls Ryan to him, and then he folds himself all into Ryan. Ryan doesn’t stop him. He likes it. Shane’s hands bunched between his shoulder blades and his face in Ryan’s hair. It feels comfortable. Good in a way Ryan didn’t expect to feel after today. Good in a way that feels like he’s doing the right thing, like this is where he belongs. As shitty as it is.  
   
It’s weird, because it still feels like Shane’s trying to protect him. Even though he’s the one curled up and _needing_. Ryan runs his hand along Shane’s side and closes his eyes. He isn’t going to sleep. He isn’t even _trying_ to sleep. For all Shane’s efforts, he’s not there. _He_ needs to be protected right now, like Jake did, and Ryan can’t sleep. Because it was the same. At the last apartment. Two floors off the ground. They should have been safe. And he will not leave someone else he cares about to die. He can’t.  
   
They should be safe here too. There aren’t any closets. Ryan’s locked the door to the apartment area and blocked the door downstairs. That makes it worse.  The temptation to unravel and _feel_ safe. So he focuses on Shane. On the quiet way he’s let himself have this. Ryan focuses on his hand gliding over Shane’s side—the way the fabric of his sweater ripples as he moves.  
   
Shane falls asleep pretty quickly. He’s been waiting on it, it feels like. He just needed a way, an invitation, to let go. But Ryan doesn’t stop moving his hands. It’s for Ryan. It gives him something—something more than Shane’s breath in his hair and the limp fingers brushing Ryan’s back. Those things are for Shane—this one is for Ryan.  
   
Time passes. He’s aware of it. Sometimes he almost dozes off, but a flutter or a gust or his own breath startles him awake. But he doesn’t move. Maybe a few times he does sleep, but never long. Never easily.   Instead, he changes the way he holds Shane, wraps his arms around his waist and nestles him further against his chest. Follows the rhythm of his breathing. He’s soft. Ryan wouldn’t expect him to be, really, not from his bone structure—the way it’s always obvious. But Shane is soft. He’s soft, and he smells like smoke and salt and sorrow—and Ryan shouldn’t like it, shouldn’t think it smells _good_. But he does.  
   
Night fades into what might be dawn—Ryan is so cut off from the rest of everything by Shane—he’s just guessing. There’s no birds anymore. No morning sounds like there were before. It’s all just the same silence. The same promise of something worse, something dangerous. But he thinks night is fading. And sleep be damned—he wishes it wouldn’t. He wants to stay here where Shane is the only thing he can see or smell or taste. So he squeezes his eyes shut and tucks in further, because he doesn’t want another day—doesn’t want another dead brother.  
   
He just wants Shane.


	10. Part 10

Part 10

When Shane wakes up there's no moment of peace or forgetfulness, he is just starkly awake. He opens his eyes to dawn light and every terrible thing that happened yesterday.

And Ryan.

And somehow that keeps him together. He is warm, Ryan's breathing slips into something heavier as Shane listens, and he wonders how much _he's_ slept tonight.

Ryan never sleeps properly in beds. It scrapes at Shane's ribs.

And Finn is gone. Definitively. And Shane's thinking about what happens when you die, and what happens when you become one of those things — when your autonomy, your voice, your fundamental self is stripped away, or buried deep.

He wonders if it's gone or if it's just sitting there, bleakly, behind the zombie's unseeing eyes.

He can't think about this anymore. Instead he concentrates on unwinding his arms and legs from Ryan's, somehow sits up without waking him. The room is dark, still, but the sky outside the window hints at morning or something like it.

Shane's eyes fall on Finn's bag, and for a long time, minutes, he just looks at it. Then he sighs, climbs carefully off of the end of the bed and goes to get it. It's very cold. He slept but he doesn't feel rested. He gets back into bed — or onto it, Ryan has the only blanket — and starts undoing the ties of the bag. The first aid kit is easiest. He pulls it out and unzips it. The antiseptic is gone, but he knew it would be. He curses mentally, remembering that he forgot to check his house for one.

There's bandages, though. White surgical gloves... it's worth keeping, he thinks. He sets it aside, then reaches for the bag again, stopping himself before he reaches in. Familiar clothes. He doesn't know if he can. He closes his fingers tight on the material of the pack, takes a breath, just starts. He pulls out shirts, jeans, a crushed disposable raincoat. It's loud beneath his fingers in the silence as he sets it aside with the rest.  
  
~  
   
Ryan starts up. He doesn’t think he slept—he’s pretty sure, but no. This crushing emptiness bears down on him. This time he knows he slept at least _some_ because Shane’s not there. If he’d been awake, he would have noticed Shane left. Well, Shane’s there, but he isn’t _there_. He’s outside the blanket going through something. He’s just turning back to it. And he’s… jesus, it’s his brother’s bag. That’s what he’s going through.  
   
This is so intensely private that Ryan feels like he’s walked into a stranger’s house, into their fucking _shower_. He could close his eyes—act like he never woke up. But that feels even worse, intruding on this private moment while pretending not to. It’s a lie. Ryan’s never been good at lying.  
   
“Hey…” Ryan doesn’t sit up yet. He’s so tired. His eyes ache with this half-nap his body has stolen. It was just enough to make him need more. A lot more. “Sorry… uh, do you want—do you need space to…” His voice is hoarse with sleep. Maybe Shane will think that’s why he stopped talking, and not because he didn’t want to say _go through your death brother’s things._  
  
~  
  
"No, you're okay," Shane says, and there's something— he's not sure. It feels better to not be alone in this, but he's self-conscious, too. He'd left Ryan alone with Jake's things because it felt right, but he doesn't want to be alone for this.

"I was just..." he wonders if Ryan will want to leave. If he should let him. If he should do this later. But the time feels right, now. He can get through it before morning light, and then the day is left. True morning will separate the rest of this day from this current half-lit time. Maybe he can keep Finn's death here, liminal, for now.

He's hesitated, but he reaches into the bag again, now. There's not much left in the main compartment. Socks, a hat. He opens another compartment, and his fingers find the familiar rubbery material of earbud headphones, and he draws them out, impossibly tangled and then a cell phone. It's dead of course. He holds the on button anyway. "I thought there might be some useful stuff," Shane says. The phone stays black so he tosses it into the bed, and turns away.  
  
~  
   
Okay, good, Shane doesn’t want him to leave. That’s… good. He’s not sure why he wants to be here in this moment. It isn’t going to be anything but horribly traumatic for Shane, but he does. He’s glad Shane doesn’t want him to leave. Still, what’s he supposed to do? His position suddenly feels very important, and he doesn’t know how he was just _lying_ there before.  All of his limbs are so pronounced and loud. Sitting up feels like too much. Lying down feels like too little.  
   
Shane pulls a few more things out of the bag. It’s slow, and there isn’t much. Ryan keeps hoping something will pop out. Make this better. Like a note that says, _psyche that wasn’t really me at the house. I’m fine._ He pushes up onto his elbow just as Shane pulls out the headphones.  
   
Wow, he misses music. Misses headphones. Misses tuning out the world for three minutes at a time. Misses the way they tangled no matter what. He tried everything to keep his fucking earbuds from tangling. That’s probably what induced this damn virus: cheap earbuds. Someone’s brain just broke trying to untangle them, and… and then there’s a phone.  
   
Shane tries to turn it on, but it stays black. He tosses it aside just as the screen turns the different black, that black that isn’t dead. It lands on the bed and the Apple logo flashes. Ryan finally gets up.  
   
“Wait, look…” This thrill flashes through him. Like the phone could bring them something, like it isn’t just as disconnected as his was before it died. Still, he holds onto the hope. Tries to. He grabs the phone and holds it out for Shane as the boot up process takes its sweet ass time. It must have a hell of a battery. But, maybe, if it was off… Ryan kept his on for too long. Jake too.  
   
Shane probably doesn’t even have a phone. He’s the kind of antiquated weirdo that wouldn’t. He probably used telegrams to communicate. He’s starting to smile at this weird version of Shane in his head, and it’s really inappropriate to smile while holding a friend’s dead brother’s phone. Especially when you fucking killed him.  
   
“Does this count as useful?”  
  
~  
  
He looks back, eyes drawn to the phone light, almost squints in it. "Holy shit," he murmurs, something more than just self-induced repression creeping into his voice. He moves, half-uncertain, then pulls himself closer to Ryan, reaches out and takes the phone. It takes forever, but gradually it trades white and black for this faded out lock screen. "Goddammit, Finn," Shane whispers, and squints down at it. It could be worse. It could be touch recognition. He's chewing his lip, trying to think of what the code could be. The battery's at 31%. Shane punches in something, and the phone shakes out an 'incorrect passcode' that feels like a cosmic digital _fuck you_.

Shane tries again. Wrong. He drags a hand through his hair and wonders what it would feel like to chuck the thing at a wall.

Wrong. Wrong.

He's just going through numbers now, words, dates, old phone numbers. This fucking thing is going to reset at ten tries, he knows it.But it doesn't. Suddenly he's looking at a picture of a New York sunrise, a rush of colorful apps. Shane's breath shakes free from his chest.  
  
~  
   
Ryan pushes closer to Shane, leans his head as far over the phone as he can without getting in Shane’s way.  
   
_Goddammit, Finn._  
   
It’s jarring, for a second, like Shane’s spoken another language, but then Ryan rights himself. Realizes. _Scott Finnigan Madej._ He went by Finn, or at least, Shane called him Finn. It hits Ryan harder than he expects it to—the inside of his chest collapses, jagged and mean, so he has to inhale too hard.  
   
He should’ve expected the passcode. But he didn’t, he winced when it showed up. Shane goes through a thousand different tries. Ryan is about to take it from him, spare him the frustration of this—because passcodes are weird. He doesn’t know if he’d have known Jake’s. But then the screen shades into something different. A city. Apps. Shane got the phone unlocked.  
   
“Nice job.” It’s an odd thing to say, but he says it anyway. He bites his lip and looks from the phone to Shane and back again. This could be worse. There could be pictures on there that trigger another landslide in Shane. It could set them back—even if they haven’t necessarily made a ton of process. He swallows at the messenger app icon, swallows at all the things that could be on here.  
  
~  
  
Shane doesn't know when Finn turned his phone off but he expected more... more messages, more voicemails. There's only two. One is an automated message from his phone company reminding him the bill is due, and then one that says "Did you leave NY?" from a name Shane doesn't know. It's dated from April.

There are voicemails, too, but he's scared to listen to them. He doesn't want to hear his parents, he doesn't want to hear anyone's last words.

His fingers hover over the phone screen. "I..." he doesn't know what to do. There are pictures, notes, there's music. He presses the internet button but of course, it doesn't work. Nothing works -- not maps, not Twitter, nothing. He didn't think it would.

"What should we do with this?"He's regretting now that he didn't take any pictures from his parents' house but he's not ready to look at Finn's yet. He looks up at Ryan. "What... what would you do?"

It's an intensely intimate question. They've both lost a brother to this. They've both lost something that was a brother to one another.

The only thing Shane can think is the only thing he could think in Finn's bedroom, after it was done.

 _What now?_  
  
~  
   
Ryan exhales. Shane’s frozen again. Ryan doesn’t blame him. And when Shane looks at him and asks what to do, asks what Ryan would do, he doesn’t know. This is different for Shane. Ryan had Jake right up until the end. He got that much. Shane ran into a brother bitten two months ago. Missed so many months before that. There’s got to be a hole there.  
  
He wouldn’t look at pictures. Not yet. He definitely wouldn’t listen to voicemails. Or he’d like to think he wouldn’t… if he did, it would hurt. He doesn’t want Shane to hurt. And he’ll be ready for them, hopefully, eventually—just not right now.  
   
“I don’t…” Ryan stops. He can’t meet Shane’s eyes right now because it’s Jake and Shane’s brother he calls Finn and death. And surviving and surviving and surviving with no end to it. A never-ending cycle of _what now?_  
   
Ryan doesn’t know.  
   
“I, uh…” He licks his lower lip. This feels like something big. Something that Shane’s tossed between them, drawing them both in—closer. “I wouldn’t… not too much right now, I don’t think.” That’s not something to do. That’s something not to do. “Does he—is there music? We… you could… maybe it would… help?” He chuckles in this uncertain way. “I don’t know.”  
  
~  
  
_Music_. Shane hasn't listened to music in so long. God, he wants to.

He just does it, goes into iTunes. "What do you listen to?" Shane asks, turns this into something about Ryan. He asks it like that's still something people do. Listen to music. He scrolls through things that are familiar: The Shakey Graves, honeyhoney, the Avett Brothers. But there's other stuff too. A mess of stuff, lots from the 70s and 80s. It reminds him of a completely different time, when the most he had to worry about was paying rent in time.

He holds the phone out to Ryan, half-overwhelmed. Ryan who's been taking care of everything. Shane needs to try harder. He needs to give something back.  
  
~  
   
Ryan takes the phone because it looks like Shane’s going to shake apart. He squints and tilts his head as he scrolls. He doesn’t recognize much. It’s older. A few things he can pinpoint as distinctly 80s. Things he knows but doesn’t _know_. He chews his lip. He’s doing that a lot this morning, because it’s chapped and it’s giving him something to do. He smiles because it’s funny. Funny how different he and Shane are, how different he and Shane’s brother—Finn—probably are.  
   
He looks away. “Anything with a good beat. A lot of scores… _The Dark Knight, Stranger Things_. Stuff that has a distinct mood, I guess.” He shrugs, still scrolling. “Electronic and R&B like Skrillex and Drake… god, he just wants to lose himself in something, in his old playlists. “The Weeknd… probably things you would hate.” He smiles again. He stops scrolling. “Oh, hey, Imagine Dragons. I like them.” He turns back to Shane. “Do you—is a lot of this your thing?”

~  
  
Shane waves at the phone like _put it on._  
  
“It depends on what I’m doing. I like… uh, do you know John K. Samson? No? Okay. Well. I like… uh… like soft—… folk—… rock—. Is that a thing? I’m making it one. I guess it doesn’t matter now, anyway.”  
  
It sounds a lot more nihilistic than he means it to.  
  
“Anyway, I like lots of stuff. But it’s nice to have music you can sort of zone out to,” he says. “But I like Imagine Dragons. I used to do karaoke.” He adds. “That was—…” he almost laughs. “Yeah.”  
  
~  
   
Ryan plays the song. _Demons_. He likes it. Always has. He glances at the headphone because the speaker is pretty tinny. And Shane hates drawing noise, but he lets it go for now. Shane’s talking about the music he listens to, and it just… sounds like Shane. He fits so perfectly into this archetype that Ryan has for him sometimes. Ryan wonders if Ryan does that for Shane too. Maybe it’s not a good thing.  
   
Because then Shane starts talking about karaoke, and quite frankly, what the fuck? Because that upends everything he thought he knew about Shane. “You used to…” He wheezes because it just doesn’t make sense. “You did karaoke? Of Imagine Dragons or just… in general?” He scratches the back of his head, looks away and tries to imagine Shane doing karaoke—Shane singing.  
   
He can’t.  
   
Or, he can, and it’s such a disaster he immediately blocks it out of his mind.  
   
“I don’t know John K. Samson, but… soft folk rock is a thing. I just… I mean if you singing karaoke is a thing, then there’s no limits any more. All bets are off.”  
   
He stares at the phone and wishes he could do more than play these songs. He wishes he could go back in time and stop whatever bit Finn. Stop whatever bit Jake. Stop whatever fucked up thing brought this on them and the rest of the world. And above all, on Shane.  
  
~  
  
"What? Why is that so hard to believe?" Shane asks. With the music, something so normal, he feels almost okay. He sees Ryan eyeing the headphones and reaches out for them, starts the process of untangling. “I did lots of songs. Movie songs. Whatever. Give me a few drinks and I'm... done. Whole new Shane."  
  
~  
  
“Whole new Shane?” He's suddenly devastated that he doesn't know if he'll ever seen Shane drunk. That he can't just drag him out and witness this for himself. Maybe Shane is the kind of person who's so unselfconscious it wouldn't bother him. Ryan smiles and shakes his head.  
  
 “I'm sure that was something to see.”  
  
Shane's untangling the headphones. He's slow about it. Ryan almost wants to grab them and help, but he doesn't. He waits. Keeps scanning through the music.  
  
“What movies? We don't have any beer so I'm gonna need specifics.”  
  
~  
  
He pulls a knot out in one long motion, like sewing, working it loose. “ _Beetlejuice_ ,” he says, “Uh…” He looks up and breathes this soft laugh that almost reaches his eyes. “I don’t really  remember,” he admits. “Why? Look at you you love it. Wow.”  
  
He’s dragging all of this up from somewhere and it comes out with less inflection, with less… just less, than it usually does, but he’s got it. He thinks he’s got a grasp on it, now, something okay. “I’ll have to be careful around you.”  
  
He gets the headphones untied, works out one last knot in one earbud, and then plugs them into the phone. The music stops, but it wouldn’t do break an eardrum. He adjusts the volume and then holds one headphone out to Ryan without looking at him.  
  
~  
   
Ryan scoffs, but it spirals into a laugh. “ _Beetlejuice_ …” He laughs a little harder at hearing himself say it. It’s just, it takes everything to this whole new level of _what the fuck_? It’s awful watching Shane work through these knots. It feels like he’s watching him work through something else. Something that maybe he won’t get untangled so easily. Then he extends one to Ryan. “You’re gonna be careful of _me_? I’m not the one who sang _Beetlejuice_ karaoke.”  
   
He takes the earbud. Finn used these—maybe he used them after he was bitten. Jake was bitten for _days_ before he… but the virus works differently on different people. Finn could’ve been sick for… a few hours, or weeks, or… Ryan doesn’t know. How long he had to sit there and wait, wait to just… disappear… or become a spectator in his own fucking body.  
   
Jesus, Ryan needs to stop thinking about this. He eases the earbud into his ear and slides the phone back across the Shane. “Okay, you pick. I’m not choosing music for someone who only likes soft folk rock. That’s way too specific.”  
  
~  
  
Shane just holds his end for a moment, and his eyes are on Ryan while he laughs. But then Ryan slides the phone closer and meets Shane’s eyes properly and Shane looks away before there’s any real connection. He almost puts the earbud in, has to move closer to Ryan to do it, but it’s awkward with the way Ryan has to sit with his leg, and the sheer length of Shane’s so he says, “Come— down here.” and drops the piece to get under the blanket, slide down beneath it. He looks up, but not at Ryan’s face, more at the soft curve of his left shoulder. He scrolls through the music, but he’d listen to any of this.  
  
There’s songs on here by Hi Ho Silver Oh, back when they still had that name. He picks _Spools_ and reaches out for his end of the headphones, but doesn’t pull, doesn’t force Ryan to come down. It won’t reach Shane though, unless he does. Maybe it’s unfair, but he wants this again, needs it. And he asked last night, but he doesn’t know how to ask again, in the morning light.  
  
~  
   
Shane’s far away. Ryan is trying not to get too close. He’s trying to make this light, as easy as it can be after yesterday. Shane drops his side of the headphones and slides under the blanket. Ryan goes to take the earbud out of his ear, to try and get a read on this, but then he gets it. He shouldn’t keep being surprised that Shane wants this closeness, in a weird way, in a _Shane_ way—but he does. He is.  
   
Ryan never got out of the blanket so he lies down and hands Shane the other side of the earbuds as he goes—before Shane can reach it. Their hands brush, and Ryan pulls back and tilts his head to give Shane more slack with the cord. There isn’t much.  
   
The song Shane chooses is gentle. Kind of nice. Really nice, actually. The more Ryan listens to it. It’s easy to lose himself in it. Zone out to. That’s what Shane said. Yeah, that’s what this is. Ryan turns to him, watches him, the sharp slant of his profile, the wispy way his hair sits. With more than he should. With more question. More hope. More want. Want that he can’t have right now. Not like Shane like this.  
   
Maybe want he can’t have ever.  
   
So he looks down, and says, because he can’t sit in silence, “You do need a haircut.”  
  
~  
  
Shane tips his head, almost a tic, cocking it to the side and looking at Ryan with confused eyes as the chorus kicks in. He reaches up and pushes his fingers through it, eyes on Ryan. “Yeah,” he tells him and reaches out, gently winding his fingers in Ryan’s fringe, which is much too long, and tugging his head forward a little, careful movements. “You on the other hand…” he begins, softly sarcastic. “You look like a K-pop star or something.” He lets him go.  
  
And suddenly he’s wondering, eyes flickering over Ryan’s face, head still cocked. “You’re not Korean are you? Because if you are, have I got a gig for you…”  
  
~  
   
Shane tugs him forward—by the hair, and it’s got all that want pounding into something—something dangerous and mean. It claws at his reserve, his willpower, so hard he has to clear his throat. Like the sound can crush the way his heartbeat blasts against every inch of his skin. He has to swallow over it.  
   
“No, you jackass, I’m not _Korean_. And I don’t look like a _K-pop star._ ” He runs his fingers through his own hair like he’s shaking out the damage Shane has done. Really, he just needs to move with the energy Shane sparked in his veins. His hair clings and tangles around his fingers until it falls back across his forehead. The bristle of it pops along his forehead enough to distract him. Sorta.  
   
“I’m _Japanese_. “He hisses through the later syllables. Like he’s offended. “And Mexican.”  
  
~  
  
He makes this sound like a breath or a laugh or a scoff. "Sorry," It comes out uneven. "You, oh. Okay."

He doesn't know what to do with his hands now. He touches the earbud in his own ear. "I cut my own hair in college," he tells him, because he feels weird now. Like he did something wrong. He still can't... Ryan and touch. He's still trying to figure it out. Or maybe it's what he said. He keeps his eyes down.  
  
~  
   
Ryan laughs. More genuinely than he has since the basketball court maybe. “What? Hey…” He shoves at Shane’s shoulder, shakes him gently. “Don’t look all…” He looks at the sloped ceiling above, it’s an older, popcorn one. Shane looks like he might feel bad, either about calling Ryan Korean or… well, he looks like he feels bad. “I have no idea if you’re from… Britain or Scotland or… wherever the fuck, either. You could be in the Beatles—or One Direction. ”  
   
He brings his eyes back to Shane. He doesn’t need him feeling bad right now. It’s possible he went too far trying to be light and has managed to… fuck this up. So he acquiesces, “But you cut your own hair—that’s, how did that go?”  
  
~  
  
He lets Ryan push him, loose under the touch. The music goes to another song, and he takes that in for a moment. "Okay, first, I would _not_ be in One Direction, and second, I have a lot of hidden talents. I'm actually very... decent at cutting hair."

He takes the earbud out because it throws off his hearing, but besides the two of them and the music, it's all quiet. "People were always impressed when I told them I cut mine myself."

He twists the headphone cord and little, likes it because it keeps Ryan close by some unspoken rule. It literally ties them together.  
  
~  
   
“Oh.” Ryan exaggerates the circle his mouth makes with the sound, lets it hang onto his lips longer than it needs to. He cocks his head a little, eyebrows raised, staring down at the phone. A smirk worms its way onto his face, all part of this motion of him taking in Shane’s last sentence. It splits open as his teeth break the smirk into a smile.  
   
“So you’re trying to impress me.” He cuts his eyes to Shane. “You’ve got a whole beauty shop down there if you wanna put your money where your mouth is.”  
   
He’s less surprised about the haircutting thing than he was about the karaoke. Especially after the razor… okay, he’s not going to think about the razor right now. He rubs absently at the stubble on his jaw—he needs to shave again, and he doesn’t know if he’s ever going to get up the nerve to bring it up.  
   
“I wonder if they have shaving stuff…” He doesn’t say razor. Potentially because he desperately wants them not to have that, even if he needs them to. For his own sanity.  
  
~  
  
Shane sits up fast because it's something to be doing, it's something he can _do_ that's useful, that lets him think about that instead of anything else. He shuts the phone off, then he climbs over Ryan, a mess of limbs. "I have no money to put where my mouth is. What are you going to bet me instead?" He straightens his sweater, looks back up at Ryan, expectantly. It might be a bit, but he feels like he can lean into it.  
  
~  
   
Ryan gets up onto his elbows and leans his head back, groaning. Shane getting up means he needs to get up. And he misses Shane, in the bed. He misses him and he doesn’t want to get up. “So, to be clear, I’m betting you that you can’t cut your hair well? Who gets to judge? Me? Do I get to judge? Because I don’t think you judging would be fair.” He raises his head and looks at Shane.  
   
He wants to play this with Shane. Give him something to latch onto. But his mind is blanking on what he could even say. They don’t have things, really. “Oh, I know—if it sucks, you have to listen to me tell you about all Kobe’s championship series and not say a word.”  
  
~  
  
"Jesus Christ," Shane says. "That sounds awful. You-- how about this. I'll bet that I can cut _your_ hair well, and you can be the judge.

"It's a lot. He's going out on a limb, but it's an excuse: a reason to touch. Another one.  
  
~  
  
That's going to be weird. Ryan doesn't want… he doesn't need to feel things. Want things from Shane when he's like this. But Shane's pushing it, asking for it. And if Shane needs it, then Ryan will just have to control whatever comes next. This isn't like before. This time it won't be for him, it'll be for Shane.  
  
He makes a show of getting up, well, until he actually has to stand because then his leg does hurt and he has to work to ignore it.  
  
“Alright, Frenchie. You're on.” He walks by him, exaggerates a stare. “Make me beautiful.”  
  
~  
  
"French—" he begins. He almost reaches out for him— because it's a careful movement, the way Ryan stands. He's hurting. They're both hiding all these fractured things.

He turns his thoughts away from that and hears himself say. "You don't need help with that."

Judder. Halt.

Wow, _shit_ , Shane thinks.

"Polish, actually," he adds, like they're related topics at all. "I think probably Polish."  
  
~  
   
Ryan’s halfway to the door, working himself into this. Into what might be Shane touching him, controlling him. He’s convinced himself this will be different. Shane doesn’t have to touch like a shampoo or anything, he just—  
   
Ryan starts. He doesn’t still. He twitches because it hits him like a bullet. _Did he just?_ Everything blazes. An inferno catches in his chest and through the rest of him until he’s not quite sure what’s left. Shane plows through it—like it’s just, like he didn’t… but Ryan can’t catch up. He opens his mouth, stutters over silence. Doesn’t turn around.  
   
_Beautiful_.  
   
Ryan said it as such a joke. Maybe Shane meant it that way too. He’s said Ryan’s good looking before, right? But that was less… that was less. Okay, Ryan has to speak. He has to use his words or risk freaking Shane out. If he did mean it as a joke, then he’s going to think Ryan’s lost it. If he didn’t, well… Ryan doesn’t want to scare him, then, either. It’s so _forward_.  
   
Ryan turns. He truly has no idea what Shane said. He shakes his head, this tremor of movement, and blinks too much. “Hm? What?” His voice is too upbeat, too colorful. Dances close to cracking.  
  
~  
  
"Hm?" He mimics Ryan’s sound accidentally. What is this game they're playing? "Polish?" Shane asks, like he pronounced the word wrong or something.

But he knows what this is. And he can either own it and maybe make it less awkward or pretend it never happened and then it, too, has to coast beneath everything else and he doesn't know if he can put any more there beneath this little life raft — the only part of his mind not consumed with Finn, with fear of dying every fucking day — without taking on water. "Oh, beautiful?" Shane says, like he's just catching on. Like his heart isn't slamming into his ribs hard enough to shock his breath around his lungs. "Was that—? You are, though. Should I have said handsome? I didn't think it fit." And it doesn't. Or it does, but not the way Shane understands it.  
  
~  
   
Ryan doesn’t think he needs to respond. Since he is nothing but a pounding, frantic heartbeat flurrying ashes into the air. His mouth hangs open, moves like he’s trying to speak, but he doesn’t for a long time. This could be normal. Shane just being… Shane, where he says things normal people don’t say. Or maybe it’s only weird for Ryan because he thinks Shane is—beautiful, and it means something huge to him.  
   
Or maybe it means something huge to both of them.  
   
But he’s too scared to let himself believe that. Too scared to think of the culmination of all the moments, the nights curled around each other, the long, trailing touches down his neck, the hat. He’s too scared to believe in them because, if he does, and Shane doesn’t—Shane is just this wistful, unknowable soul who does things that don’t fit in Ryan’s world not because of Ryan but because that’s who he is—then it will destroy him. It will tear Ryan apart by the hinges until nothing is left of his still-beating heart but a tattered pulp.  
   
He raises his chin, sniffs hard through his nose as he holds Shane’s eyes. His pulse is rocking through him, crashing against his skull so hard it hurts. He wants to keep Shane’s eyes, to meet this… challenge, even if he doesn’t believe in it. He should say _I know_ and brush it off like nothing. Like it’s fine.  
   
But he bites his lip and looks away. “It’s just not… something anyone’s ever said to me…” He laughs, stares at the ground, all nerves. “You are…” It escalates, his laughter. “Sometimes I forget the world’s ending around you. You’re distracting. With your… karaoke, and your… tiny delicate hands, and… beautiful. ”  
   
It’s the most honest thing he can say that doesn’t drag Shane into the light like he did back at the department store. He’s careful to diffuse the same trigger he pulls. Careful, careful, careful.  
  
~  
  
That... that is all Shane has ever wanted: to take the apocalypse and get it as far away from Ryan as he can. And he's done it. In fragments, he's distracted him. He'd been trying so hard.

And he has no idea how to respond to that, because of all the people he's met, Ryan is the only one that truly leaves him speechless. Shane can't look away, and it's easy because Ryan's not looking at him.

He wants so desperately to take that single long step closer, touch him. God, Shane wants to kiss him, because how has no one ever said those words to this man?

Shane thinks _I bet you say that to all the girls._ He thinks _Do I have delicate hands?_ And a hundred other things that could take this moment and fold it into fours to tuck away somewhere hidden, to make it somehow smaller in its magnitude.

Instead he takes a breath and says, "What, really? Well, someone should have told you." And he really means that, but there's something burning and overwhelming that says _You're the first._

And he wants that. Covets it. He wonders if Ryan's ever kissed a guy before, if Shane could have that, too, and _stop, stop._

"Anyway. Let's... let's put these uh, delicate hands to the test, hm?" He nods at the door over Ryan's shoulder because this moment's pushing outwards at its edges and Shane doesn't know if either of them can handle it if it finally breaks. They need something else. A new moment.

Another kind of distraction.  
  
~  
  
Ryan's still stammering and Shane's trying to move on like he did with Polish. Ryan is the reason he got dragged back and Ryan needs to control this. Handle it. But Shane saying someone else should've… Ryan never wanted that. Didn't. Before Shane, and now he can't stop thinking about it.  
  
He clears his throat. He wishes Shane hadn't phrased it that way, about the hands. Because Shane's hands undo Ryan faster than anything. He'd rather not test them.  
  
It hits him then.  
  
“So you're Polish. Good to know.” He unlocks the door and starts down the steps. “That's near Germany, right?’  
  
~  
  
He takes a breath that shakes, but it's mostly relief. Some disappointment. "Yeah, they're next door neighbors."

He follows Ryan down and takes in the chairs against the door, the mess of the shop. The windows are boarded up but it's not horribly lit. Not ideal for hair cutting, but it will have to do.

Shane goes immediately to the middle chair and spins in it like he's eight years old. It's less weird seeing his reflection here, in this light, but he meet his eyes and sees Finn, and quickly looks away, spins back to Ryan, one leg on the footrest, the other on the floor to break his spin. "Having any second thoughts?" He asks, giving him a chance to back out.  
  
~  
   
Ryan keeps walking as Shane spins in the chair. He doesn’t even bother suppressing his eye roll. A very fond eye roll. Because it’s endearing, cute, like a lot of things Shane has been doing recently. Everything he does pulls at something in Ryan, so many different things, some that he didn’t even know were there.  
   
Shane’s trying so hard now. He’s better today, or at least he’s acting better. Maybe he’s just alive enough to _act_. But he hesitated at his reflection. Saw something in it, saw his brother in it. Ryan knows how he feels.  
   
He stops in front of the chair and smiles in this way that sinks into his face. “So many.” He bends and scoops a pair of scissors off the floor. He shouldn’t have. His leg makes sure to remind him that it is not healed and he should stop acting like it is. He ignores it. Again. He extends the scissors to Shane. “But I’m not a quitter.”  
  
~  
  
He takes them, stands up and waves a hand rather grandly at the chair so Ryan can sit. Shane check's the scissors, wipes them on his sweater in case there's traces of zombie and he pokes Ryan with them. Hopefully he won't be drawing any blood here.

"I'd ask you what you want, but I can only do one thing, which is 'shorter.'"  
  
~  
   
Ryan overplays his reaction to the scissors. He yanks his body away before dropping into the chair. His eyes skate up the whole of Shane’s body, taking care to pause dramatically on the _weapon_ in Shane’s hand. “We haven’t even started and you’re already trying to draw blood.” He sets both feet in the metal bar and props his head on his hand and eyes Shane before he puts one of his feet on the ground and spins the chair around. “If I end up having to shave my head, you’re going to wish the zombies had gotten to you.”  
  
~  
  
Shane smiles at that. "Yeah, you'd look stupid."

He looks for the pump to get the chair higher in this exaggerated gesture. "Wow, I'm gonna have to raise this chair up _really_ high in order to reach you at all."  
  
   
~  
   
Ryan curls his lip and closes his eyes. He doesn’t reopen them until Shane’s finished pumping the chair. And god, he’s imagining himself bald and it’s horrific. He wishes he’d never said anything because now it’s stuck behind his eyelids and it’s not good.  
   
“I’m not going to respond to that slander because I know you only say things like that because you’re insecure about your freakishly gigantic stature. So I just feel bad for you.”  
   
~  
  
"There's nothing wrong with my stature," Shane says, and he casts around for something so that Ryan doesn't get hair all over him, but there's nothing. He pulls a face, then disappears into the closet in the hallway and comes back with a towel, presumably for this sort of thing. "Here, do something with this," he tells him, handing it over. He goes through drawers for a comb and hopes that Ryan doesn't get fucking lice or something. There's no cleaning solution that he can see.

"You're not very good at this," he adds after a second. "You never even asked me what I want if I win."  
  
~  
   
Ryan drapes the towel around his shoulders. He was not thinking about that, and he’s glad Shane had the forethought to make sure he wasn’t covered in his own hair. Maybe he does know what he’s doing after all. He fucking better. Shane’s so clearly concerned with this being sanitary, and… it’s nice, it’s reminiscent of another time—a time when it mattered. It’s why Shane makes him forget everything is dead or dying.  
   
Ryan eyes himself in the mirror. His hair is definitely getting too long. He casts his gaze up at Shane, then. “Oh, right. I assumed me not talking about Kobe Bryant would be enough, but fine—name your terms.”  
  
~  
  
Shane hesitates a second before he looks up and meets Ryan's eyes in the mirror and there's this impossible moment where Shane thinks that he knows exactly what he wants, exactly what he wants to ask, and he's just on this side of putting it out there between them, voicing it, but the way his heart's racing is begging him to reconsider.

The way they have to keep going after this, and he doesn't know if he can without Ryan...

The fact that he might be reading this all wrong, or the way it might all go wrong, even if he isn't.

He's suspended there, eyes locked on Ryan's in the mirror and then he says "I haven't decided yet," and his voice is too low, too serious. It breaks the mood. He didn't mean it to.  
  
~  
   
Ryan’s jaw clenches. A slash of silver pings through the center of him. Shane’s voice settles along his skin like sleet. For a second, for a breathless moment, Ryan thought Shane might say the words that would tip this fragile imbalance between them one way or another. And then he withdrew. Like he always does.  
   
Ryan’s breath comes out unsteadily. He runs his hands along the fabric of his cargo pants, still staring at Shane. He smiles, determined to keep this upbeat. His voice goes hazy. “You brought it up so I would agonize over it, didn’t you? As you cut my freaking ear off. That’s evil—you’re evil.” He looks away. “I’ll wait. But I expect you to be creative.”  
  
~  
  
"Is that what you think of me?" Shane asks, relieved when the tension breaks. He actually smiles. "I wouldn't cut your ear off, what would I even do with it?" He raises a hand and gently touches Ryan's hair, combs it back with his fingers, looking for tangles. There's a few, and he works them out. He's still got the scissors in his right hand. This would be easier and faster with both hands, but somehow that brings him back to the mall, the bathroom, and he doesn't do it, doesn't go back there.

Ryan's hair is soft, though. Always unexpectedly so, and Shane lingers as much as he thinks he can without being obvious about it.

"Here," he says, because there's some snags he can't do anything about. He hands Ryan the scissors to hold, then grabs the comb. "Don't stab me if I pull too hard," he tells him, and starts combing out the worst of the tangles. It's something--  blood or something, all tangled there, and Shane tries not to think about the fact that it's probably Finn's.  
  
~  
   
Ryan bounces his leg as Shane untangles his hair. It doesn’t hurt. Ryan’s never had a sensitive scalp. And he’s determined not to think about Shane’s hands, or what it means that he does one thing or doesn’t do another. He takes the scissors when Shane hands them to him. He’s fidgeting. He keeps opening and closing them. The swish they make when they come together satisfies him as Shane’s tugging his hair enough to pull at his neck.  
   
He’s not going to let himself get in his own head, so he’ll either talk to Shane or at Shane. But he will not, under any circumstance, think about Shane and his stupid fucking hands. This is easier, though. Shane’s being intentionally cautious, and it rips at something inside Ryan, batters that dying flame of hope further. But it’s good because Ryan shouldn’t feel that way, shouldn’t want to. It’s all so convoluted. He shouldn’t let it bother him.  
   
“So you cut your hair in college? What else did you do? Did you do your karaoke and drinking thing a lot? It’s weird you don’t seem like you would’ve stayed in all the time, but it’s hard to picture you going out. Wait, have you been to Disneyland?” It pulls him back to the radio. He hasn’t used it since the mall. He always forgets when they’re walking.  “It doesn’t really seem like your scene, but Disneyland is amazing no matter who you are.”  
   
He’s rambling, but it’s helping. He’s not thinking about Shane’s fingers. And sure, he’s thinking about Shane… and him, at Disneyland. He’s thinking about what it would be like. But at least he isn’t… at least it’s not the traitorous kind of want. He snaps the scissors closed again.

~  
  
"I haven't," Shane says. "I'm not really a rides guy." He's too tall for rides. Also, rides like to mess with his blood pressure and no one wants to pass it when they're supposed to be keeping all their limbs inside the vehicle at all times. "I wanted to go, as a kid. I wanted to see the fireworks, but that's what Fourth of July is for I guess." Was for.

He gets the tangle out and reaches over Ryan's shoulder for the scissors. Ryan's snapping away with them so he slides his fingers over Ryan's hand, over his fingers, like a warning, before he's touching the handle.  
  
~

Not a rides kind of guy. Maybe being that tall has detriments. Shane does get headaches all the time. Those things could be related. Ryan hadn’t even considered. He’d always just seen Shane as feeble for no reason other than… he’s Shane. His height makes more sense.

Ryan blinks when Shane’s hands appear, touch him. He moves like a shadow sometimes. Ryan doesn’t see him coming. Ryan shakes it off and hands the scissors to him.

“Yeah, they have—had, I guess, amazing shows there. That’s half the reason I love it. They had these beautiful shows on the water…” He’s sad now, because if Shane likes fireworks. God, he’d have loved it. “The fireworks were awesome. They had whole shows, stories, revolved around these fireworks shows. It was…” Was, was, was. “It was amazing.”

He doesn’t want to be sad. He doesn’t want to be sad and thinking about all the things he’s never going to get to do again. All the things he’s never going to get to do with Shane. “I wonder if it’s still—I wonder if it’s safe now.” He doesn’t know what he’s doing. They’re in fucking Illinois. They’re so far from Disneyland now. He balks because he thinks he knows what Shane will say and he wants to say it first. “Probably not.”

He flexes his fingers, misses the weight of the scissors. He needs something to focus on, something physical—that isn’t Shane. “So you liked fireworks?” He bets Shane wouldn’t even like them now. Too much noise. God, he wishes he’d known a Shane that didn’t have to jump at every sound. “Did you have like… an event or something? At the park or whatever? What do you do for events like that when you live on the fringes of society?”

~  
  
"I didn't live on the _fringes_ of society. Not everyone can be from LA, California boy."

He tips Ryan's head to the side just a little so he can see, and starts cutting. He doesn't want to think about how he spent holidays. Finn was there. His friends...  
  
Instead he says "Oops," like he fucked up, just to rile Ryan up. He's already smiling though, giving it away.  
  
~  
   
Ryan snaps his head up when Shane says oops, but he’s got a smirk on his face so Ryan snorts and looks away. Shane isn’t answering, and Ryan doesn’t feel like reliving his past right now either. So he’s floundering, because if he brings up Kobe Bryant again, Shane might actually plunge the scissors into his neck.  
   
But he’s got to talk, because he’s still got the ghost of Shane’s hand on his ear, and the way he’s tilting his head swirling in his mind. He has to work to keep his head from turning when he addresses Shane. “So, was this just trial and error? Did you cut your hair a few times and royally fuck it up or just… were you magically good at it?”  
  
~  
  
"Have you _seen_ my hair?" Shane asks. "It's not just the apocalypse. My hair is just more or less like this at all times. It's... ridiculous. So. Hm. I guess anything would be an improvement. Sorry, Ryan," he says, like Ryan is consigned to his fate, now. "At least no one will see you."  
  
He touches one side of his head, scissors in the other hand, lining something up only he can see in the mirror before he lets him go, starts cutting again, using his fingers to cut against, trying to keep the ends as even as he can.  
  
~  
  
Ryan squirms under Shane's touch. He hates how little it affects Shane, how much it affects him. Frustration winds up his neck.  
  
He has to focus on other things. Not Shane's too hot, too quick touches. Not this probably nonexistent thing between them. Not that he killed Shane's brother.  
  
“Fuck you, sir.” He closes his eyes. Exhaustion from last night hammers at his focus. He wants to talk about something else. “You know what would be cool? If mirrors were parallel universes and it's actually you in a totally different life. All different yous. I'd like to jump into one of those right about now. Let some other Ryan put up with this shit for a while.”  
  
~  
  
"Yeah," Shane says, softly. He's sort of snagging in that, caught somewhere. "When I was in my early twenties I started to feel like... like my reflection was realer than I was. Like maybe it felt everything I was supposed to. Or like I was actually the reflection, and it was out there like... living life."

Shane draws the scissors from Ryan's hair and replaces it with his fingers, seeing how it falls when he moves it. It's definitely shorter on that side now, and mostly even. He shifts and starts on the other side. If it works, he can go shorter. "I kind of felt like I... wasn't really solid or— substantial at all." He looks up now, meets his own eyes in the glass, then Ryan's.

"I've never told anyone that. Anyway… what parallel universe would you want to be in?”  
  
~  
  
Shane starts talking about feeling insubstantial and Ryan isn't surprised. Shane gives off that air. And he's… said it, more or less. A few times before. But still, Shane says he's never told anything and it's nice. It warms the inside of Ryan's chest.  
  
“You're solid. I can confirm that.” He wants to say he gets it, but he doesn't. Not really. That side of Shane is foreign to Ryan. “But I dunno, somewhere without zombies. Maybe Harry Potter’s world. Magic would be nice. Wave a wand and clean my room. Hell yes.”  
  
~  
  
"Empty the dishwasher," Shane says. "Abra kadabra. Hell, I'd go for no zombies and a dishwasher. And a boat. I'd like a boat."

Shane gets both sides more or less even and starts on the back. "You look like an emo kid, kind of," he says, eyes on the hair still falling into Ryan's eyes. "Were you into that scene? No, I bet you were always a good kid. I bet you never smoked or anything. Not even one cigarette."

He gently touches Ryan's shoulder where it meets his neck, keeping his hand braced there to cut. Even with the chair pumped higher, he has to duck a little to see. Glasses would have helped.  
  
~  
  
Ryan flexes his fingers, again and again, driving them further into his palms each time. Far enough that they bite. Shane's too close, too touching. Ryan wants to smack him away. No, that isn't what he wants to do.  
  
_Get it together, Ryan._  
  
“Definitely not emo.” He gets what Shane's saying with his hair, though. “The exact opposite probably. And yeah, I was a very good kid with a very scary mother. No cigarettes. Ever.”  
  
He drums his fingers on his knees. He's so antsy. He wants so much more touch. He wants no touch at all.  
  
“I could never sit still for haircuts.” Not entirely true, but he's giving it to himself for the distraction and excuse.  
  
~  
  
"You're doing okay," Shane says softly. He's combing his fingers over Ryan's hair, rakes it back from the crown of his head. He thinks it's all right, but Ryan's hair falls differently than Shane's does. He ruffles his fingers through it from the back of Ryan's neck, shaking loose pieces free, then steps back enough to spin the chair so Ryan faces him. "How do you like— what did you do with all this before?" Shane asks, tugging his fringe again, because he thinks the best thing to do would just be to cut it so it's out of Ryan's eyes.

He pulls it all forward so he knows what he's working with, then unthinkingly brushes it away from Ryan's forehead, from his dark eyes. Shane swallows.  
  
~  
  
Shane keeps tugging his hair. It's making him crazy. In every definition. Because it tugs just enough to whisper across his the skin where his hair is rooted. Shane brushes it aside and Ryan blinks a bit too hard. Keeps his eyes shut too long.  
  
He focuses on Shane's question so hard it almost splinters. Explodes into the air like a grenade.  
  
“I usually just…” He brushes it away from the part to demonstrate. It immediately tries falls back across his forehead. “I used to like… do stuff with it so it didn't just lay flat. But I haven't had time lately, you know, with all the flesh eating zombies.” But he wants this bit of normalcy, this bit of his old life. “Just leave it. Like you can shorten it, but, it's… leave it.”  
  
~  
  
"Okay," he says. Shane can give him this. It's such a simple thing.

He steps closer, one leg on either side of the metal footrest, his thighs brushing the outside of Ryan's, and he's pulling Ryan's hair forward again, eyes on it, suddenly quieter than he's been all morning.

But he is _present_. Hyper-aware. It's strange, overwhelming. He likes it. He doesn't know if Ryan does. He doesn't know what to do if Ryan doesn't, and so he doesn't meet his eyes, and something in his head whispers _coward_.  
  
~  
  
_Twenty seconds. Give yourself twenty seconds. And then stop._  
  
Ryan swallows and closes his eyes. He doesn't say anything. Shane's thighs are touching his, and Shane's tugging his head forward. And he fucking likes it. He is so aware of Shane's knuckles bent to hold his hair. Of Shane's silent, rhythmic breathing. It's not this that Ryan likes, it's Shane, and he lets himself have it.  
  
For twenty seconds.  
  
And at the end, he opens his eyes and Shane's not looking at him. Ryan focuses on steadying his breathing. He wipes his hands on his pants and they brush Shane's. And they want more. So much more. But he pulls them to his lap.  
  
_Don't push him._  
  
~  
  
These little touches. He notices them, notices all of them. Ryan's fingers brush against him and he exhales softly. "You okay?" He asks, drawing the scissors away a little. It’s not mocking, not pushing. He wants to understand this better so he knows when to stop, whether to stop. Whether he should not even start in the first place.  
  
~  
  
“Why are you asking _me_?”  
  
He means it because of Finn, because of the nightmare Shane's been through the past 24 hours. This shouldn't be about anything else. It's selfish that he's thinking about it like that. Shane's already so reserved with this, and after… it seems dangerous. Shane always plays so close to this edge, but he freezes. Horrified he came so close. Ryan doesn't know why. Maybe Shane's as scared as he is--can’t read Ryan. But Shane can read him, from the very first day, Shane's seen straight through him to his center.  
  
Shane isn't as easy. He's a labyrinth. And after yesterday, it runs deeper and different than it did before.  
  
Yet Shane's asking if Ryan is okay, because he knows that Ryan falls apart in these moments, beneath his hands, whether it's a haircut or a handshake. And he's asking like Ryan can give him permission, and, fuck, Ryan wants to. As much as he's scared to, he wants it like thirst wants water.  
  
“I'm fine…” He flicks his eyes to Shane in the mirror. “Worry about you.”  
  
~  
  
Shane’s still for a moment, a long one, and then he says, “Wait,” and gently turns Ryan back to face him, fingers against his jaw, but it’s a different touch now, a more clinical one. He doesn’t meet Ryan’s eyes as he cuts the last few too-long pieces of hair. They fall down over his hands, over his wrists.  
  
Shane sets the scissors down without letting him go, pushes his hair back like Ryan had done a few moments ago when he was showing him what he used to do, before, and for a moment Shane holds it there, just looks at him, then lets it fall. “Done,” he says, a little brighter, and steps back, brushing himself off.  
  
~  
   
Ryan stands up and squints as he looks at his hair in the mirror. It’s a good distraction from the absence of Shane, from whatever he might’ve done to cast Shane off him. He hates himself for it. He hates himself for a lot lately. But his hair looks passable. He turns to Shane and shrugs. “Okay, I’ll hand it to you. It’s not bad.” And after another long glance in the mirror. “Thanks.”  
   
He doesn’t bring up the bet again. Because there was a moment where he thought Shane might go somewhere, and he didn’t—like he always does—he pivoted. And Ryan can’t listen to him do it again. Not right now.  
   
“You gonna cut yours now?”  
  
~  
  
Shane would have been fine to do it, before, but now, he doesn’t want to meet his own eyes, doesn’t want the see the shadows of another person’s face in his own. But they might not get this chance again, and really, it’s cleaner if he cuts it. It’s just more practical.  
  
“I uh…” he’s been saying, drawing the sounds out while he considers, and then he says, “Yeah.” He can deal with this, he’ll be fine. He looks at Ryan and smiles at him, but it fades fast. He wonders if he shouldn’t have held him so close last night. He wonders if Ryan just gave it because he felt guilty for—  
  
A whole lot of doors slam shut in Shane at once. It’s too much at the same time, and suddenly the whole prospect of doing _anything_ other than sleeping is so daunting that it saps him of all the trying, of all the energy he’s had. He sits down in the nearest chair, the one more in shadow, and presses his fingers to the bridge of his nose. It’s like something hurts but he can’t find it.  
  
He’s reading this wrong, he’s _looking_ for things. And Ryan is too nice to…  
  
But that doesn’t seem right, either. Earlier this morning he’d said Shane was a distraction.  
  
But a distraction was just a distraction. Wasn’t it? A distraction just meant that.  
  
_Just keep going_ , he thinks. He doesn’t know how to do anything else. He drops his hand from his face. “Can you hand me the… hand me the scissors?”  
  
~  
   
This is not good. Shane has transformed from half-normal Shane into ghost-Shane faster than the Rock’n Roller Coaster take-off. Something upset him. Or, well, probably nothing specific, but this might’ve been too much too fast. He’s pushing himself so hard. Ryan grabs the scissors and pulls them behind him.  
   
“I… no, maybe you should… not?” He’s reaching, panicking. Because he doesn’t want Shane stuck on the other side of this, and the way he’s looking himself in the mirror—he remembers what Shane said about thinking his reflection was realer than him, remembers the way Shane tried to make himself look like a demon—he can’t be left alone with it right now. “Too much haircutting. You have delicate hands, and they’re going to get tired and fall off.”  
   
He looks around the shop, desperate, hangs on his horrible work with the chairs from yesterday. His heart’s lodged in his throat, pulsing too thick there. He has to get this right. He just wants to get something right.  
   
“Why don’t—you know, I wonder if there’s…” God, there’s nothing to do in a barber shop. Literally nothing. He could try to cut Shane’s, but that would be a disaster. And Shane would be looking at the mirror. “We could try to find some shaving stuff. Something other than your murder razor…” He doesn’t see anything, though. “Or we could use your murder razor again.”  
   
He walks to where Shane’s sat in the other chair and puts his hands on his knees, leans into him, so their faces are closer than they ought to be. It’s a risk. A stupid one. One that has his heart tearing free from his heart and breaking in shards with one of the mirrors. But touch worked. Last time—touched worked. It made them both happier.  
   
“Let’s just take a break—we can… do something else, if you don’t want to do the shaving thing.” If that’s too much. It probably is too much. It’s too much for Ryan. No, it isn’t—it isn’t too much for Ryan. “We kept that deck of cards. We could do that.”  
  
~  
  
Shane softly catches his breath, and raises his eyes to Ryan's. He wants to be still, wants to hide from this a little, but this time he pushes himself past it, tips his face up, almost suggestive, daring, but his shoulders are tense and tight against the back of the chair.

"You want to play cards?" He asks. But Jesus, now he's remembering the razor and the way Ryan had reacted, how he had _looked_ and he _knows_ he can't do that right now. He can't take that.

And he's remembering cutting the zip ties from around Finn's wrist and it's all so interwoven.

Shane's found Ryan's wrist and he curls his fingers around it. Warm, whole, not cut down to the bone. This is where he is right now. Not in the cabin, not in his old house.

"Okay," he says. "I'm dynamite at Crazy Eights."  
  
~  
   
Ryan’s relieved Shane doesn’t throw himself back far enough to explode out the other side of the barber shop. And Shane’s right to avoid anything else. Ryan has to figure out how to use touch in a way that Shane’s okay with. He doesn’t know if this is… if it’s what it is for Ryan for Shane. Shane likes guys. He admitted that, but Ryan doesn’t know if Shane likes _him_. It all seems calculated. Like he’s running a gambit.  
   
He thinks about the basketball court, the way Shane’s lips brushed his neck—the bathroom and that moment, where… where it felt like Ryan mattered. Like it was Ryan Shane wanted. Ryan told Shane he’d wait. But he can only wait if there’s something on the other side of it—so far it’s him trying, begging, Shane to come to him. And Shane reaching and then resisting.  
   
Sometimes Shane seems to like what he does to Ryan, and other times it horrifies him. Shane’s brother is dead. This thing between them further away. Ryan feels wrong for thinking about it, for considering it.  So he smiles at the hand on his wrist and blinks back the burst of longing. He slides his hand around to catch Shane’s wrist and tugs.  
   
“I doubt you’re dynamite at anything. Come on.”  
  
~  
  
"I am, though," Shane says. "Karaoke for one." He lets Ryan pull him up, follows him back upstairs.

They're fairly evenly matched at cards, and it starts getting a little warmer as the sun filters in through the window. It's sort of not awful. Shane forgets things for a while, but then they have to eat something, and he keeps it down better today, but he knows this won't last forever. The silence of the city outside puts him on edge every time he notices it.

He finally brings up finding a car. "Before someone else does," he reasons. That twists, panicked, around his ribs. Missing their chance— he hates thinking about it. So they go out while the sun is still high in the sky, wend their way around old trash and detritus.

Shane's lamenting the fact that he didn't think it worthwhile to learn to hotwire a car before when he notices a glint of silver on the floor of one. It's a rusty looking brownish piece of junk that looks like it didn't even run _before_ the apocalypse. Shane tugs on the door and it opens.

They always open. There's just usually no keys.  
  
Shane picks them up and shakes them in Ryan's direction. "Check it out, baby," he says, actually smiling about this. _We’re lucky_ , he thinks.  
  
~  
   
Ryan kinda thinks he should’ve done this on his own. Shane’s getting better, or he’s pretending to, but Ryan feels bad… when it was him, Shane handled _everything_ on his own. Ryan’s letting him down. But his eyes widen when he sees Shane dangle the keys. He can’t believe it.  
   
“Oh, shit, are you serious?”  
   
His mouth twitches up into a smile. Washes out the concern for a second. If they can get a car, fuck, he doesn’t know where they’ll go… if he could convince Shane to go to Disneyland or even if he should—but they could go _somewhere_. If there’s gas. One step at a time… this is one he thought they’d never manage.  
   
Ryan steps forward and eyes the inside of the car through the back window. It’s a mess. The seats are ripped—there’s trash all along the floorboard, but the windows aren’t broken, and well—it would work. It’s a hell of a step up from walking miles upon miles every day. His leg’s hurting from just this brief walk to the car and he’s tired of it.  
   
“Turn it on!”  
  
~  
  
"I hope you like driving," Shane says, even as he slides the pipe into the passenger seat, climbing into the driver's side. "Because I hate it."

He's too tall for this car. He fights with the seat for a second and gets it back. It knocks a few empty McDonald's cups around in the back, and the noise makes him flinch. He doesn't expect it to work on the first try maybe. So when it doesn't it's fine. The engine tries but it chokes. Biting his lip, because he feels like _this_ sound will draw everything to them, he tries again. Same result. "Damn." He scans the empty street. He hates this. "Keep a... keep your eyes open, right?" he tells Ryan, reprimands him a little. The engine keeps struggling when Shane tries a third time. "God _damn_ it," he whispers, shaking out his hands. _He's_ shaking.  
  
~  
   
Ryan closes his eyes when the car doesn’t stop, and they flutter, twitch with the noise. Great—he hadn’t even wanted to _think_ it. That it might not. But why would it work? Why would anything work? Fuck. Shane’s frustrated. It jars Ryan. Especially when Shane turns it on him. He’s just tasting the disappointment of the car when Shane’s—it’s not snapping, not really. Ryan takes in a breath. This is affecting Shane too much. He should’ve done this by _himself_.  
   
“It’s fine, just… it’s fine. Maybe…” He cranes his neck to the front of the car. “Pop the hood. Maybe it’s something small.” He knows nothing about cars. But he’s got to try. Shane’s shaking like he’s going to—jesus, Ryan doesn’t know. Ryan should’ve done this alone. Why didn’t he stop Shane? Why didn’t he think of looking for cars? He grabs Shane’s shoulder, trying to stop him shaking. “It’s okay, man.”  
  
~  
  
_No_.

Shane drops his shoulder from beneath Ryan's hand, pulling away like a cat that doesn't want to be touched. For a second he can't look at him, too overwhelmed by this astronomic fucking disappointment, but then he does and the uncertainty is written all over Ryan's face. The disappointment. And Shane can see it in his eyes where he's resigned himself to this not working. Where Ryan resigns himself to a world where nothing works like it's fucking _supposed_ to and Shane _hates_ it.

The hat was one thing — forgotten birthdays — but this is the thing that might keep them alive, _this_ is the thing that matters. He wants to cry. He ignores Ryan and clenches his jaw and tries the car again, pushing it, out of frustration.

He knows it won't work, and it doesn't. Slamming his fist into the dashboard, startling the breath from his own lungs, Shane pops the hood and moves fast, grabs the pipe and pushes Ryan aside as he gets out to check whatever nonsense is under there.

Like he knows fuckall about cars.  
  
~  
   
Ryan’s whole body is shaking now. He’s clenching, clenching—curled around his fists, around his ribs until they dig into him. His eyes hurt. He can’t blink, can’t do anything under this frustration. He needs to let out a breath, so he does. He jerks when Shane shoves him, stumbles, and it’s like fucking Finn all over again. It’s just—god damn it. God… no, he can’t do this right now. He can’t lose control. If he loses control right now, he doesn’t know what he’s going to do. Except make this worse. And he’s already fucked it up beyond any kind of recognition.  
   
He just has to… Shane’s hurt. That’s what this is. Ryan should’ve left him back at the damn barber shop. He should have thought do this one his own, and now Shane won’t even fucking _listen_ to him when Ryan speaks. Because he never fucking listens to Ryan because he doesn’t actually care what Ryan has to say. Because Ryan has proven himself useless, again, and again, and again, and now he’s done it again. Ryan works to ungrit his teeth, untense his jaw. He’s the one who has to stay composed here—he has to. No matter how mean Shane gets. He killed Shane’s brother. He brought Shane out here. He has to be okay.  
   
“Shane.” It does not sound composed. It sounds _bad_. It quivers and breaks. “You gotta calm down.” This is completely unfamiliar—it’s not the shock from Finn. It’s legitimate anger. Ryan stands along the side of the hood, glancing over the messy insides of the car. He can’t even begin to process what he’s looking at. Not with this inside him. He glances around the side, back to the driver’s window. Swallows. “One of us needs to sit in the car and try to turn it on if we’re gonna figure this out. It might just be the battery. We’ll find another car.”  
   
Why did he let Shane come out here? Why can’t he get this right?  
  
~  
  
_And what are we going to do if it is the fucking battery?_ Shane's brain supplies, unhelpfully. Nothing. Even if it is the battery, this fucking thing will crap out in the middle of nowhere probably, just strand them in the middle of nowhere to die from exposure or starvation or the un-fucking-dead or all three.

And Shane can't fix this like he couldn't fix Jake like he couldn't even bury him properly. All that water... Shane still dreams about it. It's just like how can't fix Finn or anything.

They're fucked. They're _fucked_ and pressing on is just drawing it out, endlessly. Drawing Ryan's disappointment out, his countless little heartbreaks— Shane sees them in his face, every time Ryan  looks at this fucking remnant of a world. This rotting inside of something that looked promising, once.

They're fucked and he can't make the world disappear for Ryan forever. It's only going to be fragments, always, and that won't ever change. It won't ever get better. Shane sees all of the things lined up to batter Ryan's spirit until it finally breaks, and it's just fucking... endless.

"Fuck— fuck the battery, fuck this goddamn car," Shane says. He whispers it, but it's filled with fury, like flames licking at the edges of his soft voice. He pushes Ryan back with his shoulder, steps back into him so he has to step back, and then Shane grips the pipe in both hands and slams it into the windshield. It cracks, but doesn't shatter. It's so much noise.

Shane hauls off and hits it again, and the glass crumples inwards, over the seats, over the dash, white like snow. It glints in the sun.

It might have been beautiful.

Shane can't even breathe. He struggles with it, eyes on the damage, the thing that he did, and then he turns and makes for the barber shop again, everything in him screaming to make sure Ryan's with him, but he doesn't.  
  
~  
   
Ryan throws his arms over his face, jerks further back—further than Shane’s already pushed him. “Jesus!” It shatters. Shane wants it to shatter. He hits it _twice_. Ryan drops his hands and stares at it. At this mess of this car. It could’ve worked—they could’ve figured something else out. Ryan could have tried something but Shane was so convinced Ryan couldn’t do _anything_ that he didn’t even bother responding. He’d rather break the fucking car than even _consider_ Ryan know what he’s talking about—could potentially add _value_.  
   
This weird, laugh-breath comes out of Ryan’s mouth as he gapes. All this glass. All over the seats. He gets it. He gets what it feels like to have your fucking front smashed in because you don’t work properly. His teeth click together and he takes slow, measured breaths through them. Shane’s already fucked off, but Ryan cannot follow him. Not yet. He’s so close to breaking down. This is just some—response in Shane. Some belated grief coping mechanism. It’s because of Finn. He’s probably pissed at Ryan because of Finn and is trying not to take it out on him. He’s trying—Shane is _trying_.  
   
But rather than telling Ryan, rather than seeing him as anything other than a child that he has to drag around and appease—Shane has elected to do this. To smash this car. To render it as useless as Ryan has been. Because he doesn’t trust Ryan at all. Ryan laughs this hollow, broken laugh because it’s so funny—so _hilarious_ that Shane would ever say he feels safe with Ryan. It’s such a lie. Something else Shane said because he has to take care of Ryan. Even when his fucking brother is dead. When Ryan _killed_ him.  
   
He scrapes the wooden handle of the hammer with his thumbnail. He wants to draw it over his head and finish what Shane started. Wreck this car until there’s nothing left of it. He’s trying to quell this tremor. He has to walk this back. He doesn’t want to lose himself to this. To this anger. Not with Shane like this—so gone that he _smashed a car_. But Ryan is furious. With Shane. With himself—god, he’s so mad at himself he could break open his own skull with this goddamn hammer. A hammer Shane found, of course, because Ryan has done nothing worthwhile since he let a zombie jump out of a closer and kill his brother. Since he didn’t have the fucking brain power to check the goddamn closet. The thing that _four-year-olds_ have enough common sense to be afraid of. He couldn’t even bury him. Shane had to do that, and even then—in this… water-logged hellhole. That’s where he left Jake.  
   
The same brother whose parents he killed. The same brother he let get bitten by a zombie. That brother. He left him in the freezing rain in a grave that probably last ten minutes, and then he ran away. He ran off with the guy who’d put a pipe to the back of his skull. Not just ran away with… wanted to be with. Wanted in this aching, _destructive_ way. He should have cremated Jake like Shane did. Shane’s always smarter than him, always better, even when he’s one third of a person—he’s better than Ryan.  
   
Ryan’s eyelids flutter. He eyes one of the shards of glass, thinks about what it would feel like on his skin—how bad it would hurt. He cuts his eyes up the road. His breath hasn’t calmed, but he needs to go back. He needs to go back and make sure Shane doesn’t wreck the entire fucking barbershop in whatever rage has consumed him. He doesn’t want Shane to hurt himself—this is something entirely new, entirely raw. And Ryan has to adjust. He has to do this. He has to do this one thing.  
   
He turns. Shane’s a long ways off, but he doesn’t adjust his pace. He just walks, because if he pushes himself too much, he’s going to shatter. He’s going to shatter like the fucking windshield, and do—fuck, he doesn’t know. But he and Shane will not survive it. He doesn’t even know if he will.  
   
~  
  
Shane wrenches the shop door open and steps inside. Ryan's not with him, but he caught a glimpse of him in the corner of his eye as he entered.

It's tearing him up inside, this fear. That something will happen to Ryan out there, that Shane won't be able to control this new — this horrifying rage inside him. He doesn't know what to do with it. He paces to the steps, takes one, then turns and comes back. He's twisting himself into circles here, pacing around the room with his eyes on the floor — and the mirrors reflect it, he sees it in his peripheral like he lives his life. Fucking peripherally. And this confusion, this shaking defeated sick panic that he can't shake... he's making everything worse. It's worse now that he smashed the car window. Shane doesn't do things like that. He's never done things like that. He's impulsive in other stupid, ridiculous ways, he doesn't fucking _lash_ out.

He's caught his breath, but something's roaring in his ears. He drags his fingers through his hair, snagging tangles, he wants to scream but he feels like it would just be disappointing. He's never felt so useless, so helpless in his life. Where the fuck is Ryan?

He makes for the door again, to check on him, to make sure he's okay and not just getting his chest hollowed out, eaten by a zombie, and almost crashes into him in the doorway. Shane pulls back fast, alarmed at their sudden closeness. "Jesus, shut the door. It's cold enough in here."  
  
~  
   
Ryan has almost stabilized himself when Shane nearly slams into him as he opens the barbershop door. Checking on Ryan, _obviously_. Like Ryan is his hapless eight-year-old child constantly wandering off and into the clutches of danger.  
   
Shane’s presence does to him what it did to the windshield. Ryan’s check collapses inwards, cracked and broken into jagged fragments. Tearing into his interior. And then Shane’s ordering him around, still clearly pissed. Maybe it just won’t fade away—he’ll just be this from now on. Angry at Ryan. At least it would match how Ryan feels, then. But he still seems to be laboring under this need to make sure Ryan isn’t _dead_. He really shouldn’t bother.  
   
Ryan opens his mouth to say something mean, something dismissive. Like, _I’ll be sure to shut it on my way out._  
   
He closes it because he still wants to make this okay. He still wants to manage this, but now that Shane’s ripped at his control—it’s worse now. The walk did not help. It made it worse. There’s a blackness seeping through him, oily and slick. He can’t move for fear of it leaking further, doing more damage.  
   
He doesn’t say anything. He closes the door and lies the hammer gingerly on one of the stations. He cannot have it in his hands right now. He needs it _away_ from him. He leans against the station, pressing into his arms, like he can put everything else down to. His hurt, his guilt, his anger.  
   
Himself.  
  
~  
  
He _wants_ to apologize but he can't make it come out of his mouth right now, he can't even think of the right words. He wants to admit that he doesn't always know what to do and that it is terrifying and he's sorry for ruining their once chance of getting out of here safely. He's still clutching the pipe and he can't-- he puts it down against the wall. "I—" he begins, and he tries to still himself, tries to stop pacing but he's shaking. It's worse when he stops. "This is so fucking..."

Impossible. It's impossible.  
  
~  
   
Ryan swallows. He wishes Shane wouldn’t say anything right now. He’s talking in this one moment where Ryan needs silence. But okay. He’s talking. He’s… making some kind of effort. Ryan can’t screw this up. He pushes himself off the counter and turns around. He’s so aware of the mirrors, of the way Shane looked at himself earlier. Ryan was dumb this morning—he let Shane go too far, and then they… and then the car. Ryan is still. He’s so still. It’s different, Shane moving and Ryan still.  
   
“Yeah…” He pushes himself, tugs the words out with his teeth. _Are you okay?_ seems such a dumb thing to ask. No, Shane isn’t okay. His brother is dead. His parents are dead. Everyone is dead and nothing is okay and Ryan isn’t helping.  
   
“I know this isn’t… I know you can’t actually be _okay_ right now. But, back there—are you… alright?”  
  
~  
  
He won't look at Ryan, he's shaken, terrified, embarrassed. He feels so defeated and Ryan, _Ryan_ asks if he's alright and Shane knows he _needs_ to be, but he isn't.

"I'm... forget it." He means the car. They'll find another one. _He'll_ find another one.  
  
"It's fine."  
  
~

Ryan keeps the exact same position he asked in. Just holds it, like somehow the answer will change. Like if he stays still enough, he won’t snap. He will keep it together, nod, and deal with this. He will handle this the right way.

“It’s fine…” He cocks his head, nods it in this small way at first, but it gets heavier—darker. And the smile on his face twists into something mean, something nasty that matches how he feels. “Right… right. Of course.” He laughs, and it’s the same way he laughed back at the car. It’s wrong, discordant. “Because that’s what fine people do. They smash car windows. Just… destroy them.”

The smile is still plastered across his face as he moves towards Shane, limbs loose, then tight, like some kind of malfunctioning marionette.  He stops several steps short.

“No, you’re not fine. You’re a goddamn disaster. It’s incredibly obvious. And why would you be? Who would be fine right now?” He wheezes, exaggerates a shrug. “But clearly you think I’m too stupid to catch onto that… I mean, just, wow.” He squints. “Have you ever told me the truth about anything?”

And that’s it—it’s the pin in the grenade. Ryan feels himself lose his grip. Even as some part of him begs, pleads for him to control it—to pull it back. It rises in him like a tsunami until it is a roar in his ears loud enough to lay waste to his heartbeat.

The act, whatever it was, drops—explodes along the ground like a porcelain vase. “Or am I just your goddamn charity case? The pathetic jackass who couldn’t even protect his own fucking brother? You’re not fooling anybody.” His voice spikes. “If you weren’t so determined to hide everything and be my fucking mother, maybe you wouldn’t get so frustrated you feel the need to break things.” He breathes and it catches in his throat. “I don’t want your fucking charity. So stop lying to me because you think I can’t handle this shit. Stop dragging around someone you don’t trust because that’s how you get killed.”

~  
  
Shane's frozen, paralyzed under that and he just stares at Ryan. "What are you talking about?" He asks, voice strange and uneven. "I— hold on here, _what_?"  
  
It's too much to deal with at once. He latches onto one thing. "Ryan, I _do_ trust you, I thought that would be _abundantly_ clear, I— when— when have I ever _lied_ to you?"  
  
~  
   
“Mm…” Ryan pretends to consider. “No—no, you definitely don’t. You didn’t trust me to try the car, did you? No. You didn’t trust me not to get eaten while I wasn’t in this fucking shop for five seconds. You don’t trust me to do anything.”  
   
His hands clench as he stares at Shane. There’s still something in him trying so hard to stop. Because Shane’s hurting and he can’t deal with this right now—he can’t deal it Ryan’s shit. He wants to fix this, but he can’t—because he can’t ask Shane to fix this for him. He can’t make Shane trust him. And he can’t blame Shane for not trusting him. Not after everything.  
   
So there’s just anger.  
   
“Oh, it’s not _lies_. It’s just half-truths. I barely know anything about you. You didn’t tell me about the gun. I didn’t even know you had a _brother_. We went on this mission back to your house and I _knew_ you were—” He bounces his clenched fist in front of him, throws his head to the side. There are tears, biting at his eyes. He’s panting to compensate. “All you ever say is _you’re fine_ or that _I shouldn’t worry about it_. You get attacked by zombies while I’m not there—and it’s just, oh, well—Ryan doesn’t need to know he’ll probably burst into tears like the four-year-old he is.” His shoulders shake. There’s so much weight on his leg—he’s not holding his body right. He’s going to fucking collapse.  
   
Under Jake, under Finn, under his mom and dad, under Shane’s dad and the fucking seatbelt, under Shane being so miserable he can’t stand still. Under the way he catches himself in the mirror like he can’t stand it.  
   
“You shattered a car windshield and said you were fine…” He snarls and pushes the chair nearest to him over. It clatters along the ground. Not nearly satisfying enough. He wants to pick it up, slam it down. “ _That_ is a lie.”  
  
~  
  
Shane's eye are hard, but it's because he's trying so hard to _read_ Ryan beneath all of this. And, God, he's been here before. He's faced off in utter confusion with people who are near tears — over the supper table, in parking lots, naked in bed... all because he can't give them what they need.

And here he is now, again, with Ryan. Even after he'd told him everything, even after he'd fucking spilled his guts trying to explain, tying to _warn_ him what Shane was like, even though he'd struggled so hard to do things right this time...

And Ryan had said _just be you_ , and now it's all being thrown back in Shane's face, and he can't even be pissed. He's just hollowed out, Ryan's grabbed his heart, his spine, and _twisted_.

 _I just wanted to protect you_ , Shane thinks, and it feels so futile now.

And the worst part is is that he can't even be surprised. It's not the first time, it won't be the last time, but it might be the first and last time it's with someone he trusted as much as Ryan, and here's Ryan now, telling him _'You don't trust me.'_

He overturns a chair and Shane tightens his shoulders and looked away, jaw clenched. He doesn't know what to do. He casts around for the answer, and his eyes land on his own reflection and it throws this moment into sharp relief. He connects with it, and it's awful.

It's so awful. Shane holds his own eyes and can't even sum up the fucking energy to hate himself.

 _Jesus_ , he thinks dully, _here we are again._  
  
~  
   
Shane isn’t talking. Oh, god, this is so much worse because Shane isn’t saying anything. All that anger, and now nothing… and it’s killing Ryan. He wishes he could be the car. He wishes Shane would grab the pipe and hit him. Because he’s not mad at Shane—he’s mad at himself. He’s mad because he can’t be what Shane needs. He’s mad because Shane spends all this time doing all this shit for him like hats and… god… fuck. And now he’s mad because Shane’s brother is gone, and Ryan’s made it worse—so much worse.  
   
_Fuck_.  
   
Ryan tries to say something to stop this. To tell Shane it’s not about him, because he can see it—he can see Shane breaking down and thinking he owes Ryan all this shit. And, god, fuck, he doesn’t. He’s already given Ryan more than he owes him—so much more. That’s why Ryan’s so mad. That’s why he can’t get a grip.  
   
“You’re not fine.” Ryan snarls it. “God _damn_ it!”  
   
And then Shane looks into the fucking mirror, and it punches Ryan in the stomach. He’s doing this—he’s making it worse. And he just wants…  
   
“ _Stop_ looking at the fucking—stop looking around like you’re—like you’re not enough. I told you this is about me. I _told_ you…” He gasps. “I’m not useless.”  
   
“I’m not—” Ryan jerks—completely snaps. His fist careens into the mirror with a gut-twisting crunch and _shatter_. A spray of white and silver explodes outwards, leaving spidered cracks and broken edges to cling to the rim. Silence follows. Nothing but the tinkling patter of glass hitting the linoleum. It’s strange after the crash. His fist sings under the impact, bent sharp and violent against his wrist. He drops it. Blood drips slow and warm across his fingers where the glass broke, beads slower here shards clipped his arm as they fell away.  
  
_Ow_ , he thinks belatedly.  
  
~  
  
The mirror shattering feels like Ryan's hit _him_. And it's so much sound, so much, and then there's blood, _Oh God_ , Shane thinks, _there's blood_.

And suddenly Shane doesn't care about truths or lies or noise anymore. He doesn't care about anything other than the fact that Ryan's hurt himself, he's hurt _himself_ and Shane doesn't know how to protect him from that. It's too internal; too far away, Shane doesn't know how to connect enough to anyone to see it before it comes — like this has come — in glittering shards and destruction and all this red on Ryan's knuckles.

He doesn't even know it happens. One minute he's standing there surrounding by silence save for this screaming pitch in his ears, and the next he's got Ryan's sweater in his fists and, heedless of his leg, heedless of the fact that he had even moved, he swings Ryan around and away from the glass.

It grinds to powder beneath their shoes, and Shane _pushes_ him. Initially, maybe, he was going to tell him to get the fuck upstairs, be quiet, so they could both hide. Instead Shane slams his palms into Ryan's shoulders and shoves him back into a wall, following fast, grabbing the front of his sweater and hauling him upright, keeping him there, but the momentum propels him forward, he's right up against him, panting.

He wants to see his hand, he wants to make sure it's not cut too deeply. He has a thousand fears of arterial veins and infection and embedded glass. Shane grabs his wrist with his free hand and wrenches it up between them.  
  
~  
   
Ryan doesn’t have time to think before Shane’s grabbing him. He’s twisting and pushing, pushing until Ryan’s back hits a wall. A little grunt escapes him because it hurts—his back and his leg. He quivers, mouth curled too tightly against his teeth. He can’t get oriented, because Shane grabs his sweater again, tugs him forward. Like he’s going to hit him. Ryan flinches before Shane gets ahold of his wrist. Yanks it between them. His hand’s unsteady, half-curled into its fist and ruby red.  
   
“Stop. It’s fine.” Ryan grinds his teeth and pulls it closer, which just serves to bring Shane closer, which is not what he needs with all this wild energy running through him. He doesn’t want to be this close to Shane right now. Can’t be. The cuts along his knuckles sting. They’re not shallow, but he doesn’t think they’re too deep, just slashes of dark red across the backs of his fingers. Blood trails between his knuckles and down his palm before it breaks away and spatters the glass fragments below them. He looks up, flustered.  
   
It’s hard to look at Shane’s face right now. He’s pissed, or… or something. It’s not good. They’re both panting and it’s heavy and Ryan hates how his anger pools warm and thick in his gut. Because Shane’s close to him. And Ryan isn’t mad at Shane.  
   
“It’s fine.”

~  
  
_It's fine_ , Ryan says, but it's not fine, they're falling to pieces. Shane takes in the blood, and it twists uncomfortably up his arms and through his gut. He meets Ryan's eyes as he lets his wrist go, takes both his shoulders in his palms, and drags him close only to push him back against the wall again.

"It's _this stupid shit_ you're pulling that makes you a child," Shane snaps, and he doesn't mean it. He, childishly, just broke a car window, their last hope, worse than the mirror. Ryan didn't ruin their chance, Shane did. He's holding him there with the full weight of his body because Ryan is stronger and Shane knows it. He lets go of his sweater and grabs both his wrists and shoves them into the wall over Ryan's head and he _presses_ them there with the weight of his hand, with the length of one forearm against Ryan's.

He bets it hurts, all that glass. He almost doesn't care. "Stop, I can't fucking trust you with _yourself_ , that's the problem!"

Shane is bad at yelling. It's not loud enough, but it comes out seared and brittle at the edges. Rough and black.  
  
~  
  
“G— _fuck_.” Shane slams his wrists into the wall and says all these things. All these things that Ryan hates. And he's hurting him. He's pushing him into this wall. He's got his wrist pinned, smearing the blood as it spills down Ryan's arm. His skin is too warm. Fingers gripping his wrists mean as fire. It's Shane's mouth, not the words, that Ryan focuses on first. The way his lips snap over syllables like a whip.  
  
“Fuck you…” Ryan gasps. “You started this. Just because…” His eyes dip to Shane's mouth again, and jump back up. There's so much skin touching him. He lifts his head and their breath tangles together. Shane's body is one place and his eyes and words are somewhere so different. “Just because you don't talk about it doesn't mean it's better. I don't know how to help you! And it's not up to you to trust me with myself. I can _handle_ it.”  
  
But he can't handle this. He can't handle wanting to kiss the man that might want to kill him.  
  
~  
  
He's watching Ryan's eyes, getting lost in them the way he does _every_ time he lets himself look. And Ryan's looking at his mouth, and it send a hot jolt of need through him, of want, and Shane doesn't bother to examine it before he tips Ryan's face up higher, cupping his jaw, and there's all the times he's wrapped his fingers around Ryan's throat in a gesture of trust, pushing curiously to see how close they can become, to see how far this goes, and the times Ryan's let Shane slide his fingers into the hot, secret softness of his fucking _mouth_ and he thought—

It was all searching for this hurt. That's what Ryan wants from him. Not touch. Not Shane.

Shane's eyes rush to dark, he feels like someone's stamped on his chest. He pushes Ryan's head back against the wall, fingers digging into his jaw, then ducks his head and bites his throat just above his shoulder, hard enough to bruise. His teeth are chattering as he lets go, pulls away just an inch or two, panting in gasps against his skin. He can't look at him.

Was that all this was? Shane is so bad at understanding people, at reading them. He never wanted to hurt him, he just wanted to give Ryan what he wanted, and he couldn't sort out the way Ryan shook beneath Shane's hands and the razor, or the way he shook against Shane's shaking frame or the way he looks at Shane softly sometimes like he—

Looked. _Looked_ at him.

 _Fuck you_ , Ryan had whispered in his ear, once, and Shane had _wanted_ — but the words sound different now, in a lot of ways.

Ryan probably won't look at him like that anymore.

And this is the worst kind of self-sabotage. Shane's punishing himself for following this as far as he has, he's punishing Ryan for things that aren't his fault.

If Shane could have talked to Finn, maybe Finn would have got it, maybe Finn would have held him back from this awful ledge. But Finn's dead and Shane's already jumped.  
  
~  
  
Ryan might be scared. If he had sense enough to be, he would be. Okay, he is. Shane grabs him like he's thinking about kissing him, slamming his head back, gripping his jaw too tight, and then he bites him. Ryan cries out. It's abrupt, clatters out of his mouth. And Jesus, it hurts. It mixes with everything else and it's too much hurt. Shane's _trying_ to hurt him.

Some part of him wants it, but mostly it's this pit in his chest because Shane's trying to hurt him.  
  
“Stop!” It's less forceful than Ryan means it to be. More afraid, more pleading. “Stop, I'm sorry, Shane! I'm sorry, I just… you're hurting me, _please_.”  
  
~  
  
Shane's hands fall to Ryan's hips, and he gets his fingers into the waistband and yanks him forward, and Ryan's pleading with him and Shane— God, it's fucking awful. It's all hurt, he's lost the part of himself that _wants_. The part that needs Ryan for something that is so far removed from _this_.

He can't, though, do this anymore. It spikes through him, scraping like rust in his veins, over his bones. He wrenches back, lets him go, backs up, up, until he can't even fathom this space anymore. He only sees Ryan.

"Isn't that what you _wanted_?" He bites out, but it's awful. He feels so fucking sick. His hand is bloody where he smeared Ryan's blood and Shane's holding himself desperately tight.

And then he breaks.

His breath cracks out of him, and then he's falling apart, every joint, everything holding him together, and oh Jesus. _Ryan_.

"Fuck," he says, and makes as if to go back to him, but he's different now, he's not as sharp. He stops himself because he's the fucking worst kind of person. Ryan's _bleeding._

Shane closes his hands into fists and he's just gasping, chest rising and falling in jagged rhythms. He looks away from him, squeezes his eyes shut.

Finn's dead. Ryan's... Ryan feels like he deserves all of this awful fucking hurt. That's why he let Shane do what he did.  
  
The line's crossed now and he’d do anything to take it back.  
  
~  
  
Ryan's unstable in a different way now. The gashes ache, throb until he's light headed. He shivers, too aware of where Shane bit him. How close it was to where he kissed him. How different they were. His leg wobbles. And Shane says something about Ryan wanting hurt. And it's absurd but it isn't… wrong. Ryan's chasing it. A little.  
  
But not from Shane, not like that, not… he's hurt now. He's messed up this thing with Shane irrevocably and it's fucking awful because he needs him. Needs him bad. And it changed nothing. He's still useless. The car's still broken like his leg. but there's more to this. Shane's gasping and Ryan's got to respond. Shane is… Ryan caused this. Made Shane want to hurt him, and now… Shane's hurting and that's all that matters.  
  
He takes a step forward. “Hey, it's… just breathe, okay? It's… I'm sorry I snapped.” So fucking sorry. “Just breathe.”  
  
~  
  
Shane steps back from him, skittish, like he doesn’t trust himself. “No, no,” he’s saying, “Jesus— _Christ_ , don’t.” His eyes are on Ryan, but he doesn’t meet his gaze. Shane touches his own face, his mouth, smears Ryan’s blood over the side of his lips, part of his cheek. “ _I’m_ sorry. I’m so—”  
  
He wants to look at it, the place he bit him. It’s already purplish, angry-looking, but he can’t step close enough to actually see. His mind’s going through everything — they have to clean Ryan’s hand, they have to clean the place Shane _bit_ , they have to wrap his knuckles up in something, but he can’t say any of it. “Ryan,” he says again. He says it like _please_ , but he doesn’t know what he’s asking for.  
  
~  
  
Ryan stops. He flexes his hands. His left one _burns_. Blood cakes and sticks so his skin pulls too hard when he moves. He’s trying to process everything too fast. Shane thinks Ryan wants to hurt. It sucks, because that’s not what it is—he’s got this whole issue, this thing that’s swirling in him and making him lash out at himself. But it was never about that with Shane. It was about letting him—letting him do what he does. About Ryan relaxing and letting someone else control something. But he let Shane control way too much Look at what it’s led to.

Shane smears Ryan’s blood on his face and Ryan wants so badly to yank his hand away. Shane’s so worried about hygiene and he’s getting blood all over him. But Ryan can’t do much because his hand is soaked in it. He wipes it on his pants and doesn’t wince. He takes another tentative step forward, hands up.

There’s a whole different side to this. Ryan killed Shane’s brother and Shane might be reacting belatedly. He’s got to be angry—there’s got to be something in there. It could be part of why Shane lashed out. Why Ryan’s neck is pounding with the tear of Shane’s teeth. Either way, Shane’s angry at himself, and Ryan doesn’t know how to fix it.

He can’t advance any closer because he’s not sure Shane won’t snap. “Listen…” His teeth chatter. He’s not steady and he needs to be. “Your brother just… you lost your brother. It’s fine. You’re allowed to do this. To hold back or smash car windows or—I shouldn’t have… I just freaked out for a second and I shouldn’t have.”

He shouldn’t have let Shane look for cars. He shouldn’t have let Jake watch the closet. He shouldn’t have reacted to Shane’s hands. He shouldn’t have broken the mirror. He shouldn’t have broken his leg. He shouldn’t have killed his mother.

“I get it. I’m reckless. I’ve got issues I’m dealing with…” His jaw clenches. “But it’s not… that’s not…” He can’t finish because he’ll have to say what it is, and he can’t do that right now. Because this is messed up. God, this is more messed up than it’s ever been. “You’re pushing yourself too hard. I pushed you too hard. You don’t owe me anything—just… just take a breath.”  
  
~  
  
That’s not how this works though, not for Shane. He’s hearing what Ryan says, he’s taking it in, but Ryan’s wrong. Shane was supposed to protect him, and he hasn’t, he’s hurt him instead. He’s making Ryan feel the need to apologize for something Shane so fucking stupidly did.  
  
His voice is calming somehow, though, easing something in Shane even through Ryan’s chattering teeth, and he knows he shouldn’t take it because Ryan’s neck is bruised, his hand is bloody, and at least half of that is Shane’s fault.  
  
And Ryan tells him to take a breath, but Shane can’t because if he does he’ll start crying. Because he did lose Finn, he _does_ want to tear things down around him. Not his own walls, but everything else. He wants to enforce the ones he has and just destroy the rest.  
  
Everything except Ryan.  
  
And Ryan is taking this, taking everything Shane shouldn’t have done, and he’s shouldering it himself and Shane thinks that he _can’t_ hold all that up — he lost a brother, too. Shane doesn’t want Ryan to have to hold it, but he also does. He’s so tired of carrying everything. Shane couldn’t even _feel_ the weight that was slowly breaking him.  
  
He couldn’t feel it properly, and this is what happened.  
  
But he fucking feels it now, his defenses are falling away from him in pieces, Ryan’s peeling them away from him: Shane’s hurt, his self-blame, his isolation. It feels like being undressed, here, in the middle of all this ruin, and Shane has never felt so vulnerable.  
  
_...just take a breath._  
  
Shane shouldn’t take this from Ryan. The right to be furious, to be hurt, to be disgusted with Shane. He shouldn’t take the trust Ryan has still found it in his heart to give him, but there’s nothing else. Shane has nothing fucking else holding him up. So he takes a breath, a proper one, and it fills his lungs like a bulb blowing. It’s too much at once. And with the breath is this horrible rush of grief, like he knew there would be, somehow, it drags through his chest, until Shane’s swept under.  
  
He is so tired. He drops somehow, just kind of goes down in this controlled collapse. It’s almost slow, and then he’s sitting on the floor, and he’s all jagged angles, shards of glass already clinging to his clothes. He doesn’t care. He braces his arms against his knees and drops his head down, both hands over his face as sobs are wrenched out of him like bits of his insides. It’s raw and painful. He’d forgotten that crying _hurt_ like this.  
  
It was months. Finn was like that for months. Shane wonders how long Finn waited for him there, if he was bitten there, or before.  
  
Shane had been holding out for Finn to be okay. Finn was in New York — there were rumors about quarantine zones there. Why didn’t he stay? Why didn’t he fucking stay?  
  
_Because he was looking for you_ , Shane thinks. Finn, his brother, his confidant, his partner in crime, the one who always knew how to ease out what Shane needed to shake free, and leave the rest. Finn came looking for Shane, and Shane had chosen isolation. He’d chosen the cabin and solitude and in some ways, in a lot of ways, he’d found peace there, for the first time. Give him an inch and he’d take a mile, hell he’d take two, everyone else be damned.  
  
_That’s what I do_ , Shane thinks. And now here he is again, doing the same thing to Ryan. It’s like he’s a wildfire, like that unnatural creation of darkest black— consuming everything people give, without ever learning how to give any of it back in any of the right ways.  
  
~  
   
Ryan inhales sharply. It rattles out of him, slowly, as Shane breaks. It’s almost… relief. It is relief. Seeing this—seeing Shane give himself over to it. Ryan doesn’t know why it’s happening or if it’s just finally too much. Shane might never come back from this. This could be horrible, a point of no return. Ryan feels awful for the relief—but it’s there, anyway. A break in the weight on his shoulders. Weight that’s threatening to crush him.  
   
It hurts too. Hearing Shane hurt. Ryan clenches his teeth and balls his hands—ignores the way the bloody one stings. He stands there, not moving, even though Shane’s sitting in _glass_. Even though it’s probably dangerous. He just stands there, brow furrowed, and lets Shane shatter.  
   
Eventually, Ryan walks slowly, cautiously, over to him—like he’s a small animal—like fast movements will scare him. They more than likely will. Ryan doesn’t know what to do next. He’s not sure if Shane would even want comfort, or if he wants to be left alone. But Ryan can’t leave him. Even if he wanted that, Ryan couldn’t. He skims his clean hand over Shane’s shoulder, intentional and quiet, but he doesn’t linger. Shane and touch are two things he hasn’t figured out quite how to piece together. But he needs Shane to know he’s still here.  
   
Anger and sadness and guilt aside. Ryan is going to be here for Shane. In the only way he knows how to be. Even if it’s wrong. Because he cares—and maybe all he can do anymore is care. It was all he gave Jake, in the end. It’s all he has. He’s the kind of person who punches mirrors and makes people think he wants to die—wants pain. Caring is all he has.  
   
He sits down beside Shane, careful of the glass. His eyes watch for too long before he turns his head towards the other wall. It feels personal. Ryan doesn’t want to stare at Shane while he sobs. But he can’t stop seeing how much it shakes him—like all those brittle bones will splinter under the shred of tears. Like Shane’s never cried before.  
   
Ryan wants to take this away from him. But he can’t—this is something Shane has to feel. Has to let himself feel, at least for a second, if he’s going to get better. So he sits there, amidst broken glass and lost brothers, because he still means it. Means it loud enough to drown out the rest of him.  
   
_I’m here if you need me._  
  
~  
  
Something in him tells him to just stop, to get it together because they'll never survive like this.

Then Ryan touches his shoulder, sits down next to him, and he knows that if he stops now he'll never start again, not about Finn, and it's like sickness, like poison. He _needs_ to get it out of him. He understands that, somehow, so he does.

The light changes. Or maybe it just reflects off the room differently now, with its shattered mirror. They've done something they can't come back from. After a while, Shane goes quiet, except for the way his breath shakes and convulses outside of his control. It's the kind of crying children do. He'd lost that ability somewhere along the way.

And then that settles, too.

And Ryan is still there, and Shane doesn't know how to look him in the eye, or what happens next.

"There's no water in here," Shane says, finally. It feels like the wrong thing. He scrubs at his eyes. "You need to clean your hand." The blood. They're never safe.  
  
~  
   
Ryan glances at his hand like he’s forgotten it. He’s been sitting, silently, waiting on Shane for so long that he kind of has. Most of the blood has dried and caked to corners. The stillness has washed out the pain, but movement pulls it back into focus—dampens the ridges of his fingers with something fresh. He sighs because he’s overwhelmed. He’s sat here and he’s been still, and it was just—he didn’t have to think about things while he did. He just waited on Shane, and didn’t have to think about the way he’s falling apart too. About the fact that things are fucked up. About everything.  
   
He doesn’t want to use the few bottles of clean water they have to drink for this—they’ve got next to none left. And it’s getting harder and harder to find time to boil it. It hasn’t rained in a while so there’s less standing water, anyway.  
   
“I can wet a shirt. It won’t take much to wipe it down.” His voice has gone hoarse from disuse or something else. He turns to look at Shane, raises his eyebrows. “We need to find some more water soon, anyway.” He misses the department store. He misses a lot of things.  
  
He doesn’t ask Shane if he’s okay because he doesn’t know how. He doesn’t know if that’s the right thing to do yet. And he’s tired. Tired of messing up. And just _tired_.  
  
~  
  
Shane finally looks up at him, and it hurts. They shouldn't be sitting here amongst all this glass, and he suddenly doesn't know how to move in it. He shifts, rolls to the side so he can stand, but he doesn't, he just moves closer to Ryan, crouching in front of him.

Ryan's right. They do need to find water, they need to keep...

He's exhausted. Ryan's exhausted.

The bruise on his neck is purple and angry and Shane feels it twist at him as though he's the one who’s been bitten.

"Hey," he says, and his voice cracks with uncertainty. He knows he probably looks wrecked to match. He reaches out, so hesitant, touches Ryan's shoulders with both hands, gentle, barely a touch. "Hey... come here." He tugs at him gently, wants him closer, fucking _needs_ it. Needs to check the damage he's caused.  
  
~  
  
Shane seems better. Not good, but better. Ryan hopes he's come out the other side of this, and Ryan hadn't stood by while he let Shane destroy himself. His eyes are red-rimmed and Ryan wishes he could hug him without it being weird.  
  
He manages a patchwork smile. “There's glass everywhere.” Ryan comes at his tug, anyway. Shane's looking at the bite. It hurts when Ryan focuses on it, but it's not that bad. In another life, another day, it could've been two people just… wanting each other. It wasn't but it's not that bad. He doesn't want Shane to worry about it, but he doesn't want Shane to think it's what he wanted.  
  
“Honestly, all I'm taking from this is scratching smashing a mirror with my bare hands off my bucket list. I'm a badass.”  
  
~  
  
He laughs, soft sheer relief, but it's still a little choked, still wet. He's so careful, moves so slow, but gently folds his arms around Ryan, hoping he won't pull away. Knowing he probably should want to. He's warm and solid and Shane wants to do so much more than this, he wants to hold him against him until he can't tell whose heartbeat is whose, but he doesn't. He never does.

"Yeah," Shane agrees. "You are."  
  
~  
  
Ryan wraps one arm around Shane's back, slides his hand down his back. It's not what he wants, but it's close. He's guarded. Nervous about what Shane thinks, about what's wrong with him, but he leans into it. For as long as it lasts.  
  
It bubbles in his throat again and as he pulls back and catches Shane's eyes, it bursts.  
  
“I don't want you to hurt me.”  
  
And he means it in every way he can.  
  
~  
  
Shane has to catch his breath because that almost tears him to pieces again, but he holds Ryan's eyes and, strained, whispers "I don't want to. I'm sorry."

But he has no excuses, no way to explain himself: just that Ryan hitting the mirror— "You scared me, I don't..." he exhales, drops his eyes for a moment. "I don't think you tell me everything, either."  
  
~  
  
“Yeah.” Ryan licks his lip and looks at his hand again. “I try to, but I don't think I know what's going on with me…”  
  
He fists his good hand in Shane's sweater and drops his head onto his shoulder. “I'm trying to figure it out. I get why you… but I don't want...” He shudders. “I don't want _you_ to hurt me.”  
  
It's not good. It's probably more scary than helpful. But it's honest.  
  
~  
  
Shane lets that settle in, all it's horrible fragments. "Please don't— feel like that," he says, but he knows it's useless and so he laughs. "No, I know you can't change it, right now, but _this_?" He finds Ryan's hand, wraps his fingers carefully around his wrist. "Doing this? I'm— Jesus, I'm not trying to treat you like a kid, I just want to make sure I don't lose— I can't..."

 _You're all I have_ , Shane thinks. "Just. I know you can handle yourself, it doesn't mean I want you to."  
  
~  
  
_Lose you._ That's what Shane almost said. Shane's afraid of losing Ryan, like Ryan is afraid of losing Shane. Shane's fingers slip around his wrist like a velvet bracelet. It's so different from before.  
  
He doesn't want to handle himself either. Not all the time. But he can't give this over to someone else. He can’t slide into this safety after everyone is dead. He can't feel like he deserves it.  
  
“I'm trying,” is all he says.  
  
~  
  
He doesn't know what that means, exactly. He presses his face into Ryan's hair for a second, then brushes his lips over it, so lightly Ryan probably didn't feel it. Not like Shane meant it, not like Shane wanted him to. But then, it's so much. It's too much for right now. It's always too much.

"Let's... come on." They need to get out of this glass, but first.

Shane touches Ryan's jaw, the place he'd held so tightly earlier, and turns his head to the side so he can see the marks. It doesn't get better, now matter how much he looks at it, but it's worse up close, like this. "Jesus..." at least he didn't break the skin. It's just painful and angry looking. "Okay. Let's... let's fix this," Shane says, moving to stand.  
  
~  
   
Ryan feels himself shutting down. It feels like he’s been running, sprinting, and he hasn’t been able to stop, and this feels like the most normal Shane’s been since the basketball court. And Ryan is already trying to shut down. And it pisses him off. He shouldn’t. It bothers him how fast he leans into Shane. How much he thinks about the way Shane’s touches his mouth to Ryan’s hair.  
   
Shane may not want Ryan to handle himself, but he’s got to. He’s got to keep doing this. Anything else feels unfair to Shane, to Jake… to everyone. But damn, his body wants to collapse. Ryan lets Shane move his head, even though he knows he’s looking at the marks again. Knows he’s beating himself up over it. But it’s not his fault—Ryan pushed him. Ryan made him think it was something he wanted—and he did it after Finn. It’s _so_ not Shane’s fault.  
   
Shane’s starting to stand, and Ryan gathers himself. He’s got to get up. He feels like he’s back on the ground after that zombie broke his leg. He feels that _sick_. Like he’s snapped something inside of him, fractured it like the mirror. He puts his good hand on his knee and pushes up before he can fall face first into the glass. Before Shane gets up with all his four hundred feet of limbs.  
   
Ryan grabs his forearm and tugs him up too. Because he can feel himself backsliding into this and he doesn’t want to. Or he… fuck, he _does_ want to, and that’s why he can’t. Even now, he hangs on longer than he should—clinging to Shane’s arm before he lets go.  
   
“You know, we could just let my hand keep bleeding—maybe the blood loss would make it easier to sleep.” He winces, draws a fist to his mouth, half-smiles. “You know, I hear it now. That was a poorly timed joke. Immediate regret. I’m really tired. Let’s not hold it against me. Let’s step back a few seconds and pretend I just said I’m tired.”  
  
~  
  
Shane doesn't let him go. "Come on," he says, "If we can make it upstairs it'll be a miracle, let's not waste energy just standing here."

Somehow they do. Shane braces himself against the wall, lets Ryan use the railing, and he keeps hold of his arm. He tries not to think about zombies surrounding the place. He tries not to think about how it feels like they're the last two people, last two creatures on earth, living or dead, because he doesn't know which is scarier, or more strange.

"Wait, there's—" Shane says when they're back in the room. There's glass all over them, and he reaches out to brush some from his pants. It bites into his hands, but not seriously. "Fuck," he whispers, “here, just— undress." He wants to sleep, he wants to crawl back into that bed and just lose himself for a while. They didn't prop the chairs up against the door downstairs, they're not safe, but Shane can't even bring himself to consider going back down there now.  
  
~  
   
Ryan watches Shane glance at the stairs. He’s thinking about the unblocked door. They left it after their fight. “I’m, oh, hey—do you want me to go do the chairs downstairs? We forgot,” he says like he just thought of it. He’s turning, thinking of fighting Shane on whatever argument just so he can go and drag some life back into him when it registers.  
   
“I—hm?” It’s high-pitched. He’s sure there’s some meaning, something Shane’s going for—but he’s stuck on the fact that Shane just told him to undress. Without any preamble. He just announced that Ryan should undress. “You mean… out my clothes?”  
  
~  
  
Shane just looks at him, torn so equally between incredulous and charmed by this ridiculous creature that is Ryan.

"That's generally. That's how undressing works."

There's this endless, silent, tense moment, and then Shane says, belatedly "Because of the _glass_ , Ryan."  
  
~  
   
Right, the glass. Because Shane definitely just cut his hand on it. And it is all _over_ Ryan. “Obviously… obviously because of the glass.” His smile is so manufactured, it is truly the most awkward thing he’s ever done. “What else would it be because of? It wouldn’t be because of anything else. That’s—I was just… duh, I knew what you meant.”  
  
He did not.  
   
In an effort to reduce the horrendous awkwardness that has descended upon him like a starving hawk, he yanks his sweater off a little more aggressively than is entirely necessary. It falls unceremoniously to the ground a few feet away from him. He’s thinking back to being naked that first night in the bath—how he hadn’t understood it then. Why it bothered him—why Shane bothered him.  
   
Now he knows. And he’s thinking about Shane naked, about how winter-white the sun painted his shoulders in the tree house. But it’s not like they’re going to get _naked_. That would be absurd. Hell, he could put on some other clothes. But that’s not what Shane said—Shane just said to undress. And Ryan tired and half-out of his mind with feelings—feelings for Shane so overwhelming he’s drowning in them, doesn’t want to. He takes his shirt off, and immediately cocks his head. “My shirt was covered by my sweater. I probably didn’t need to take it off.” He nods at it where it’s fallen on top of his sweater. Then he looks back at Shane.  
   
Shane is going to kill him.  
  
~  
  
"Why are you still— you're talking so much," Shane says quietly, but then, he's just been standing there watching him, almost transfixed. "It's—“ he shakes himself a little, tears his eyes away from Ryan's skin. The mark on his neck is so much more noticeable now, how low his pants fall, even with the belt. They're not eating enough. "It'll be warmer this way. I'll get the chairs, you— get in bed." He's starting to smile because he knows he's being bossy again, but he feels better when he can hold things together. Maybe he can't help it. "I'll let you decide on the level of undress," he adds, turning towards the door.  
  
~              
   
Ryan huffs through his teeth. He volunteered to do the chairs. Now somehow this has happened. Shane is going to do the chairs, and Ryan is supposed to just get in bed. But Shane’s smiling a little bit. Ryan is torn. He doesn’t want to fall back into Shane taking the lead on absolutely everything. Ryan hated it when it was him—hated having to do it all. Shane must hate it too, and after Finn… just…  
   
He wants Ryan to _decide the level of undress_ —so now it’s Ryan’s weird thing if he’s just sitting the bed in his boxers and Shane comes back like _what in the hell are you doing?_ Ryan goes to rake his fingers through his hair, but it’s the bloody one and it’s this stinging, painful mess when he touches it. He pulls it away.  
   
“Fine, go do the chairs,” he says. “But I’m not getting in bed. I’m going to fix my hand. And then if I do get in bed it will be because I want to, not because you said so…” He is talking a lot. He’s potentially compensating for what happened downstairs—or compensating for how he felt when Shane said undress like that. How it seeped through him like syrup.  
   
He’s compensating for both.  
   
He grabs his shirt and the bottle of water. Maybe he’ll just take all his clothes off and Shane will just have to deal with it. Okay, no, he’s not doing that. He can’t even righteously imagine doing that without turning pink.  
   
Because he’s going to get in bed, and it’s going to be because Shane said so, and goddamn it.  
  
~  
  
Shane goes back downstairs with this strange, dreamlike feeling. Because here is the place, smeared with red, that he held Ryan against a wall and hurt him, and here is the mirror that Ryan shattered with his fucking _fist_ , and here is the glass dusting the floor, glinting strangely in the corner of Shane's eye, and yet Ryan is still upstairs — he hasn't left, and they're still speaking, and Shane said 'undress' and Ryan did it.

Shane can feel his pulse, can feel his heart beating. He does something with the chairs, barely even present. He said undress and Ryan just _did_.

And Shane lost himself and Ryan stayed.

Shane gave he worst of himself and Ryan's still not going anywhere.

He has no idea how long it takes. He knows he's tired because his body hurts as he climbs the steps again, panting too hard. He's probably dehydrated. His head hurts, his throat hurts. Crying is exhausting. Sometimes living is exhausting, but he's floating somewhere strange above all that.  
  
Somewhere kinda okay.  
  
~  
   
Ryan does a shit job with his hand. He doesn’t get much water because he’s being careful not to waste it. He scrubs too hard at first, and then too lightly. He has to pick at some glass lodged in his knuckles. There’s a lot—these tiny, endless knife-beads—too much for him to deal with, but he gets the most painful bits out. The blood comes off slowly. There’s still some stains on his arms, and… he should probably wrap the gashes, but he’s not going to because he is too tired.  
   
He is on strike.  
   
At least they’re okay now. Shane seems better. He broke down, and as weird as it is, Ryan’s glad he did. He just wishes it hadn’t been provoked by Ryan. One of the only things Shane and he seem to have in common in the want to just keep going. He cried over Jake. But he hasn’t let himself stop. When he thinks too hard about it, about the muddy grave with the hat that he knows is gone—it’s still too much. Maybe it always will be. But it got to him—he let it get to him again, while Shane was hurting, and… he wants to take it back so bad.  
   
Because Shane makes him stop. Not with outbursts or breaking mirrors. He just does. That’s what it is about him that Ryan likes, one of the things—he’s this calming presence, a balm to all this energy in Ryan. It isn’t just the apocalypse. Ryan has pushed himself his entire life, and never once thought about stopping—until he met Shane. It scares him. He doesn’t know if he’s okay with thinking about it.  
   
Ryan only bounces around the decision for a few seconds before he slips off his shoes, drops his cargo pants to the floor, and steps out of them. He takes a sip of the water and holds onto it as he climbs into bed. Shane needs some. He cried a lot.  
   
Ryan pulls his good leg up, bent, and keeps the other straight. He’s kept his socks on because, well—the toe is still a thing. It’s probably fine now, but he’s not chancing it. The dying light casts shadows off his leg. It’s still bruised, more yellow than purple now. Getting off it always hurts worse, and it got all twisted during their argument. So he closes his eyes.  
   
He fingers the bite mark on his neck and winces. Ryan’s thought about Shane’s teeth a lot—more than he should. About them over his bottom lip, about how they’d scrape over his skin or clatter against his own teeth. This wasn’t that. This was mean, angry. And somehow, it’s made him want the other side of it more.  
   
He drops his hand and groans, presses back into the couch’s skeleton behind the bed. The blanket’s tucked under him because of course it is. Whatever. He focuses on the water bottle, because Shane takes his time downstairs, and he’s probably so tired and Ryan shouldn’t have let him go, but… Ryan just focuses on the water bottle.

~  
  
When Shane comes back into the room, he takes one look at Ryan, the fading sunlight on him, and immediately looks away. "It's not quite the modern art you made," he tells him, pushing the door closed behind him. He locks it, stays leaning against it. He's worrying at his lower lip, but he can't just stand here like a weirdo.

He pushes himself off of the wood, keeps his eyes to himself. Struggles to. But okay, here's this. This moment, this Level of Undress. Shane peels his own sweater off, his shirt, hesitates half a second before he sits tentatively at the edge of the bed and undoes his laces, takes off his boots. His entire mind is filled with Ryan, this room. It's too much for him, but all he wants is to sink into it. He kicks his boots off, socks, because he’s already awkward enough in his limbs, in his skin, to undress down to underwear and socks.

He stands again, fingers falling to the button of his pants but he can't. He reaches down and gently hits Ryan's hip with the back of his hand. "Get under the blanket, it's cold."

He thinks, knows, that Ryan is bad with Shane's silences, but Ryan takes the words from his lips, he fills all the hollow places in his chest. How can he talk around that?  
  
~  
  
Ryan scoffs. He almost argues, but he wrestles with the blanket and wrenches it free. “I cannot believe you're gonna tell me to decide the level of undress and then flip out.” He shoots the water bottle to Shane's though. “You should drink while you're chickening out. Distract yourself.”  
  
He's not as freaked as he expected to be. Shane's definitely handling this poorly, but it's just Shane. Ryan doesn't think it's him. He slides the blanket over his legs.  
  
“Also, to be clear…” He leans forward and brushes a hand over Shane's knee, gets a hold of a visible piece of glass. He brushes it off, into the floor. He'll probably step on it later. “You're going to kill us both with your self consciousness.”  
  
He smiles and slides further down the bed. If he doesn't sleep tonight, he will _kill someone._  
  
~  
  
Ryan always somehow manages to surprise him, and Shane mentally flails around a bit, as he takes the water.

"I don't know what you're talking about," he tells him. It's not his cleverest retort, but at least it's not just the heat creeping up from his collarbones, over his neck. He takes a drink from the bottle, almost finishes it, and then sets it carefully on the floor before he gets one knee up onto the mattress, just at Ryan's hip, then the other, effectively straddling him, without actually touching. He's in top of the blanket anyway, and Ryan's beneath it.

"I'm not chickening out. Just,” he waves a hand vaguely “by the way."  
  
~  
  
Ryan's heart rises into his throat. It's fine. This is innocent. It's fun. It's fine. Now if his brain could get onboard they'd be set. Ryan tips one side of his mouth into a smile. He wants to reign in his nerves, keep this easy.  
  
But Shane's chest is stark in this light. All bony and burnt orange. He's awkward and it's… it tugs at something in Ryan. Want in a way he's never wanted anyone else. Wants that presses its fingers into every too-deep hollow in Shane's hips, his shoulders.  
  
Shane waves his hand and Ryan laughs. It's the easiest thing. “ _By the way_?” he repeats. “Because it's looking like you are, pal. Looks like a pretty by the numbers chickening out to me. Just… slap a sticker on it and sell it for half-off.”  
  
~  
  
"Nobody's buying," Shane says, head tilted. He's ignoring that he's flushed, he's ignoring it _determinedly_ because as pale as he is, it's never a dark one. He could get away with saying he'd run up the steps. That would explain his racing heart, too.

Only he didn’t run up the steps, and Ryan knows that.

And Shane almost doesn't care. He touches the place below the bite he's made, very softly.  
  
~  
  
Shane might be blushing. It's hard to tell in the sunset pinks. He may just have over exerted with the chairs. But he may be blushing.  
  
Shane reaches and touches the skin below the mark on Ryan's neck. Ryan tries to stay animated, tries so hard to hold onto this. But he wants to let go. He does. He also wants to grab Shane's hand and explain just exactly what it does to him.  
  
Ryan scrapes his lower lip with his teeth as he watches Shane. He still hasn't responded. Shit. He forgot what they were talking about, oh, right—Shane balking. But now Shane's _touching_ him.  
  
“Maybe I'm buying. Way to run off customers, genius.”  
  
~  
  
Shane meets his eyes and holds them, hard. "I'm bad at sales," Shane says, as casual as if they're actually talking about sales, and not something else.  
  
He moves forward, pushes Ryan back almost more with the movement than any physical touch, but his palm rests against the curve of Ryan's collarbone, and it feels breakable under his hand. He leans down over him and lightly brushes his lips over the bruise, soft, then pulls away, sits back, lets his hand skate down Ryan's chest, over his side, and pretends it doesn't light something in him that burns, threatens to burst into colors, like fireworks.  
  
~  
  
Ryan draws back, heart wild and chest still under the flutter of Shane's fingers. Shane always surprises him with this. Every time, Ryan never expects him to do what he does. Every time it's a surprise, so it tears the breath from his lungs when Shane's lips brush the bite. Not quite rekindling the pain, but igniting something new.  
  
Ryan closes his eyes as Shane pulls away. He's afraid he'll grab him, latch on and not let go. It's a brush stroke, but the paint is the color of Ryan's pulse as it follows the touch. His eyes come open slow as he finds Shane's eyes marked golden in the sun. And he thinks, distantly, that Shane belongs in a story book. With old gods and impossible heroes.  
  
He reaches up and his fingers whisper along Shane's jawline before they fall again. He tries to summon his voice, to push, to take back that control he had.  
  
But he can't.  
  
~  
  
_Oh_ God, Shane is looking down at Ryan and thinking _impossible_ things.

"I never know," he says, then swallows, "I never know how much you want." He looks away. This is so much more than he'd anticipated. "I think you're giving me an awful lot of credit, if you think I'm going to be able to figure you out."

But his hand is at Ryan's side, just at the edge of the blanket, and he slips his fingers beneath it, tracing the ridge of his hip bone.  
  
~  
  
Ryan laughs, it's jittery with Shane's touch. The words have pulled him up some. He needs to respond to them. Even when Shane's fingers tracing butterflies on his hip. Ryan inhales hard enough to gasp.  
  
“Weird. I was thinking the same thing.” He drops his hand to Shane's, the one on his hip. He wants to get lost in this, but Shane is here again, doing this for Ryan.  
  
“You don't need to…” He looks away, to that far off place where he flicked the glass. “Just don't do anything you're not comfortable with. That’s all I want. Don't push yourself.”  
  
_I want whatever you want to give._  
  
_Nothing more, nothing less._  
  
~  
  
He squints at him a little. _Why does he always think...?_

"You think this is just about you, for me," Shane says, and it's a statement. It comes out sort of wrong, regardless. "I mean you think I'm only doing it for you. Is that what you think?"  
  
Or does Ryan not... like him?  
  
"I just, in the department store, you said it was about... uh. Me. So I just don't know—" fuck it's too much. His head hurts. How far does this go?

Is he really so unreadable? No wonder everyone else always read him wrong. And the heat of Ryan’s hand is burning into his and he thinks about taking it in his, but doesn’t. Not yet.  
  
~  
  
Ryan sits up so they're all wedged again each other, chests close. “I don't know. Sometimes.” He holds himself up on his good hand. Watches Shane's face. Their hands are still locked under the blanket. He wants to stop frustrating Shane like this.  
  
“I just know I'm a lot for you. Like broken mirrors and basketball a lot. And I see you trying to… take care of me, or whatever. So I just don't want you to do it at the expense of yourself.”  
  
His eyes flick across Shane's face and down to his chest. “I want…” He almost says you, or this, or any other number of damning things. “I want to understand you. Sometimes I think I do. Sometimes I think I couldn't be further off. But if this isn't just for me, or if it's…” He squeezes Shane's hand. “Stop worrying about me. I'm… because you've never pushed me too far.”  
  
He laughs and shakes his head, still dipped. “Except the whole crazy eyed biting thing from earlier. But that was an extenuating circumstance.”  
  
~  
  
Shane’s trying to regulate his breathing. “Yeah, well, extenuating circumstance aside,” he says, suddenly _fiercely_ wishing this blanket wasn’t between them, wishing he’d taken his fucking pants off before they started this because somewhere in the back of his mind all he can hear is _the glass, Shane._  
  
“Sometimes I feel like the only good thing I’ve ever done is…” he thinks about the way Ryan looked at him in the bookstore, when Shane had given him the hat. He thinks about how happy, how different Ryan had been on the basketball court, how ridiculously enamored Shane had been by him, then.  
  
And now. Just quieter.  
  
He doesn’t finish the sentence, he’s thinking too fast. “If you want to know something, just ask me. You can _ask_.”  
  
~  
  
Ryan glances up at him again. Shane is hard to read, and it's bothering him that he is and Ryan desperately doesn't want to disappoint him. To make this dichotomy he's got with his own mind worse. Because Ryan wishes he were more like Shane.  
  
“The _only_ good thing?” He's floored. Floored that Shane could think he's not doing enough. He slots his hand into the space just below Shane's jaw. He needs to make this bigger, more than just words.  
  
“I can't even fathom what you would say there because you have done nothing but just make things easier since I met you. I could've gotten you killed the first night, but you still dragged my sorry ass out of the rain. You still…” Their faces are too close. Ryan should draw back, but he doesn't. Shane told him to ask but he doesn't know how to say the things he wants to know are things he can never ask.  
  
“You're still trying to help me. And you talk about not being enough and it's like you've just set yourself on fire trying to fix whatever you think is wrong because it's the only way to… give what you need to. I just don't want to make it harder. I don't want to ask you for even more.”  
  
~  
  
He can feel his pulse pick up against Ryan’s fingers, so soft against the vulnerable places of Shane’s throat, but he doesn’t tense, he doesn’t pull away. He feels a little like he’s just been taken to the top of one of those awful rides where they drop you, and dropped — his stomach flipping, because kissing him—  
  
He’s trying to drag his mind back to this, and his eyes unfocus from Ryan’s, until he’s kind of staring through him, but he’s back too quickly, blinking back to this impossible closeness. Shane licks his lip because it’s chapped, and he’s self-conscious and oh god, they’re so close. He can feel Ryan’s breath against his mouth.  
  
His breath hitches softly. How does he explain that Ryan’s given him this—  
  
“Ever since the cabin. Ever since I met you, I felt like… like I kind of had solid form again. I could have just been a ghost out there, most of the time. No one knew where I… nothing I did mattered. And then you showed up.” Shane’s too close to him, he needs to not be, not while he talks about this. He drops his head, pulls back. It feels utterly absurd to get away from Ryan’s touch so he can undo his pants, but it’s the only excuse he can think of. And also, _the glass_ , his mind insists. He wishes it would shut the hell up.  
  
~  
  
Ryan lets Shane pull back, because he's processing this comment about Shane being solid. At least he did that, at least Shane hasn't wasted away in a cabin. It feels pathetic in the face of what Shane's dead. Of all the little things. But he needs Shane to have a solid form. Needs him to know he matters.  
  
“Cool,” he says and it's truly the stupidest thing he's ever said. He needs more but he just lets it hang there for too long before, “I'm glad you're…” He’s so scrambled and lost he said cool. Wow. He leans back onto his elbow.  
  
He pulls his hand to the bridge of his nose and rubs it. Tries to scrub _cool_ from existence. Tries to scrub _himself_ from existence.  
  
~  
  
“Cool,” Shane repeats, and he almost smiles. He looks up and Ryan looks kind of mortified and it’s—. Shane laughs, quick and genuine. He kicks his pants off and onto the floor— it’s a task and a half — jesus, his legs — and then brushes at the few particles of glass on the blanket.  
  
It’s not premeditated. He thinks he _should_ have fucking thought about it first, because his palm brushes Ryan’s thigh through the fabric and he draws back quickly like he’s been burned. “There was— glass. There.” He looks away and collapses onto the bed beside Ryan on his back, still on top of the blanket. Tiredness creeps forward from the edges of his mind, but he’s still thinking about this, he pushes it away.  
  
  
“I meant that I like doing things for you. It gave me some sense of reality.” He says this to the ceiling, where the light is fading from orange to red. “Something I could do that was important, so I— maybe I’m holding onto that too hard.” Because of the way Ryan looks at him… “It’s not because I think I have to babysit you.” He looks over at him.  
  
~  
  
Ryan stares where Shane touched him. His thighs. It's… he can't think about it. It's awkward. Shane's awkward, but the glass is a real thing.  
  
“Yeah, no, I know…” It's soft.  
  
Shane's all knees and elbows without his clothes. Ryan follows the whole length of his leg. The way it bends. Jesus, it's pale. Shane's so pale.  
  
He doesn't know if he likes this, though. It's not about Ryan. It's about Shane's need to be real. Need to help. It fucking hurts, but he doesn't show it. Because it's something he can do for him at least.  
  
“You would still matter, even if I wasn't here. You always mattered.”  
  
~  
  
“If you go somewhere, I’ll murder you,” Shane says. He wishes… he wishes he didn’t feel darkness creep into that. It’s a joke, but then… Jake was barely turned.  
  
Shane keeps telling himself that he didn’t kill him. That he didn’t kill Ryan’s little brother. He killed the thing that killed Jake first… He has to tell himself that.  
  
Shane keeps his eyes on Ryan. “I’d… I’d have to stop learning how to be a person, if you weren’t here,” Shane says. “I guess I might even miss you, and your— your ridiculous impulsivity, and your precious Carrots Bryant, and your—“ he swallows. “Your teeth are too big for your mouth.”  
  
He wonders, vaguely, how long he’s been looking at Ryan’s mouth. He wonders what Ryan would do if he knew how _much_ Shane thought about it, because it’s really— it’s getting ridiculous. He should be ashamed of himself.  
  
~  
   
Ryan likes it. Shane telling him not to go anywhere. He obviously wasn’t planning on it, but it’s nice to know—it’s nice to hear that Shane doesn’t want him to. Even if Shane framed it around murder, and that’s mildly terrifying. He’s still glad Shane said. That he thought it.  
   
He rolls onto his side and puts a hand over his mouth. “What the f—first off, my teeth are _normal-sized_. There’s nothing wrong with my…” He sits up because he has to process this thing about his teeth. They are too big for his mouth, but he was _hoping_ Shane wouldn’t notice. He hates his teeth. “Second of all, your little bit… about Kobe Bryant? It’s not cute.” He sneers. “It’s not cute at all.” Okay, maybe it is a little cute. Maybe it’s endearing to the point that Ryan doesn’t like when Shane says it correctly. It means something’s wrong.  
   
He’s still got his hand over his mouth, feeling along the backs of his teeth with his tongue like he can make them smaller that way. He drops it, then—thinks deeper about what Shane’s saying. “I don’t want you to stop being a person if I’m not here… you… I mean, obviously you would be devastated.” He injects his voice with something upbeat, casual. It’s not quite there, but it’s better. “I’m great—I’m fantastic, but…” They’re in the zombie apocalypse. He used to worry about this with Jake—what happened if something happened to him. But Shane, Shane was doing it before… he could do it again. Because _nothing_ can happen to him. He’s gone through all this shit—he has to… he has to find something on the other side of this. “You would still matter if I…” He waves his hand like he can dismiss the possibility. But he’s saying this, and he doesn’t know what he’d do if he lost Shane. If he wouldn’t give up. Break down. “You’re not allowed to stop being a person.”  
   
He tugs at the blanket because he’s made this heavy and he wasn’t supposed to. He didn’t mean to. “Get off the blanket. You don’t get to tell me to get under it and then just… sit there. You have no insulation. You’ll freeze.” He pulls again. But Shane’s on it pretty good, and Ryan isn’t going to pull hard enough to send him rolling to the floor.  
  
~  
  
“If your teeth are normal sized,” Shane says, lifting his hips, getting beneath the blanket as he’s been so rudely ordered to do. He shoots Ryan this look, eyebrows raised, “Then your head is too small.”  
  
He says it because he can’t think— he can’t even _think about what it would mean to not have Ryan. He can’t even fucking think about it, and so he’s not going to. He refuses.  
  
~  
   
Shane didn’t answer him and Ryan wants to push it. He wants to make Shane promise him, but he doesn’t know what it’ll help. Besides, his objective should just be not to die. Not to get eaten by a zombie. Not to… give up.  
   
He doesn’t push it. Not now. He once asked Shane to kill him before he turned. He still wants that, wants to die before he can—but he hopes Shane doesn’t have to do it. He hopes he can. He gets the blanket over both of them.  
   
“Okay, you know what—you…” He covers his mouth, but no. He’s not going to take this. He doesn’t have to stand for it. He spins onto his other side and curls up. “Me and my big teeth and small head are going to pretend your big head and tiny hands don’t exist.” He pulls a section of the blanket up to his chest. “Goodnight.”  
   
He thinks about it. “I said that to the wall. Since that’s _all that’s in here_.”  
  
~  
  
Shane’s just looking at him incredulously, this smile growing slowly on his face. “Okay, all right,” he says, and then falls into silence. It’s so easy for him. It stretches on, this quiet between them, and he lets his eyes trail over Ryan’s neck, the bruise there, the line of his vertebrae beneath his skin. Gently, he reaches out and touches his knuckles to the bone at the top of his spine where he can see it, then draws it down, slowly, letting his knuckles rise and fall heavily over each notch in Ryan’s spine until it disappears beneath the blanket.  
  
~  
   
Ryan convinces himself he’s totally fine with Shane’s silence. He didn’t want Shane to try and talk to him. He clearly wasn’t actually mad, so it’s fine that Shane’s taking this time to take a break. He needs to sleep. He’s probably starving and dehydrated and all kinds of other terrible things. Ryan doesn’t want him to respond, because he’s tired too. He’s going to sleep. He needs to sleep. He didn’t sleep last night and after his fist and the fight.  
   
Then he feels something brush him. He thinks it’s an accident at first, but it isn’t. Shane dusts his knuckles along Ryan’s spine. Every rise and fall shoots red electricity from Ryan’s spine into the rest of him. The notes in his spine press hard and jagged against his skin—present in a way he’s never felt them. He closes his eyes. He doesn’t know what to do. Immediately caving at Shane’s weak and only attempt at challenging his bravado is not cool. ( _Cool_ , god, he wants to die.) Is not okay.  
   
He tightens his grip on the blanket and pretend his body doesn’t lean, arch a bit, as Shane’s touch sinks lower. He presses his mouth over the gash on his index finger and tastes the coppery remnants of blood. It makes him be quiet.  
  
~  
  
If Ryan asked him why he does this, Shane doesn’t know if he could answer him. He doesn’t know why, just that it sparks something in him so intense, so quiet at the same time, that it’s like a drug. It quiets his mind a little but, christ, he’s _living_. He’s alive.  
  
It’s a very solid, very real feeling. It’s simple, until he starts thinking about what it means and what Ryan wants and what _he_ wants and whether he should want it at all. Whether or not he should. Shane burrows almost desperately into the quiet beneath those questions and lets his hand sink lower.  
  
Unlike Shane’s, Ryan’s spine is straight all the way down, or at least as far as Shane lets his touch venture, which is about to the small of his back, where his skin is thinner, hotter. Shane leaves his hand there, pressed to the base of Ryan’s spine and shifts carefully so he’s a little closer. He touches his mouth to the smooth, soft expanse of skin just above the centre of Ryan’s shoulder blades and draws a breath as if he’s about to speak against him, but he second-guesses himself, just stays quiet, but he closes his eyes.  
  
~  
   
Shane is a demon. He is a demon in human skin, and he was sent to this planet specifically to destroy Ryan. To systematically dismantle him brick by brick. Ryan’s so aware of every notch in his spine, he’s got a count of how many—how much more Shane has to go before he finally reaches the base.  But Shane stops short. Ryan doesn’t know if he’s glad or not. Shane leaves his hand at the small of Ryan’s back. It presses into Ryan. The skin is thin so it feels like Shane’s leaving handprints on his bones. The silence is what makes it worse—what makes Ryan struggle. He can’t talk because Shane isn’t talking, and if he can’t talk—then he’s as malleable as clay. He will bend and break and bow at Shane’s touch. It freaks him out.  
   
And his pride is there making sure he doesn’t say anything else. Because he said he wouldn’t say anything. It feels like an admission of weakness, of defeat, if he opens his mouth and talks to Shane. As if the way Ryan’s body tilts at his touch isn’t enough. Shane scoots forward, puts his mouth on Ryan. Breathes. The breath is what kills him. Reaches into him and rends all the pieces, everything he is, to fragments. Until all that’s holding him together is Shane’s lips at his back.  
   
Ryan sucks at the injury on his hand to keep himself from saying anything. From telling Shane he is a wolf in sheep’s clothing. He pretends to be awkward and uncertain, and then he does this and wields his hands and his body like Poseidon’s trident.  He leans into Shane so Shane’s hand on his back is the only thing holding their bodies apart.  
  
~  
  
Shane exhales, then moves, shifts, and it’s terrifying. He moves his hand, slides it up over Ryan’s hip and catches hold. He draws Ryan back against his own body, and he just molds against him, all the way up Ryan’s back until Shane’s racing heart is slamming against the back of Ryan’s shoulder, and maybe his fingers hold onto his hip too hard before he spirals into this touch. They are so close that Shane’s hardly breathing, and he hopes Ryan’s okay, but it’s like he has touch or voice and never both and his throat is too dry to speak.  
  
Consciously, he loosens his fingers. Ryan is so warm. Impossibly warm, and Shane is breathing against his back, lungs expanding against him, taking in air too fast, but quiet.  
  
His fingers flutter uncertainly, tapping against the inner curve of Ryan’s hipbone, but at least, Shane thinks, he’s not shaking yet, like he always seems to when Ryan is close enough to set him alight.  
  
~  
   
Shane’s pulled him close. Everything in Ryan touches everything in Shane. The last time they were like this—Ryan turned over and curled into Shane’s chest. He felt like he was going to fall apart, then—still feels it in a lot of ways. He still misses Jake, and this reminds him of him—of a time when his loss was fresher, closer. But he feels safe like this—feels like Shane’s holding him together with all the lingering touch, all the way their skin touches. He feels safe, and yet more vulnerable than he’s ever felt. It should be impossible.  
   
Shane adjusts his grip on Ryan’s hip. His fingers tap, but they’re too soft. Like Shane’s got ribbons wrapped around his bones instead of skin. Some part of Ryan hopes Shane can’t feel the way his heart screams over every inch of him. Another part of him wants Shane to feel it—wants Shane to understand all the things he wants to understand. Then maybe Shane could figure it out. That Ryan wants this—wants every single bit of it. That Ryan wants Shane.  
   
Finally, Ryan pulls his mouth away from his hand. It’s cold in the air. He smiles and tips his head back, just barely. “You’re hard to ignore.” It’s different from his usual voice, almost too quiet to hear. But he hears it. Somehow, over the pound of his heart rising against Shane’s touch.  
  
~  
  
Shane laughs silently,  but it shakes against Ryan’s back. “Turned that corner pretty quick,” he says, just as soft, breath sliding softly over the back of Ryan’s ear.  
  
He keeps his eyes closed, tries to match his breathing to Ryan’s, but it doesn’t help much — it’s just as unsteady as Shane’s is. He lets his hand slid from Ryan’s hip to his stomach, but it’s quicker — faster than the slow exploration of his spine. He kind of spills his fingers over Ryan’s skin, but he’s not pulling anymore, not holding Ryan against him. This is different, different. His finger brushes Ryan’s waistband and that’s where he stops. He doesn’t do anything other than curl his fingers lightly, fingertips sliding over the soft, skin of his abdomen. He’s almost _hot_. Shane clenches his jaw for a moment.  
  
He doesn’t know what to do with Ryan’s silence now, not like this. “Talk to me,” he whispers, asks it, less than he commands it, into his hair. _Is this okay?_ Jesus—  
  
~  
   
Ryan quivers. It’s involuntary. Goosebumps spread over him, like they’ve been waiting for Shane to push far enough. It starts at Shane’s breath, his smarmy, perfect little comment that nips across Ryan’s ear with warm breath. And it finishes when Shane dips closer to Ryan’s waist band—and the sensitive skin beneath it prickles—washes out to the rest of him.  
   
Shane holds his abdomen, or maybe doesn’t hold it. He just touches it. Shane’s hands are cool again Ryan, and the heat mists between them—wraps around them so tight Ryan struggles to breathe around it. He wants more than this, but he never wants to… break this. This is all he wants. He laughs because he gets it, then, Shane not understanding what he wants.  
   
_Talk to me…_  
   
Ryan almost asks what about, but he gets it. Shane needs this. Needs to know he’s not actually pushing Ryan—taking advantage of this control he’s got over him. It’s a request more than a demand, skipping along his skull. Gentle.  
   
He smiles and lays his uninjured hand on top of Shane’s. He slots into the spaces between Shane’s fingers. “You worry too much. You’re going to give yourself high blood pressure—can tall people get that? I don’t know how your species works.”  
  
~  
  
“I’m not a separate species,” he says, acutely aware of Ryan’s fingers between his, and how it pulls and tugs at something inside him until it aches. He wants this. Not just… in these stolen moments, but always. Ryan’s fingers fit between his, fit comfortable, fit right. He slides his thumb over Ryan’s index, feels where the hammer’s making it calloused, and sighs softly.  
  
“I like your mouth,” he informs him, out of nowhere. He’s drifting somewhere, here but half-not, and he curbs his thoughts before he can linger there too long. The bathroom, the cabin, the slick heat, the scrape of teeth. They’re too close for thoughts like that.  
  
Or maybe they’re exactly close enough for thoughts like that. He doesn’t know. He doesn’t know anything.  
  
_I barely know anything about you._ Ryan had said.  
  
“I’m…” he cuts himself off.  
  
~              
   
“You’re right,” Ryan says, “you’re definitely human.” He lets Shane have that—take it however he wants.

Ryan’s hot. He’s burning all over. Burning with these tiny bolts of Shane. _More, more, more_ is sliding stronger into his head, breaking down _this is enough_. He wants to turn around, snake his hand into Shane’s hair and—god, he’s got to stop. He promised Shane it was enough, and here he is… wanting more of this. But Shane’s thumb is slipping over his index finger, bringing to life all the ridges and rises in his skin. Ryan has never thought much about his body—he took care of it. He worked out because he was supposed to, because it was something to do, something to excel at. But he’s never thought about his body, not much, not really.  
   
With Shane, he does. He thinks about the freckle in his eye (it’s incredibly weird), the way his teeth are too big for his mouth, the way his thumb slips out of his hand during gestures sometimes. He’s knows how many notches are in his spine, how the skin split over his injured hand… Shane makes him see it, all of it. It’s terrifying. Terrifying all the things Ryan has to break. All these places Shane has touched.  
   
Shane says _I like your mouth_ like he’s heard Ryan thinking about it—thinking about the way he talks weird around his teeth, the way it’s clearer when he messes up words because he already stumbles, struggles. And it all falls to cinders at Shane’s feet.  
   
Ryan smiles, unbidden. “That’s either a _lie_ because you feel guilty or just kinda creepy so take your pick…” But Shane can probably hear the smile in his voice. Ryan can. But he needs the end of Shane’s sentence. Shane says so little—Ryan can’t imagine letting one of his sentences slip into nothingness. “You’re what?”  
  
~  
  
He hears the smile and doesn’t want it to disappear. He pushes the thoughts he’s having down and pulls Ryan back against him harder, curls around him in this impossible way, pressing, closer somehow, still.  
  
How can they be closer? It seems impossible, but here he is. Here they are.  
  
“I’m kinda creepy,” he says. “I was going to inform you, and then you just took the words right out of my mouth.”  
  
~  
   
Fuck. Shane is clawing into this closeness. It’s going to break him. It’s going to pull him into doing something he doesn’t think they’re… ready for. Or maybe they are ready for it, and neither of them will do it. Because they don’t understand—don’t know if the other is. But Shane is driving this. He’s been driving it from the start, and this feels like a need.  
   
Ryan curls into Shane as much as he can, back to him. He folds into him, lies his free hand—the one that hit the mirror—in front of him. Shane is backing out of whatever he was going to say. Ryan rolls his eyes. “That’s absolutely not what you were gonna say, but I am proud of you for admitting it.”  
  
~  
  
He hums something that might be acquiescence into his hair. Exhaustion is filtering in piece by piece, and he almost doesn’t want to give himself over to it. And part of him has never been more aware of his own physical body than this moment.  
  
“What is this, anyway?” Shane asks. “Just… off topic.”  
  
~  
   
Ryan thinks he knows what Shane’s asking, but fuck if he’s going to be the one to answer it. He keeps his eyes on the fingers he’s got sprawled in front of him. “Well, Shane, that’s—that’s my hair. That’s what you’re touching right now. I’m sorry if that’s confusing you.”  
  
~  
  
Shane makes a sound halfway between a “What?” and a scoff. “I couldn’t tell. Someone did an awful job cutting it. It looks like a — a poorly tended hedgerow. I was trying to inform you gently, but...”  
  
~  
   
Ryan’s laughter is a full-body event. He shakes with it. Partially because he’s side-stepped the question and partially because Shane is insulting his own work. It’s not even that funny, but it is—because Shane’s saying it. Things are funnier when he says them. Maybe because Ryan’s always already halfway to smiling.  
   
“I’ll take it up with the barber.”  
  
~  
  
Shane laughs softly. “I wouldn’t go back there. Place seems shitty. I hope you didn’t _tip_ him.”  
  
~  
   
Ryan drops his head and tucks it further into this awful, shitty mattress. But it feels less awful that it did last night. Less bumpy, less digging. Everything feels better than it did last night. Surprising, given what happened.  
   
“He wasn’t that bad.”  
  
~  
  
After one more quick glance around the room — always checking, Shane kind of follows, tucks his head down against Ryan’s. He keeps his eyes closed, adjusts his arm around Ryan’s waist, pulling his hand as well so that he’s holding it against Ryan’s own chest. Their fingers aren’t twined anymore, but he’s still got his hand wrapped around Ryan’s palm. He can feel Ryan’s heartbeat against his knuckles, and it’s that, above everything else, that makes him feel safe.  
  
~  
   
Sleep comes slowly for Ryan. Slower than it does for Shane, but it does come. Shane’s all curled around him, and it’s different from last night. He forgets he’s in an apartment. He forgets about what happened last time. He even forgets about the low ache in his hand. He listens to Shane breathe for a long time, curling his hand around Shane’s tighter now that he’s asleep. He left his hand here, so Ryan doesn’t see a problem in taking comfort in it.  
   
He falls asleep, eventually. Dreams lash at him, and he wakes up once, twice, but it’s a hazy wakefulness. Shane’s body is warm around him, and it drags him back down before his consciousness can crawl all the way out of the darkness where it’s been. Shane weighs on him, presses him back to sleep because that’s the thing with Ryan’s body—it answers to Shane. Shane’s sleeping, and all curled around him like this, Ryan has to sleep too. So he does.  
  
~  
  
Shane’s used to drifting in and out of sleep. He’s used to barely even noticing the hazy moments of wakefulness his body urges him into. He used to be able to sleep through anything, sleep anywhere.  
  
Not anymore.  
  
But he sleeps all the way through the night this time. Doesn’t even wake when Ryan stirs against him through the night.  
  
By the time he does open his eyes, it’s not the immediate rush of awareness he normally gets. It’s warmth, first, and then Ryan — the rhythm of his breathing, and Shane doesn’t open his eyes, even while he listens, but everything is dead silent, like it has been since the got here. It’s silent in an unnatural way — not like the cabin. There were still deer in the woods, there. Still crows that would hang around the tree-line, once in a while. It might be uncanny if the silence was more terrifying than the low moans of the living dead, but it’s not. Especially not when it’s broken by soft, mundane things. Ryan’s breathing, the soft creak of the bed as Shane shifts, stretches out his legs until one knee cracks before folding around him again.  
  
It’s not like the cabin, when he’d tried to slide, unnoticed, from Ryan’s arms.  
  
Shane knows they can’t stay here much longer, though. They’re running out of water. Eventually, they’ll run out of food again. And if he’s being honest, he wants to leave Illinois. It’s not the place he knew. There’s nothing left here, anymore.  
  
It’s funny. Sometimes he misses the cabin. Even now, the two of them here, resting, safe, he misses it. He misses the feeling it held, once Ryan got there. He’s homesick for it, in a way he shouldn’t be.  
  
Shane drifts for a while, in and out of sleep, but his mind’s kicking into gear and he opens his eyes. He finds shapes in the water damage on the ceiling. There’s cracks in the walls. It’s depressing. Instead he turns his attention to what he can see of Ryan’s skin. He has almost no freckles, no moles — not like Shane does. He’s noticed the one in his eye, he’s noticed the two on his throat, lined up on either side like connect the dots. There’s this soft-fade where his arms are tanned darker than his shoulders — California sun. Someone so warm shouldn’t be out here. It’s a juxtaposition in this new, contorted nature; a sharp contrast, and yet somehow he’s so soft at the edges, held together by light and this predisposition to hope.


	11. Part 11

Part 11

Ryan pulls awake. He doesn’t jump out of it. He drags himself like slowly easing over the top of a ledge. It comes back in fragments. This bubble of half-warmth, skin, Shane—and then the rest of it. This weird, foreign apartment. There’s still the moment, there’s always this moment, where everything is okay for a blink before he comes back fully. Everyone’s alive. But they’re not—everyone’s dead, except Shane. That’s enough to keep him from hating it too much. The one thing Ryan prefers about this present life.  
   
He groans as he shifts and stretches his shoulders. It’s soft with sleep. He rubs at his eyes. They feel more rested, certainly more so than yesterday, but the motion brings back the slashes along his fingers and he lowers his hands. He tries to roll onto his back, only half-cognizant of Shane still tangled around him, or at least, half-aware of the way it makes it hard to be on his back. Shane’s already up. His posture’s changed—his breathing’s present, there.  
   
Ryan’s part way turned when he pushes his head so he can try and look at Shane. “You better not have been watching me sleep, you weirdo,” and it’s hoarse like the groan.  
   
~  
  
 _Oh_ , Shane thinks. _Whoops_.  
  
“You already know I’m creepy, I told you. I came with a disclaimer.” He makes absolutely no move to shift back or give Ryan room. His part of the mattress is warm already, he’s not about to just hand it over to Ryan. Warm spaces on the mattress must be won.  
  
His arm is still over Ryan’s waist, but loose, not holding anymore. His palm isn’t pressed to Ryan’s skin like last night. And here they are at this transition again, and Shane never knows exactly how to act in daylight, when they can’t half-hide what they’re doing, what they want, in darkness. Even the department store bathroom had been dark.  
  
He needs to drag his mind away from this.  
  
“You slept, though,” he tells him, eyes flickering over Ryan’s face.  
   
~  
   
Ryan stares at the ceiling, since Shane refuses to let him roll onto his back. He could just scoot further away, roll that way, but he doesn’t want to—can’t talk himself into it. He nudges Shane with his elbow, but it’s playful. “Great, are you still under warranty? I could really use a refund.” He flips so he’s facing Shane, not getting any space out of it. But he’s not at a disadvantage anymore.  
   
There’s a smirk on his face. It’s the morning, and things are okay. Shane’s right. He did sleep and he didn’t even have many nightmares. He’s in a good mood, and it’s _the morning_ and Shane’s here. Shane is here, still touching him, albeit less purposefully as last night. Ryan tugs at his hair. “You still need to cut your this mop on your head. And you already fucked up my hair, it’s only fair you fuck up yours too.” He lets go and the smirk stays.  
  
~  
  
He raises his arm a little as Ryan turns.  
  
“You keep changing your story, pal,” Shane says. “Are you afraid of what our bet’s gonna cost you?” He suddenly doesn’t know what to do with his hand so he reaches up and musses Ryan’s hair. “I think it looks cute.”  
  
~  
   
Ryan catches Shane’s hand and pushes it back against his chest. “Cute?” He hates how much he likes it. He hates how isn’t reacting to that like he should. “You think it’s _cute_?” He tries to twist the smile out of his mouth. “I’m not a baby animal. My hair’s not supposed to look cute. And I’m not changing my story.” He’s still got his hand wrapped around Shane’s wrist, thumb on his palm, wedged against Shane’s chest. “I said it was okay yesterday because I felt bad for you. You suck as basketball, at haircutting… it’s really sad.”  
  
~  
  
“Wow, you—” Shane starts laughing. “You get really mean when you catch a little shut eye.” He sort of squints at him, cocks his head. “I dunno, Ryan, you kind of look like a chipmunk. You’ve got those beady little eyes.”  
  
~  
   
Ryan shoves him, _makes_ him fall onto his back, and then he’s the one straddling Shane. Only there aren’t blankets. There isn’t anything between them. There isn’t enough between them, and Ryan almost regrets it. But he pushes his hands into Shane’s shoulders anyway. It’s just skin to skin. There’s no sweater—there isn’t anything stopping this from being too much. Shane’s chest with all the weird, jutting shape of his bones. Hollow under Ryan’s hands.  
   
“Not a chipmunk.” He holds Shane’s eyes like this is the most serious thing he’s ever told him. “First you say my mouth is big, and now I’ve got beady eyes. You really know how to charm people, don’t you?”  
  
~  
  
Shane somehow manages to get his hands up in a gesture of surrender. “I—” he’s a little breathless, too startled to turn it into a laugh, he just looks up at him for a moment, a handful of heartbeats. “I’m just telling the truth,”  he says, as serious as he can, but he’s fighting back this smile.  
  
“But okay. You’re not a chipmunk.”  
   
~  
   
Ryan lets go and slams his hands back into Shane’s shoulders, not hard enough to hurt, but enough to make his point. He’s still got half a smile tugging at the corners of his mouth, which doesn’t mix well with the offended bit he’s going for.  
   
He bends down so they’re sharing the same breath. His leg probably isn’t in the best position, it’s not straight—but he’s got it stretched further out. It’s easier than last time he tried this with Shane, but it’s not entirely comfortable. But it’s worth it. Touching Shane like this. For now, it is.  
   
“That didn’t even sound a little bit like an apology.” He pulls his head back because he knows this is a lot for Shane having woken up—well, he has no idea when he woke up. But he’s still in bed. “You’re a dick.”  
  
~  
  
Ryan leans down and Shane closes his eyes, and its wildly instinctive. The second he does it, he knows he shouldn’t have because it’s not— that’s not… what this is.  
  
 _You’re a dick_ , Ryan says and Shane take a deep breath, blinks up at him. “Yeah,” he says. “Why don’t you say something nice to me, the next time you get so close?”  
  
It’s a risk, but he’s taking it. Fuck it. He wants to reach out, he wants to pull Ryan down by the back of his neck. He wants to press his fingers into the spaces between Ryan’s ribs, the softness of his sides. He wants to hold his hips in his hands. He doesn’t. He keeps his hands where they are, in this gesture of surrender.  
  
~  
   
Ryan squints like he isn’t sure what Shane’s talking about. It’s a little like flirting. But it seems like something that shouldn’t happen in the apocalypse—it’s more and less than what Shane usually offers. These wordless touches. This feels different.  
   
 _Something nice_. Shane has said a lot of nice things to Ryan. And Ryan has said them to him, but maybe… not in a way where Shane isn’t expected to give something back. Ryan’s so in this. So desperate for validation from Shane. Maybe he needs to give without pushing for anything back.  
   
He drops his shoulders and grabs Shane’s wrists. He considers pinning them over Shane’s head, some kind of revenge for the shit he pulled yesterday, but he doesn’t. Ryan drops them and rolls his eyes like he thinks the gesture is ridiculous.  
   
“Like _what_?”  He bends down, but this time he’s only got one hand on Shane’s chest. Like he’s telling him a secret rather than threatening him. “You want me to tell you you’re _cute_? Or beautiful, right? That’s what you said.” He gets his free hand into Shane’s hair again. “Or that I always wanna touch your hair because it looks so damn soft?” He pulls his fingers loose, cups Shane’s head loosely, and he’s closer then. To his mouth. His hand skims down to Shane’s neck, his Adam’s apple, and stops, fluttering unsteadily, over the hollow in his throat.  
   
“That you’re the realest person I’ve ever met? That sometimes I’m almost okay with the whole bullshit apocalypse because it means I met you?” He’s so close now. He’s less than an inch from Shane’s lips. He drops it, though, drops so he’s at Shane’s ear. “That your bone structure reminds me of colosseums and museums and all these ancient, incredible places?” He skims his mouth along Shane’s skin, starting at the tip of his jaw, beneath his ear, and scaling it until he’s at the edge of his mouth. His lips cling to every imperfection in Shane’s skin. He says the last part into his jawline. “Or that I forget how to breathe when you put your hands on me?” He pulls his head up, and their mouths are close again—so fucking close.  
   
Ryan could kiss him. He could kiss him right now, but he’s given this everything he has. He can’t give anymore right now. The fear in him is going to tear him to pieces.  
   
“Is that what you want?” He smiles, eyes exploring the whole of Shane’s face, before he pulls back up, eyebrows raised. Heart beating so fast it’s an effort to keep his breath, his _self_ steady—so fast his skeleton tries to burst out of his body. “Because I don’t think you could handle it.”  
  
~  
  
Shane’s just shattered beneath that. It comes like an onslaught, but one that he’s just opened his arms, bared his chest to willingly, fucking _take him_.  
  
He feels simultaneously as insubstantial as the sunlight catching particles of dust in the air and more solid than he’s ever been. He feels every beat of his heart, every breath, every quiver beneath his skin. And Ryan fucking smiles at him and it just _ruins_ Shane.  
  
He reaches up, slides his hands over each side of Ryan’s jaw, then up into his hair, until his fingers slide against the backs of his ears, until his thumbs are along the delicate strong edge of Ryan’s jaw.  
  
Ryan thinks he’s too much for Shane, too much for everyone. Ryan thinks he’s too much, and Shane hates it, in this moment, hates everyone who’s ever made Ryan feel like he _should_ tone himself back. Turn the dial down from ten to two, diminish him in any way.  
  
Shane presses his thumbs to Ryan’s mouth and sits up, close enough that they are the only thing keeping him from brushing his mouth against Ryan’s lips when he speaks, the only separation. “Try me”  
  
~  
   
Ryan doesn’t expect this. He thought Shane would shut down, or at least—he doesn’t know, but he did not expect him to answer it like this. He also didn’t expect his heartbeat could go any faster, and yet. Shane’s hands curve along his jaw to rest on his mouth, and Ryan’s losing it. He’s losing himself in Shane’s hands, because he just said he can’t breathe when Shane touches him—and here he is, answering with this.  
   
He can’t answer with Shane’s thumbs against his mouth. Shane sits up and Ryan latches onto him with his eyes. Like if he blinks or looks away, then this moment is going to snap and they’re going to be stuck back with dead brothers and zombies. He doesn’t want it to.  
   
He opens his mouth around Shane’s thumbs and presses his teeth over the tips of them. Careful not to hurt, but enough to shave at the first layer of Shane’s skin. He meets Shane’s eyes like a dare, a challenge, and he doesn’t know what it’s for—he just knows that he’s pushing and Shane’s answering. And he doesn’t want it to stop.  
  
~  
  
Shane holds his eyes, lets himself do it. It’s a lot, but he lets it wash over him in waves, breath shallow, like he’s waiting for that one wave to sweep him under, to smother him.  
  
Ryan’s teeth scrape over his skin, and he feels something spill hotly through his chest, his stomach. “Okay,” he whispers, and draws one hand away, presses it to Ryan’s shoulder. At the same time, he braces his foot against the mattress, and uses it as leverage, pushes Ryan over, gentle, controlled, until he’s on his back, and Shane slides over him, no space, chest to chest.  
  
He’s still holding his eyes, one hand still on his shoulder, the other holding himself up just enough so that he doesn’t crush him. He slides his fingers from Ryan’s shoulder and up his neck, exploring, pressing lightly into ever dip and rise of his skin, _drags_ the edge of his thumb over Ryan’s adam’s apple. _Where do I put my hands to make you want me? To pull you apart, to build you back up?_  
  
~  
   
Ryan lets Shane push him back. His mind spins too fast. He’s thinking in colors, rushing through all the ways his body is splitting into parts. How he wants this—more than he’s ever wanted anything, and how it scares him in this exhilarating, brilliant way. He straightens his legs as Shane follows him to the mattress. Shane’s propping himself up, not fully pressed against Ryan, but it’s like the contact is painted in new strokes. Shane’s got the brush now, and it’s flipping Ryan’s world on its head. It’s bigger, sharper.  
   
Shane cuts his hands along Ryan’s shoulder, to his neck—his neck because he _knows_. He knows all the things wrong with Ryan. All the ways to stop him cold. He says he hasn’t figured Ryan out, but he has. God, he’s figured him out like Ryan hasn’t figured himself out. Ryan’s hands shake, and he arcs his neck, presses himself too hard into the mattress. His whole body rocks with it, beneath Shane. His hips buck against him. Like he can slam himself further into this touch. This silent tremor of movement. A gasp flickers out of him, and somehow—through all the fire turned to magma over his bones—he gets his hand up, and it slides down the crooked line of Shane’s spine.  
   
 _Get a grip, Ryan, get a grip—or let go._  
  
~  
  
Shane’s breath hitches sharply at that surge of sharp hips, flashing white through his mind. Ryan’s hand skates down his back, and he’s got his eyes fixed on Ryan’s face, and his fingers resting softly over Ryan’s neck, and he slides his hand up to Ryan’s jaw and presses, almost gently into the soft vulnerable places there, but not enough to cut off his air. Maybe Ryan’s already not breathing anyway.  
  
He drops lower, braces himself on his elbow as Shane gets that hand beneath his head, fingers curling softly in his dark hair, lets himself press his hips into Ryan’s, press him into the mattress. He exhales shakily, but doesn’t shut his eyes. He wants to, wants to give in to this, but he’s watching Ryan, checking, making sure he’s okay.  
  
Briefly he drops his mouth to Ryan’s jaw, eyes flickering up, then shifts lower, letting his hips drag. He touches his tongue to the freckle on Ryan’s throat, traces some invisible line to the one opposite. He thinks _anything you want._  
  
~  
  
   
Ryan digs his fingers into Shane’s back. God, Shane is… Ryan can feel himself unraveling, and he doesn’t know that he should. His eyes had closed at Shane’s grip on his throat, but they flutter open now. He takes these panting, full-body breaths, as he watches Shane watching him. Shane can’t let go. So Ryan doesn’t know if he should let go. It isn’t fair—how Shane took this over, and now he seems so… wrapped up in it.  
   
But Shane’s pressing into him, and it’s rising and building to this pulse. This pulse entirely separate from, louder, harder than his own. A second beat Shane’s planted inside him. Ryan feels every bend in the mattress, feels the way Shane’s fingers dig into his throat—his airflow. He can breathe—he can breathe, physically, but he can’t work the air out of his chest.  
   
Ryan’s toes curl. He jumps between stillness and stimulation. He bends one leg and presses it into the bed so relieve some of the sensation coursing through him. Shane touches his mouth to Ryan’s jaw—then his neck. And it’s undoing him. It’s all heat and damp and breath, traced along his throat in all the soft places Shane’s fingers have already marked. It’s Shane’s mouth. God, it’s Shane’s mouth.  
   
He gets his hand behind Shane’s head, fingers quivering in his hair again. The touch has him at a fever-pitch, all wound and starting to shake. “You’re…” It vibrates against Shane’s mouth, bounces around inside him. “You’re not gonna break me…”  
   
But it’s not quite true. Shane is breaking him. Already has. But that’s not why he said, he said it because he didn’t know how to say, _you let go first._  
  
~  
  
Shane’s so tense, like he’s holding himself together with willpower alone, and his skin and bones and muscle has nothing to do with it. His limbs are easy though, he’s soft around Ryan, against him, except the single downward press of his hips, the ache coiling into the tension there like smoke. He’s too tall, so he presses into the mattress, but his hand —the one not around Ryan’s throat — snaps down and catches Ryan’s raised leg, the back of his thigh, and digs in.  
  
He exhales this soft sound against his skin, pulls himself up, hips a whisper of movement over Ryan’s — still separated by fabric, by uncertainty. He looks down at him, panting softly, then leans down to kiss his cheekbone, just below his eye, the want in him swirling to this screaming pitch, spilling out of him in impossible gentleness. “No, I’ve got you,” he whispers against his temple.  
  
He won’t let him _break_.  
  
Shane spreads his hand over the back of Ryan’s thigh, curling towards the inside of it. “I’ve got you.”  
  
~  
   
Shane drags him up, gets a hold of his thigh—and Ryan feels it down to the quick. The way the fingers blaze through his skin like silk. They wind to the very center of him, fracturing his center of gravity. He’s doesn’t know what to do with everything boiling inside him. This ache to do something for Shane, this ache to give into this—to lose himself completely and let Shane breathe for him.  
   
But he can’t. Not yet. Even when stillness circles him like storm clouds—he can’t give into it. There’s Shane, on the other side of it, pushing, half over this edge with him. And Ryan thinks, believes, Shane might want it to. He’s so wound. There’s all this tension in him—in his hips, matching the violent pulse in Ryan. Ryan feels it—feels Shane through flimsy fabric and hesitation.  
   
Ryan uses his grip on Shane’s hair hold him so Ryan can turn his head under Shane’s fingers, and it’s this sigh and strain of movement that ratchets him into a frenzy. Still, he pushes his mouth against Shane’s jaw, kisses it, just barely, and whispers, “I wanna have you too.”  
  
~  
  
Fear kicks in, or caution, saying _step back_ , but Ryan’s lips are against his skin. Shane thinks about all the emptiness inside him, all the hollow spaces where feeling is supposed to be, and how if he lets Ryan in, Ryan will find them. Echoes in an empty house.  
  
He doesn’t think he could bear Ryan’s disappointment with him. With the whole of him.  
  
If they’re going to jump, now, he needs Ryan with him, but he doesn’t know if he can. He doesn’t want to propel Ryan forward without following him down, but he also doesn’t know if he himself even has the capacity to clear the rocks below. Maybe he’ll just slam into him, the force of his own emptiness.  
  
But Ryan’s lips are against his skin and Shane’s hand slides up Ryan’s leg to his hip and pins him, rocks against him.  
  
 _You’re not enough_ Shane thinks to himself, but he’s already… he said he could do this. He told Ryan to try him, he offered him something, a promise, and he’s not about to snatch that away, now.  
  
“Take it, then, it’s yours.” It comes out rushed, filled with fissures. He’s terrified, but he means it. He’ll drudge up everything he’s ever fucking felt, for Ryan, collect it in this mess of half-felt and half-remembered and try to cobble it together into something cohesive and hope, fucking hope Ryan wasn’t lying, wasn’t just too optimistic, when he said _you’re enough._  
  
Shane doesn’t want to be the thing that disappoints Ryan, ever. He feels like he’s raking everything in him together to offer up, and all this hope, all this want, all this desperation builds in his mind, his heart, his blood.   
  
~  
   
Tension rolls off Shane, bleeds into Ryan like steam into his pores. His hand glides up Ryan, so easy, so different from this mess in his eyes. A smooth roll of thunder against the jagged strikes of lightning. Ryan can’t help it—doesn’t choose to do it. His body just leans into it, reaches for it—like Ryan can peel himself open for Shane. He wants to. God, he wants to, but he… he’s afraid. At the core of him—he’s still afraid. He’s afraid of what this is for Shane, of what Shane’s doing to himself—of what he wants, what he needs from Ryan. What he’s too scared to take.  
   
Shane tells Ryan to take it, take him, maybe, and Ryan wants to. He wants to reach out and take everything Shane’s got and hold it. Promise him that it’s enough. Because it is, god, nothing has ever been so overwhelmingly enough.  
   
Ryan pulls both hands up, one in Shane’s hair, one clenched around the tattered fabric of the mattress, and touches either side of Shane’s face. Holds it. He brings Shane’s forehead against is—sweat slick between them.  
   
His thumb strokes along Shane’s cheekbone. Ryan’s fingers press hard in his twitching, aching mania—body still crackling under Shane’s touch. Begging, pleading for more in this consuming shriek. His lips shake. His whole body shakes, and he wonders if he’ll ever stop shaking when Shane touches him. When Shane does this to him.  
   
“Are you okay?” It’s all breath and bullets. The angle makes it impossible for their mouths to touch, but he’s aware of the red smear of Shane’s mouth—how exertion has made it deep, starker than usual. He’s aware of the heat bouncing off it and tugging at Ryan like its own orbit. Of Shane’s hand still pressed along his hip, digging into the bone like he’s smoothing out the cracks. And he wants to kiss him. He wants to kiss him—more than wants—more than needs to kiss him.  
   
But he’s afraid it’ll be stolen, something taken, and he can’t—he can’t take anything from Shane. Not when he’s giving so much.  
  
He’s panting, his arm is shaking where he’s holding himself up, and he finally pulls away from Ryan’s throat. He’d been nudged away a little when Ryan shifted, but now he draws away altogether, leans further down, braced against the mattress on his forearm, fingers sliding up over Ryan’s cheek instead.  
  
 _Is_ he okay?  
  
He shuts his eyes for a moment, because he’s too close to Ryan, and Ryan’s expressive eyes, and not close enough and it _hurts_ somewhere. Somewhere separate from the ache tugging everything to this deep, clenching centre of him, pulling at his breath, his bones.  
  
He makes this soft sound, almost a moan, or the beginning of the words, and meets Ryan’s eyes, his own almost amber — burnt fields in autumn, pupils blown wide. “Yeah—”  
  
Maybe.   
  
He slides his fingers into Ryan’s waistband, trembling out a should or a suggestion.  
  
“You? Are you?”  
  
~  
  
Fuck, this is hard. This is harder than anything he's ever tried to do. Shane makes this sound that slides down Ryan's throat like whiskey. And he wants it. But Shane seems like he might not be okay. Like he's pushing too hard, and Ryan is here and he wants it like air, but he can't take it. He won't let himself.  
  
Shane's eyes are wild, like crystallized honey. Somehow gnarled in their smooth colors, marred by the black.  
  
Ryan closes his eyes to take it Shane's hand on his cheek, then he opens them into Shane's again. He brushes, soothing and gentle along Shane's cheek, feathers back into his hair.  
  
Pressure at his waist band licks up his spine. His toes curl again, at this sensation down this untouched corridor, this echo in the silence.  
  
“I’m okay,” he says, and then has to drag it along every nook in his throat, “but maybe we should slow down.”  
  
And it hurts like a hammer across his shoulder blades.  
  
~  
  
He exhales roughly, everything in him slowing to almost stillness as he closes his eyes. He doesn’t know if it’s relief. He doesn’t understand why they keep running up against this wall, and he thinks it’s hurting them both more than it’s helping.  
  
But Ryan’s right. Because Shane has plunged headlong and heedless into moments like this — never with this intensity, but moments like _this_ , hungry and wanting, and it’s never felt good, after.  
  
He thinks, though, that it might be okay with Ryan.  
  
“Okay,” he says, and his heart thuds out heavily like a bass drum, monotonous, reminding him of this ache below his waist with every beat, but that’s not as bad as the ache in his chest. He nods a little, wets his lips. He can still feel their breath intermingling.  
  
~  
  
Ryan collapses, a little, because it all hits him in a rush. He's somehow tired and ready to run, ready to crush the world in his hands, and then there's this hurt. It mingles with the low ache the mirror left. With the way his leg sits wrong. And he worries Shane is killing him. He worries he wants it.   
  
His head presses harder into the mattress. He laughs and it's breathless, scattered. “Not sure how anyone ever felt like you weren't enough… you're…” He swallows, hands still on Shane's cheeks. He eases them around to the back of his head, not pulling.   
  
He closes his eyes. He can't finish. He's just trying to quell the want, the fire, the pain. The chaos Shane's given him. The chaos that's changed everything.  
  
~  
  
He moves, pulls back a little because it’s too much, the press of Ryan’s hips, the heat of him. Shane adjusts so he’s still leaning over Ryan’s chest, but he drops his hips to the side, one leg falling over one of Ryan’s, still entwined. He doesn’t want to just… leave him cold, he just…  
  
“I… sorry,” he says, because this must be him. “I’m trying, I just— I’m not used to feeling this much?” It’s a fucking whole lot. It’s a whole fucking lot to _say_ it. To Ryan.  
  
Shane closes his eyes and drops his forehead to Ryan’s shoulder. “If you want… I can—“ he breathes a laugh. “I’m sorry.”  
  
~  
  
“What I want,” Ryan says it slow, deliberately,”is for you to stop apologizing for yourself. You're okay.” One of his hands, the messed up hand, eases away from Shane. The other stays, holds the base of his hairline, easier with Shane on his shoulder. Countering Ryan's wild heartbeat with his own.  
  
“It's a lot, just pace yourself. It's not about me… you worry too much about everyone else.” He laughs. “You're a mess.”  
  
But he likes it, he thinks, that Shane's never felt this much. That maybe Ryan's doing something right. Unless it's just _too much_. Because Ryan is always too much.  
  
~  
  
“I think… I think I’m worried that you’re going to be waiting for me, forever,” Shane says, like he’s weighing the words.  
  
“I want this.” He’s speaking against Ryan’s skin and it’s still _doing_ things to him, so he draws away a little, shifts so that he’s looking at him, head resting on one bent arm. He takes a second, eyes tracing the lines of Ryan’s nose, his jaw, before he drops his eyes, brow a little furrowed. Almost tentative, he touches Ryan’s waist, then slides his fingers over his stomach, traces absent shapes.  
  
“I do want it, jesus… I think you’re going to kill me.”  
  
~  
   
He said you’re a mess, but it keeps bouncing around in his own head. I’m a mess. He is. He’s such a mess, and it’s less because of the zombie fucking plague and more because of the obscenely tall person still half-wrapped around him. Shane’s talking into him—against his skin, and it’s warm and damp and—and Ryan’s just trying to get his heart rate down. All of him down. At a level he can interact without pinning Shane back to the bed and pushing, pushing, pushing.  
   
But it’s not him that’s pushing, in a weird way, it’s Shane. He’s asking all these questions with his hand, on his waist, on Ryan’s stomach again. All Ryan’s edges feel sharp and impossible under Shane’s touch. Ryan laughs because it’s the easiest thing to get out first—the only way he can bring himself into words.  
   
“Not if you kill me first.” His eyes flick from the ceiling to Shane—who’s further back now. But Shane’s saying he wants this. Ryan isn’t so gone he can’t understand that. “You think too much.” Ryan raises his hand and shoves Shane’s forehead back gently. “And that’s sad—coming from me, that’s sad.”  
  
~  
  
Shane smiles automatically when Ryan laughs, like he can’t help it, even though he’s not feeling it. He still doesn’t understand this, and there’s this fading ache that’s leaving his gut in knots, and he wonders if Ryan’s really in this, or not, but that sounds like an accusation right now, and Shane doesn’t want it to.  
  
“I do,” Shane says. “My brain never shuts up, it’s like a prison, sometimes.”  
  
His hand’s made this slow journey up Ryan’s stomach, over his ribs, to his chest, and he lays his palm over Ryan’s heartbeat. He laughs a little. “You okay, there, buddy?” he asks, and it comes out weirdly soft — like it’s something he’s _calling_ Ryan, and not just a word — a catch-all name for any guy he’s talking to.  
  
~  
   
Ryan inhales. Shane’s hand glides up to his chest, and Ryan thinks he should just reach in and snatch the heartbeat beneath it. He’s the only reason it’s beating. Lately, that’s what it feels like. Like Shane controls his heart beat, starts and stops it on a whim. On a glance. On a touch.  
   
He watches Shane too intensely. He feels it—the way his gaze gets heavier and heavier until it’s pulsating. “I’m okay…” He considers the way Shane said buddy, how soft he said everything around it. Swirls it around inside him. He almost says, _but I don’t wanna wait forever_ , but he’s so scared it’s putting more pressure on Shane. So scared it’s unfair. And he will wait forever. He doesn’t want to, but he will.  
   
He catches Shane’s hand and presses it closer into his chest. “You’re just…” He rolls over and presses his face against Shane’s shoulder, holding his hand against his chest. “You’re good, Shane.” It’s such a strange thing to say, innocuous, but not, so he keeps going, “and I… I really don’t wanna fuck this up.”  
  
~  
  
Shane kind of bends his body around him, because Ryan’s got his hand hostage and lets that resonate through him. “Thank you,” he says, all uncertain, almost a question. “But yeah, I know…” God, does he ever. Losing Ryan… losing this…  
  
“I know,” he says again, whispers it. But how do they not? Everything’s fucked up, literally everything, in this fucking apocalypse. But damn it, he doesn’t want to just _take_ that. He doesn’t want to let it win and Ryan’s sometimes the only thing that makes him feel like they have a shot.  
  
“I don’t think you’re gonna fuck it up, man,” Shane says. “That’s not. I don’t think you will. So don’t… don’t dial it back with me. I can handle it, I’m… I’ve got it, Ryan.”  
  
~  
   
Ryan grins, and it brushes against Shane’s skin where he’s still got his face pressed against it. “You sure? I can spend a lot of time talking about Kobe Bryant. I can give you detailed accounts of every championship they’ve won. And it’s not just that… there are a lot of things I can talk about… for a long time.”  
   
But he worries. Shane says he’s got it. He wants to have it, Ryan gets that. But he doesn’t know that Shane does have it. Ryan could overwhelm him. He could’ve overwhelmed him just now, and he had to fight to make sure he didn’t. Shane’s so wrong. Ryan could so easily fuck this up. He’s fucked up most of his real relationships by hanging on too tight. And he’s never held on to anything as tightly as he’s holding onto Shane.  
  
~  
  
Shane fights his hand free from Ryan’s — it’s a bit of a task — and buries it into his hair, kisses the top of his head a little too hard, then pushes him over enough to get his hand over his mouth, presses down, but he doesn’t climb over him. He knows how that goes.  
  
“If you talk to me about Kiwi Brigadiers one more time,” Shane says, eyes locked on Ryan’s. “I will… I will _kick_ you in the shin. The broken one. But I won’t fucking go anywhere. Okay?” There’s something dark in his eyes, honest, but it’s sinking below the mischief.  
  
~  
   
Ryan narrows his eyes. Shane’s hand is still over his mouth, and he’s just… trying not to think about it. Trying not to let Shane see what he’s actually doing. How close he is to sending Ryan slamming back into him and kissing him until he doesn’t know what to do with his fucking mouth. Shane thinks he can handle Ryan. He has _no_ idea.  
   
He doesn’t know if that shows in his eyes, the danger, the crimson-colored desire. But he raises his eyebrows and brings his hands up to shove at Shane’s chest. It’s not hard, not fully invested, but a reminder that he has more than his mouth. Then, for added measure, he flicks his tongue along the salty callouses of Shane’s hand and smirks under it.  
  
~  
  
Shane softly catches his breath, and smiles a little, tries to ignore the insistent tugging, the desire rushing up inside him again. "Is that all you got?" He asks, but he eases up a little, removes his hand. He drags his fingers lightly over Ryan's lips, letting them cling to his skin.  
  
~  
   
Ryan doesn’t quite let Shane get his hand away from him. He follows and gets his teeth around them, in this light, half hold that falls just short of pinching the skin. He lets go and laughs. It’s not hiding anything this time. It’s genuine. “You’re the worst.”  
  
~  
  
Shane makes this face like he's pretending to have all this false modesty about a compliment he actually thinks he deserves. "Thank you, I do my best," he says. "You though, the very _picture_ of chastity. With your eyes and your mouth. Frankly," Shane says, leaning on one bent arm, settling into this bit. "How dare you."  
  
~  
   
He laughs harder, because all these different shades of Shane are just… he wants all of them. Every single one of them. The blacks and the yellows and every bit of this. “I’m the picture of chastity—that’s, wow, again I think you’re the first person to ever notice.” Ryan leans up as Shane leans down. It’s still charged. He’s still thinking about Shane’s mouth, and his jaw, and the way it felt under Ryan’s lips. “Someone has to keep you in check.”  
  
~  
  
Shane goes still as his eyes go dark. He was just about dealing with this, but Ryan's creating sparks inside him. "Is that person gonna be you? Little guy? I could squish you with my bare hands."

Shane half-wishes he had even half the bravado he pretends he does.  
  
~  
   
Ryan grabs either of Shane’s hands and shakes them. He works incredulity into his expression as he looks from Shane’s hands to his face. He turns them, spilling them out with one of his thumbs. “With these hands? You think you could squish me with these hands?” Ryan lets out a single bark of laughter and clicks his tongue. “I’m pretty sure you couldn’t squish a fly if it sat on one of your palms and waited for you.”  
  
~  
  
"I—" Shane dissolves into genuine laughter. Not just the quick, startled laughs, the quiet ones Ryan sometimes pulls from him, but something bright and unguarded. "All right, come— come on."  
  
He twists his wrists, entwines the fingers of both hands with Ryan’s, pulls him closer. “You son of a bitch…” he says, half-wondering, half playing, still, but too soft to be even close to an insult. He draws Ryan almost over his chest. “You’d kick a guy when he’s down, huh? Beneath you?” His eyes flicker once between Ryan’s searching.  
  
~  
  
Ryan pushes one knee into the to keep himself up as Shane drags him. He lets himself linger over Shane, not quite on top of him. He's grinning at the laugh, startled and completely disarmed, that shook loose from Shane. He likes it.  
  
“You are beneath me,” Ryan says like he's just realizing it. “You did threaten to kick me in the shin earlier. It's only fair.” He looks at his fingers still tangled in Shane's. “My injured shin too.” He scoffs and nudges Shane's leg with his knee. He doesn't want to be do too much touch. They'll end up right back where they started and Ryan's not sure he can stop again.  
  
~  
  
"What am I gonna do with you?" Shane asks, eyes down, trying to puzzle out that touch against his leg. He looks back up at Ryan again. He has so many questions to ask but he doesn't know how to ask them."I hate to say this," he says instead, "but I think we're going to have to move soon. Up sticks."  
  
~  
  
Ryan bites his lip and collapses dramatically, half on Shane, half not. He doesn't want to keep going. He wants to close his eyes and open them back to a time when it was okay to lie around. It didn't mean death. It just meant getting in trouble at work.  
  
And for a moment, he lets himself believe they're in his bedroom, going to work. He closes his eyes and the walls aren’t stained and there's a shelf of his favorite DVDs in the corner and a thousand hats in the closet. And Shane's there. And they have all the time in the world, because his mother's still alive to talk him out of every stupid thought he's having and his brother isn't in a watery grave.  
  
“Yeah, it does,” he says after too long.  
  
~  
  
As soon as it’s out there, the agreement to leave, Shane’s itching to get going. And yet they stay there for a while, he untangles one of his hands from Ryan’s, the one where he can feel all the jagged places from the shattered mirror, and runs it down the back of his neck instead, over his back. He idly lets his fingers slide from Ryan’s shoulder to his spine and back again, over and over until there’s this layer of calm over everything, until his blood stops pumping with sparks of heat, until Ryan’s heartbeat slows against Shane’s own chest. He almost falls asleep again, but he knows Ryan won’t, so he says, a little too soft “Okay. Hup hup,” and sits up.  
  
They gather their things. Shane checks about ten times to make sure Finn’s phone is properly turned off, then slips it and the headphones carefully into his bag, wrapped in a shirt in case they get wet or broken or something. He doesn’t know what to do with Finn’s bag, so he offers it to Ryan, since Ryan’s bag’s been destroyed since that night with Jake. It’s up to him if he wants to take it.  
  
Shane leaves Ryan to it and goes downstairs to cut his own hair, since he probably won’t get another chance. He avoids his own eyes in the mirror, cuts his hair into something less careful than Ryan’s, but certainly shorter. A little too short, because it sticks up at the side and he tries to flatten it with his palm, but it won’t. _Oh well_. Shane finally meets his eyes, sees Finn’s, even though Finn’s eyes were always more dark grey than brown. Shane takes himself in, shrugs at his reflection, and puts the scissors down. Then he goes back upstairs to see how Ryan’s doing.  
  
They can’t take everything, of course. It makes his throat tight, leaves this sting in his nose and the corners of his eyes, to leave Finn’s clothes, but he doesn’t let himself dwell on it too long. They can’t take them, they’re needless weight, and maybe someone else will happen upon this little safe haven and find some use for them. In the end, he only takes one thing. Trades one of his own shirts for one of Finn’s wool sweaters, orange and cream, grey and blue in shapes that remind Shane of mountains. It kind of smells like home. He folds it tightly into his bag.  
  
And they go.  
  
There’s a few convenience stores that are as disconcertingly empty as the rest of the town, but there’s no water anywhere. There’s Gatorade though, the gross fucking blue one. It’s past the best by date but they drink it anyway. It helps his head some.  
  
Shane hates moving. They’ve been switching the packs back and forth, since one is heavier no matter how they packed them, and he’s got Ryan’s now. He hates how the dark comes on so fast, but it’s their own fault for lazing around this morning. Still, he doesn’t say it, he wouldn’t trade it, he just hopes they get out of this fucking place before night falls. It’s a ways off, yet, but it’s getting late enough that the shadows under the trees are dark when they reach the edge of town. Shane only knows these woods from driving past them on the highway, but they’re keeping off the road. Something about the silence here makes Shane not want anything or anyone to see them leaving, or see which direction they go, so they pick their way through the trees.  
  
It’s a bit of a slog. Shane’s given Ryan the pipe again, because Shane’s always a little further ahead. Not by much, but Ryan’s not as fast, and Shane’s trying to pick out the levelest ground as they go. He doesn’t like being in front, doesn’t like not being able to see Ryan, but hearing him is almost enough.  
  
The wind’s picking up and Shane’s shoulders are tight against the rising cold. It feels like snow but the air’s too wet. Like thunderstorms. There’s a charge in the air that makes him nervous.  
  
He stops to wait for Ryan. “I dunno,” he says, “We could probably take the road for a bit, what do you think?”  
  
They agree on that. At least they’ll get to more shelter faster. Hopefully. And they’re far enough out of the town now to not be seen.  
  
At least, that was the idea.  
  
They’re not five seconds over the embankment when something comes screaming out at them from the other side. It claws its way over the guardrail and it’s just this massive fucking thing, not wasted like most of the zombies are. Shane can’t even wrap his _mind_ around how it moves so fast carrying that kind of bulk. “Ohfuck,” he says, and turns, catches Ryan’s shoulders and together they kind of half run half slide down the embankment back into the trees. He hears Ryan hiss in pain and Shane’s grabbing at him, trying to get them both to their feet. They’ve lost the pipe, and they both kind of grab for it at once. “Run, _run_!” Shane says, but Ryan won’t. Fucking of course he won’t. Shane pulls the pipe from him and takes this panicked running swing at the zombie as it barrels down the hill. He gets it, and it’s head explodes into black but the momentum is too much and Shane topples back, just managing to avoid being literally crushed by it. He also narrowly avoids slamming his skull into the trunk of a tree. He rolls to his feet panting. They should be safe, but there’s sounds now. For the first time in a long time there’s sounds that aren’t their own, and it’s so surreal after so much silence, such a fucking change that Shane’s confused by it. He doesn’t know where they’re coming from. But they’re getting closer.  
  
Somehow Ryan sorts it out because he’s saying “Shane!”  and catches his forearm, orienting him, and then they’re plunging headlong into the woods, away from the highway. They are going to get so fucking lost, Shane thinks, if they survive.  
  
They hit this river and it’s small enough that Shane jumps it, but Ryan’s suddenly splashed knee-deep in frigid water. Maybe it’s a blessing, maybe it numbs the pain in his leg. Maybe it just slows them both down, Shane doesn’t know. He goes back for him, sees the shadows moving in the distance over Ryan’s head. There’s so many of them. Grabbing Ryan’s arms, Shane half hoists, half drags him out of the river. He keeps ahold of his sweater sleeve as they keep going, stumbling now, but they’re out of rhythm with one another in their fear, their disorientation, and it makes them slow, and they need to fucking _move_.  
  
Shane lets him go, spins. To the left the trees are a little bit thinner. It’s back towards the ghost town, but Ryan can’t move fast enough through the undergrowth that’s in their initial intended direction. He pushes Ryan back in the direction of the town as gently as he can in his urgency.  
  
“Go! I’m right behind you, go!”  
  
Shane thinks they might lose them. His lungs are burning, but he thinks they might. He keeps Ryan in front of him because of his leg, because he needs to know he’s still running. If they can find somewhere to hide, maybe... if they can find… anything, anything. _Fuck_ , he thinks, _help_.  
  
And then, in direct opposition to his prayers:  
  
He’s not actually sure what happens first; the sound of something metallic or mechanic, or the pain. For one horrible moment he thinks he’s been bitten. What else could hurt this much? The answer comes a split second later as his leg comes forward to catch him in his run and something snaps him violently back. He goes down hard, slamming into the earth before he can get his hands up properly, and bites sharply into his lip. He loses the pipe and a rough sound wrenches free from Shane’s throat through clenched teeth.   
  
He twists on the ground, pain crackling up the nerves of his leg, fully expecting to see a zombie latched onto him, but there’s not.   
  
It’s metal. And for a split second there’s immediate relief. He actually believes he thinks _Well that’s not so bad_.   
  
Except he’s stuck. The trap is chained to a tree and it’s snapped shut onto his leg above the ankle, above the top of his boot, and he can’t see how much it’s biting into his skin through his pants, but there’s already blood. He feels it soaking the fabric more than he can see it in the growing dark. _Fuck_ it hurts. He gets his fingers around the sharp metal teeth and pulls but it doesn’t budge.  
  
Panic sets in.  
  
 _Ryan_ , he thinks desperately, wanting him. It’s his first thought, once he realizes how fucked he is, but he doesn’t call out. If Ryan comes back he won’t be able to outrun the zombies. And— no. _Fuck_ , Ryan has Shane’s pack.   
  
Shane’s pack has the gun.  
  
Shane looks up, brown eyes wild, panicked. He can’t see the infected yet. Maybe they’ve managed to outrun them so far, but they’ll smell the blood. Shane’s still prying at the trap, but it’s biting into his leg where his running’s already wrenched it sharply and it _hurts_. He’s got a mouthful of blood, feels it sliding hot and salty between his teeth.   
  
~

Ryan’s feet keep slipping in his boots. It’s awful. His socks are sloshing and wet and he hates it. But he’s got to keep moving. He’s half the reason they haven’t outrun this shit by now. Because he can’t make himself move fast enough. He’s running, narrowly avoiding tripping on his leg—lungs burning—through this endless woods. And now they’re going backwards, and fuck everything. He keeps glancing back at Shane to make sure he’s there. He doesn’t love being in front—he gets why he is—he’s the one with the bad leg, but he doesn’t like it. Shane’s weaker than him. Overall, he is. 

He notices fast when Shane’s not there anymore. The double take turns to a twist, panic, and a fast, whoosh of motion. Ryan slides in the dirt. He slips, falls, almost slams theatrically into a tree. Avoids that. But the bag clatters and skids along his arm. He has to pull it back over his shoulder. His mind is clawing back the past few seconds, and he thinks he heard him Shane—a sound. Oh fuck. Oh fuck. Ryan scrambles back to his feet. He’s so sure he’s going to see him coming, but he doesn’t. He isn’t.

“Shane?!”

He moves a hell of a lot faster now. He forgets the burn in his legs. The thud in his leg. But it takes ages—this endless run, these endless fragmented thoughts of _where am I_? Of questioning whether he went back the same direction as he came. It’s all just trees and gray sky. He’s so lost, and he can’t lose Shane—he can’t. Finally, he finds him. He’s on the ground, and a chilling, angry panic rends Ryan’s insides to shreds. He expects zombies. Shane’s on the ground, and—but it’s not zombies. Not yet. He hears them, but not yet.

“Shane!” 

There’s something metal—a trap, a fucking trap—latched onto his leg. Ryan rushes over to him, takes everything in. “Jesus—fuck.” It’s already bleeding, and… fuck, fuck, fuck. Shane’s trying to get it open, but Ryan brushes him back. He doesn’t have the angle to do it. Jesus Christ, it’s a trap—Ryan has no idea how to open a trap. What is a trap even doing here? God, what he wouldn’t do for Google. He tugs at either side of the trap until it hurts, but it’s rock solid.

The noises, the footsteps—all dragging and angry—get closer. Ryan’s on his knees, scrambling. He stops, glances back for the pipe and gives it back to Shane. He tugs at the trap again, but this isn’t working. This isn’t how to do it. He stares at it, blood rushing through him too fast. His head hurts—everything hurts. This cannot happen. He’s got to get this open. There’s got to be a trigger, or something. There’s springs on either side of the teeth. He presses at them, but they won’t move either. Nothing will move, and Shane is bleeding, and—

The growl splits open the air—across the trees like a fucking cleaver. Ryan’s neck turns fast enough to snap. There’s several of them. Little shadows running, closing in. “Oh boy, oh…” He doesn’t have time to count. There’s just a lot. He fights with the left spring a little longer. It pushes back and starts to decompress, but nothing happens. It dips and snaps back up when he looks back at the zombies.  The growls come again. He doesn’t have time. He can’t get this done—not before… fuck this. He’s got a hammer. And he’s got a brain. These motherfuckers can get fucked.

“Okay.” He looks at Shane. “Keep—I think you need to get the springs down. Keep trying.”

He tosses the bag to the ground, out of Shane’s reach and pulls the hammer free. He puts himself between Shane and their new friends. Four of them, now that he takes them in. There’s just four. He has more fingers on one hand than that. He can do this. They look more recent, like the one from the road. Bulkier. Bigger. _Awesome_. Ryan pushes aside whatever feelings he has about that. He doesn’t have time. He clenches the hammer in his hands. 

He’s not losing anyone else.

~  
  
Shane can’t say anything.  
  
He’s all alone and then he’s not, Ryan’s back and he’s so torn between relief and hopelessness that he makes this sound like a sob and just digs his fingernails into the earth as Ryan tries the trap. He wants to say _Oh, you’re so fucking stupid_ , but he can’t seem to get his mouth to work. Maybe some selfish part of him…  
  
He swallows blood.  
  
There’s springs on the trap. Of course, that would make sense, but then there’s zombies, too, at the edges of Shane’s vision, at the edges of the shadows, like nightmares.  
  
 _Keep trying_ Ryan says, like there’s some hope, and every ounce of hope that’s drained from Shane floods right back in and suddenly he’s angry as well as terrified, because if he gets bitten now, he’ll never forgive himself for doing that to Ryan.  
  
If Ryan gets bitten…  
  
Shane can’t even think about it. He finds the springs and presses, but his legs are too long and he doesn’t have the strength in his arms to press down as hard as he needs to, and he thinks, maybe, they’re stuck. The left one shifts, but not the right. Shane grits his teeth and tries his fucking damnedest. Who fucking hunts fucking anything with traps anymore? Jesus Christ—  
  
He looks up and there’s a flash of white. Teeth or eyes through the trees and Shane’s stomach lurches with terror, and then Ryan’s in front of him, blocking his view.  
  
Blocking Shane from them.  
  
“No, Ryan,” Shane says, “Ryan you have to run—” and he’s already pleading. He needs—  he needs the gun. That’s two zombies at least that he could shoot if Ryan runs… maybe the other two would… would stay with Shane.   
  
But the pack’s too far, he knows it.   
  
~  
   
Ryan glances over his shoulder to Shane honest-to-god telling him to run. He almost laughs. Of course Shane would ask him to run—of course he would. Ryan glances back to the approaching zombies and then to Shane. “Are you out of your fucking mind? I’m not going anywhere.” He sees Shane eyeing the bag and grips the hammer a little tighter. “I can handle this.”  
   
God, they’re close. Ryan gauges the distance. It might be safer to meet them further out. He’s given Shane the pipe, but he won’t be able to defend himself well like this. God, it must be killing him—the trap. Ryan’s eyes keep jumping to it, clinging like he can burn it away with his gaze. It doesn’t work. Nothing works. But the way it grips Shane’s leg scratches at Ryan—like the teeth are digging into his own skin. Shane can’t seem to get the springs down either. He almost puts the hammer down and tries again, but he’s out of time. If he puts it down—focuses, then they’ll be on them by the time he stands back up. And it won’t matter. Shane can’t get away now anyway. He has to kill these things.  
   
He thinks about the gun in the bag. He hasn’t thought about it at all. Not since their fight, not since he found it, but he thinks about it now. He doesn’t know how many bullets are in it, but he doubts it’s enough. And he can’t get the words out of his mouth.  
  
~  
  
"No... Ryan, no no no." Shane's voice trails off into a whisper, but when he speaks again, it's stronger, trying to keep it steady and calm and failing hard. "Give me the bag, Ryan, c'mon. Fuck—"

His stomach is so tight, everything in him is tight. And maybe it's cowardly. He doesn't want to die but he wants to see Ryan die even less. For him. While Shane can't do anything but watch. "Ryan!" His voice rings out, sharp and desperate. "Come on, before they—”

Ryan can't take on four of them himself, not with a broken leg and Shane cannot fucking watch him get hurt. "Ry, _please_."

But one runs forward. Maybe Shane's fault, since he apparently can’t shut up. He lets go of the trap and grips the pipe hard.  
  
~  
   
Ryan turns back around, eyes wide. It’s this thunder clap of rage. It twists onto his face like a sudden storm. “Give you the—” His breath leaves him, a whoosh of air that feels like something’s struck him. But nothing has. Not yet. “Fuck you, no. No—why would you even?” He snarls and the hammer digs into his palms, starts to splinter.  
   
“Go to hell—go to hell for even…” Ryan has to pay attention to something else. Partially because he’s going to punch Shane in the face, and partially because something else is right here. It’s running hard, so Ryan sidesteps to use its momentum and spins, slams it to the ground farther out. It lands in front of a second one and sends it sprawling forward. It falls too, hits the ground a pace away from Ryan. It’s a taller zombie—not as tall as Shane, but definitely tall and broad. A man with gnarled skin and clouded eyes. Ryan swings the hammer in an arc, but it hits its back, plunges deep into the spine and sticks. Ryan tugs once, hard, but the first one—smaller, faster, with long hair—tries to take a bite of his shoulder. He lets the hammer go and stumbles left.  
   
And the second one gets back up—hammer still lodged in its back, because fuck him, apparently. He takes a gasping pant of breath. It lunges and he ducks around it, gets a grip on the hammer. He yanks once, twice—nothing. He’s amazed at how well it’s stuck. “Jesus, give it back.”  
   
He squeezes with both hands and slams his good leg into the zombie’s back. It flies forward and he flies back. He hits the ground hard enough to taste blood. His ears rings, and he barely gets the hammer—sideways—up in time to have the smaller zombie’s jaw snap around the wooden part. The world keeps spinning without him. His head pounds.  
   
“Jesus.” It’s right in front of him, snarling and spitting and pushing. Saliva pools between its teeth, brown and oozing. It seeps over the decaying remains of its lips. His arms quiver, trying hard to hold it back. He twitches to shake it loose, but loses his grip. The hammer’s handle jerks back, back, square across the bridge of his nose. The world goes purple. His ears ring—eyes watering. Fuck if that didn’t hurt.  
   
Anger responds, breathing fire up his throat. He grunts and kicks his foot into the zombie’s leg. It snaps back as Ryan snaps up. He brings the hammer up and down, and this time—it hits skull. Brain matter, or something like it, spews outward. Blood spills down the front of his face from where the hammer handle hit, but he doesn’t feel it. He doesn’t feel anything but adrenaline.  
   
Another zombie catches him in the side, grabbing onto him as he staggers back. The first zombie, the one who’s back had a hammer in it, can’t get up. It’s crawling, towards him, but slow. The other two are there now, though. Ryan wrestles with the zombie that’s grabbed him—it’s got a grip on his shirt, and he jerks its head back by the hair. It falls away in a messy, rotten clump. A retch scrapes up his throat. They stumble. Zombie snapping and grabbing at pieces of Ryan, Ryan hitting his hands against its chest. Its hands scratch through his shirt, not tearing, but digging at the skin beneath. He finally throws his new appendage off and his foot catches something. He hits the ground again. It’s the other zombie—hammer-zombie. He tripped over it.  
   
Of fucking course he did.  
   
He swings a foot at its face, but it catches his boot in its mouth. He shoves his foot further in—fast, sharp—until something cracks. Its jaw hinges and swings open. Free-hanging. Just like— _no, not right now._ He pulls his foot free and grabs it and pulls it in front of him so when the next zombie lunges and bites—it bites its friend’s neck.  Ryan shoves them both away, one dead—well, both dead, one inanimate.  
   
Then he looks up in time to see the last one focused on Shane. It’s close. Way too close. He doesn’t think about it—he just reacts—makes the absolute stupidest decision of his life—he throws the hammer. In what could only be described as a miracle, it crashes into the zombie’s shoulder so it screams, staggers, and falls. Still very much alive.  
   
He steps towards it—his hammer and Shane, but the other zombie almost gets its jaw around his arm. Its hand snatches up to grab his face. It can’t get a grip, so it slides all the way down his arm—fingers too weak to cut but it snags one of the cuts in his hand near the bottom. He groans and rips free. He really, deeply wishes he hadn’t thrown away his weapon. It jumps again, and he throws a punch. Because they’re boxing now. It hits bone and warped flesh and screams back up his arm. The zombie stumbles and shrieks its offense.  
   
Ryan glances back to Shane. Shane is hurt—he can’t defend himself. He can’t—Ryan needs to get over there. He tries, but the thing takes another swing. It knocks him back until he’s against the tree where Shane’s stuck. Out of reach of the hammer and regretting everything he’s ever done that’s led him to this point.  
   
“God damn it…” If he loses Shane here, he can’t keep going. He will not live through it again. He cannot lose him. His back digs into the tree as he holds the zombie as far out as his arms will let him, by the shoulders.  
  
~  
  
Shane's sure — he's _sure_ Ryan's going to get bit and he can't do a goddamn thing. He can’t even emotionally brace himself for it, can’t even wrap his mind around how awful that will be.  
  
He wrestles with the trap until fear and frustration makes him jerk at it in a way that sends a jolt through him, metal twinging something inside him that feels so overwhelmingly _wrong_ it almost makes him vomit. And fucking Ryan's this small flurry of motion and grit that's got terror pulsing through Shane like blood. 

Shane doesn't even notice the zombie that's bearing down on him until it's way too close. He doesn't even  have time to let go of the trap and get the pipe up before it's practically on him. Until, suddenly, it isn't. It's pitching, screaming to the side. Ryan threw the hammer. Because he’s a fucking idiot.  
  
Shane looks up in time to shout, "Watch— _Ryan_!" The zombie gets Ryan's back up against the tree and Shane can’t even take it in. Somehow his survival instinct kicks in, and only has time to roll over, face in the dirt, arms over his neck as the zombie Ryan hit with the hammer lunges at him a second time. Shane feels it hit his back and it's biting, tearing, but he's still got his pack on, and that's what it's got. It's not giving up though, blindly searching for flesh. It slams into him again and again, growling and snarling like an animal, biting and biting at the pack’s canvas.   
  
It's all Shane can hear. He can't get up, can't shove back because he's scared if he does he won't even  have the protection of the pack. All he can hear is the sound it makes, all he can taste is his own blood.  
  
~  
   
Ryan keeps tearing his eyes backwards. Towards this zombie that’s on top of Shane, and god damn it, if Shane isn’t just sitting there. “Shane!” But Ryan’s got his own problem, this thing is bearing down on him. His back is biting into the tree bark hard enough to bruise, to break skin—but he doesn’t know what’s happening because he’s got to get to Shane. The zombie presses an arm into his face, shoves it back against the tree. It’s getting too close to him. It keeps clicking it’s teeth together. Ryan groans, fingers starting to dig into its flesh. This one is bigger than him—not as big as the other one, but big. God, how long ago did they turn? There’s still muscle, and… there’s still too much.  
   
His face scrapes the tree. Hurts. But he hears that thing on top of Shane, and he can’t—he can’t keep sitting here. He drops to his knees. Bends his broken leg so it almost drags a cry out of him. Drags something close out, anyway. But he pops back up as the zombie crashes into the tree. He yanks it back and slams it once, twice into the tree so its head explodes under his hand. It’s disgusting, but thankfully—it’s his uninjured hand. He wipes it on his jeans and drags the other zombie off Shane in one, violent yank. It tries to cling to the pack, but Ryan’s not dead—so he’s stronger.  
   
He’s tired. The hammer is still a few strides away. The zombie gets its teeth around his pant leg. It crackles through him, less pain and more panic. He swings back and then brings his foot up over its head. “Go to hell, you motherfucker.”  
   
He stomps with enough force to split its head open like a melon. It falls apart beneath him. And then there’s nothing else, and he stands there—gasping and bleeding for a few seconds. Shaken and shaking, because everything comes flooding back into him where adrenaline had deafened it. Worry, fear, pain—mostly worry. He wrenches the pack off Shane—replaying the moment, the position, if Shane could’ve been bitten. He needs to get the trap off his leg—god, _fuck_ , his leg. But he has to see he’s okay. He has to know he wasn’t bitten. It clamps its jaw around him like another bear trap.  
   
“Shane, hey…” He pushes him off his back and checks, trying not to be frantic, trying not to make this worse. But his eyes jump too fast, his hands shake and twitch like a paused VHS screen. Shane has to be okay. He has to be. “Did it bite you?” He doesn’t think so. It was still latched onto the pack. It couldn’t have bitten him. It _couldn_ ’t have.  
  
~  
  
Shane gasps "I don't think so," but he's shaking, shuddering, and Ryan's down on the ground with him, his face covered in blood and Shane grabs hold of him, of his shoulders and just hangs on. "Are you okay? Christ—" he wipes at Ryan's cheek where there's blood. There's so much blood. "Did it—? _Are you all right_?" he asks it like Ryan is particularly slow, punching each word, because Shane needs to know desperately. There's so much of Ryan that could be injured, there were so many moments Shane couldn’t see where those teeth were latching. He doesn't know what to do with him except not let go, one hand clinging to his sleeve, the over sliding down over his chest, checking for wetness, a gasp from Ryan, blood, and hoping desperately not to find it.  
  
~  
   
“Yeah, yeah. I’m good.” He’s distracted. He barely acknowledges the question because he’s still checking Shane. He doesn’t find anything wrong—he seems okay. He has enough sense to worry about Ryan’s bite, and there’s nothing _there_. Nothing major. And Shane said no. Shane would’ve said yes. Shane who was going to take that gun and… not use it on the zombies.  
   
He’s okay. Ryan has to think it, five, ten, fifteen times, before his breathing slows, before reality clicks back into place. Ryan grabs a hold of Shane’s hand after he lets him check. Other than the hammer to the face and a freshly bleeding hand—he’s mostly fine. His body will probably be sore from the tree and ground tackling he did, but he doesn’t have a _fucking bear trap on his leg._  
   
“We have to get that thing off your leg,” he says, like Shane has forgotten the horrible painful attachment around his ankle. He doesn’t want to pull away too fast, because Shane looks disoriented—like someone’s flashed a ten thousand light bulb in his eyes.  “Okay?”  
  
~  
  
Shane swallows twice, then shoves Ryan hard in the shoulder before he says, in a voice that's so contrastingly gentle, "God _damn_ it, Ryan," and tugs him closer, presses his face into Ryan's neck where it meets his shoulder.

Fuck the trap. Ryan almost died, almost got bitten to save him, and Shane wouldn’t have been able to do anything about it but stay stuck here and watch him turn. He’s _pissed_. He’s overwhelmingly grateful, and he doesn’t know if he wants to hit him or kiss him, but his mouth is full of blood so he decides on not doing that. He forces down a sharp breath until he can exhale normally, calmer, against Ryan’s skin. Against the bite mark Shane made earlier.   
  
~  
   
Ryan doesn’t know how to react to Shane right now. Shane shoves him, which is incredibly rude, and then he pulls him to him and he’s burying his face in Ryan’s neck. None of it makes any sense, but this is Shane. He doesn’t know what he expected. He gets a hand around Shane’s head, because he can’t really fault him for the weird response. They just got attacked by zombies and there’s a bear trap on his leg that he seems content to treat as a minor inconvenience. Shane breathes against the bite on his neck—it feels so soft, muted, next to the torrent of new bruises and cuts. The breath filters through him, raking out the rest of his adrenaline and leaving only uncertainty.  
   
He holds Shane, gently, and this relief floods into him like its broken a dam. He lets out a breath that’s been caught somewhere in his chest and squeezes a little tighter. He shouldn’t—he really shouldn’t, but he presses his mouth quietly against Shane’s temple. It’s brief, because they can’t do this long. They can’t.  
   
“I told you I was a badass,” he whispers before he pulls back. “But c’mon, your leg, we’ve got to get that thing off your leg.” He doesn’t push him away. Doesn’t have the strength to.  
  
~  
  
“Never do that again,” Shane says, drawing away. He does it like nothing happened, like Ryan’s breath against his temple didn’t give him goosebumps, like he didn’t just press against him, desperately wanting more, without any worldly idea of how to achieve it. And on top of all that, Shane just wants them both to get to safety. Safer safety. Because lately all Shane’s needed to feel safe, to feel _daring_ even, is Ryan. But tonight…   
  
Reality check.  
  
As though they fucking needed another one. As though all this death, all this pain and gore and blood and grief and food from fucking tins wasn’t enough.  
  
He doesn’t look at Ryan but he doesn’t want to look at the trap on his leg, either. It hurts. “What if we can’t get it off?” he asks, laughing through it so that he doesn’t freak out. So that he doesn’t freak Ryan out. But seriously, what if they can’t? “I dunno if I’m emotionally prepared to pull a, uh... _127 Hours_.”  
  
His stomach twists just thinking about that, but they can’t just sit here either. It’s cold, and it still feels like rain. The air is heavy and pressing around them. The pines are making this creepy, unnerving whispering sound as the wind tosses them, above their heads. It masks all the other sounds in the woods. Shane worries about that in order to avoid worrying about the metal biting into his skin.  
  
~  
   
Ryan can’t bring himself to laugh. Mostly because some part of him is still thinking about Shane asking for the pack—about how Ryan _knows_ what he wanted to do with it no matter how many times he tries to convince himself it was for the zombies. To shoot them. It wasn’t. He heard it in Shane’s voice.  
   
“We’re gonna get it off.” He moves back over to the trap and glances between the springs. He braces his foot on the left spring and it moves down so fucking slow. He doesn’t have the balance to try using both legs, but he’s pretty sure he’s going to have to get them both down to open the teeth. He has to twist and work to get the angle, but he gets his hands over the right spring. It digs into his palm, but doesn’t move. It isn’t stuck. He will not accept it being stuck. He will not even consider it. He sighs and pulls his foot off the left spring. If it’s more cooperative, he can do it second.  
   
He pushes his foot onto the right spring. It fights him, immobile, for too long. All the adrenaline from earlier boils through him—this roar of black waves and thunder inside him. He needs to get this trap off Shane’s leg. There’s too much blood—it’s made half Shane’s pant leg dark and wet.  Ryan raises his foot and jams it into the spring. It holds for a second and then falls. He leans to push at the other one. But he can’t, not if he’s going to open the teeth once he’s done. He pulls his broken leg onto it. It decompresses, maybe not all the way, but enough, so he gets his hands between the teeth and yanks.  
   
It doesn’t move.  
   
“Oh, fuck me.” Now he’s doubting if these fucking springs have anything to do with opening it. But there’s nothing else. There’s got to be some kind of trigger to undo it—and there is nothing on this fucking trap but a chain and teeth and springs. Rage sizzles against his skin—this uncontainable fire pushing against his skin. It explodes out of him as he tries to tear the teeth apart.  
   
They don’t move, but they do bite into either of his hands enough to draw blood when they slide off the edges. “God damn it…” He pulls them onto his jeans, to breathe and wipe them off. He readjusts his footing on the springs and the left one falls further. He grabs the hinges again, and this time they come away from Shane’s leg, slowly.  
   
He glances up at Shane. It’s the first time he’s looked at him since he started because he can’t stand looking at him stuck like this. This weird hopeless fear that he’s trying to disguise behind jokes and everything else. Shane doesn’t belong in this world—god, he doesn’t. Ryan doesn’t know what world he belongs in, but it isn’t this one.  
   
“Can you pull it out?” His teeth are gritted, still holding the metal apart—that’s not hard. The worst part is the way the springs try to bounce up under his feet.  
  
~  
  
Shane hates this. God he _hates_ this, because there's all this darkness in Ryan's eyes that shouldn't be there — so utterly different from the impossible bright-dark they usually are, like every good thing in the world is somehow behind those eyes if you just look into them long enough.

And Shane thinks he could. He thinks if he did, though, look into Ryan's eyes that deeply, while Ryan does what he does to quiet Shane's mind... he might never look away.

It scares him. He wants it.

Ryan asks him if he can pull his foot out and he can't, because the teeth are still dragging along his skin, pulling at the wound. He tries anyway, because he can't stand seeing Ryan like this either. He knows it's hurting him, and Shane wants to take this trap and throw it, and he's pissed he can't because it's fucking tied to a tree. 

_Jesus_ it hurts. Maybe Shane can throw the tree as well. Anger, frustration, it's just sitting uselessly in his chest. "Hold tight," he says, like Ryan's not. Shane gets his fingers into the trap too, so it doesn't snap shut on Ryan's He pulls hard. It screams along his skin, tearing at it, shredding into his pants.

The trap catches at one edge of his boot and Shane curses sharply, pulls again, twists his knee slightly, and he's out.  
  
~  
   
Ryan makes sure Shane’s clear of the trap before he releases and steps off. The trap springs shut again and he kicks it—just to work out some of the lightning in his chest. Ryan unzips his pack on the ground and pulls out one of his extra sweaters. Rage chips off him one pebble at a time. Because Shane’s leg is hurt. Shane is hurt, and Ryan couldn’t keep the trap open far enough so it didn’t dig into his leg further.  
   
He kneels over Shane, trying to be cautious. Trying not to move too fast or too much. His hands hover over his leg, not touching. “We need to wrap it. Do you mind if I look at it?” He gestures with his fingers over the leg of Shane’s pants. God, Ryan’s hands are a mess. He needs to get them clean beyond rubbing them on his jeans if he’s going to treat Shane’s leg.  
   
Wait, Finn’s bag had a first aid kit in it. Ryan still winces when he thinks about Finn. But it might treat Shane’s leg better than a dirty sweater. He’s still having a hard time meeting Shane’s eyes because this is awful. God, it’s awful enough that there’s a burn behind his eyes that has nothing to do with the hammer. “Did you bring that first aid kit?”  
  
~  
  
"Yeah," Shane says, watching him. He wants him to stop, he wants to make this better. He wants to say _Ryan, look at me_ , but he doesn't know where that will leave them, and he thinks maybe Ryan's angry at him. And why shouldn't he be? Shane would have been furious, hurt, if the tables were turned.

"Yeah it's in... its in my bag."

He can't ask Ryan to look at him, but Shane can't look away. He almost reaches out, but stops himself.  
  
~  
   
Ryan goes to grab Shane’s bag and finds the first aid kit. He grabs a bottle of water too because they’ve got to clean it somehow. There’s enough wrap to get most of the damage maybe. He still hasn’t looked at it—so he doesn’t know. He feels like he’s doing everything out of order. Every step is the wrong one. Every step is going to leave Shane with an infection or a ruined limb. He gets back over to Shane and rolls his pant leg up gingerly. Doing his best to separate fabric from skin so the gashes don’t drag. He jerks his head when he gets the pant up, muscles twitching a bubble along his skin. It’s worse than he thought it would be. A scream almost tears itself past his lips, but he doesn’t say anything. Doesn’t make any noise at all. Shane’s not either. Ryan takes in a breath and runs his fingers over the air above the injury. It’s all bloody lines—and this black, infinite space of dark where the teeth clamped down.  
   
Ryan unscrews the bottle’s top and glances up to Shane to show him what he’s going to do. He can’t get his mind to focus on anything but the steps—to think about what this means, about how it’s going to take ages for Shane to recover. He should be talking to Shane, trying to walk him through this, but he can’t bring himself back into his body. Every time he tries, he can’t stop thinking how much it must _hurt_. Hurt Shane. And Shane hurting isn’t something his mind can comprehend.  
   
He isn’t careful with the water this time—he uses half the bottle to clean it, pours it all over Shane’s calf. The blood comes away in thin angry sprays of water. It’s still bleeding, but he can’t stop it, not right now. No more than he can stop the panic spreading through him. This could so easily get infected. Hell, it’s an open wound. He glances across to the zombies still littering the ground.  
   
That’s what the wrap is for. _Shane is going to be fine_. He repeats in his head, again and again, like a brick wall against anything else trying to slip through. He unrolls the wrap—some of its gone. He thinks about Finn again, wonders if he tried to use some of it to cover the bite. He would’ve, right? Finn thought there was a cure…  
   
He starts wrapping the wound, tight enough that red stains it immediately. But he doesn’t stop, just keeps wrapping, taking these controlled, unsteady breaths. Shane isn’t flinching. He’s had almost no reaction to any of this, and it’s freaking Ryan out a little. He laughs, half-choked, as he looks up from wrapping to find Shane.  
   
“Wow, you’re, uh… handling this like a champ. Are you—you’re not gonna go into shock on me, are you?”  
   
 _He’s going to be fine._  
  
~  
  
It hurts, of course it hurts but he's so far away from that, thinking about infection and if there are any more traps and will the blood draw more zombies? Will he be able to _walk_? He hasn't put any weight on it yet. But then Ryan walked with a broken leg, has been walking, without complaint. Not once.

Ryan doesn't really complain.

"Uh. I'm not in shock," Shane says. At least he doesn't think so. How can you tell for sure? "You did really... you were, like— it was like an action movie out there. Well, a horror movie, but an active— an active one... You did really good," Shane says, like maybe that will make it better.

He doesn't think it does. He wants to ask _Are you okay_? But he doesn't know when the last time either of them actually was okay _was_.

"I'm sorry," he says, like he was the one who put the trap there. His words are heavy, though, like when he was asking Ryan for the bag. For the gun. 

"It's a last resort. It's always... I would have tried them first." 

He’s pretty sure he means it.  
  
~  
   
Ryan is back to focusing on the wrap. It’s so hard to look at Shane right now—there’s this depth of pain somewhere, separate from him, but Ryan sees it in his eyes. Sees all this worry. And Ryan can’t stop thinking if he’d been able to run where they’d planned to go originally this wouldn’t have happened.  
   
Still, he smiles at Shane’s weak attempt at a compliment. Ryan’s pretty sure he didn’t look anything like movie heroes and looked more like a flailing moron, but he’s glad they’re dead. He can’t bring himself to feel triumphant because it feels like it was his fault, somehow, anyway. It’s like he’s still making up for Jake—and it isn’t like it was selfless. Ryan cannot lose Shane. Leaving was never an option.  
   
Shane brings the gun up again. Ryan doesn’t know if he’s glad or not. On one hand, it’s something that shouldn’t just hang between them, on the other, Ryan doesn’t know how to not be mad about it. He doesn’t know how to not want to punch Shane in the jaw, and he can’t be mad at Shane right now. Not like this. And really, he shouldn’t be at all. It makes sense.  
   
“Don’t apologize when you’re bleeding like this—it’s unnerving.” There’s a weak smile in his voice. He doesn’t look at him as he ties the wrap off and pulls his pant leg over it. “And I get it. _As a last resort_.” He emphasizes that fragment, slows it down. “I get it.”  
   
He does look at him then. “But wasn’t gonna leave you behind. I’m never gonna leave you behind.” He walks over to Shane and holds out his hand. “C’mon, let’s see if you can walk.”  
  
~  
  
"I can walk," Shane says, even though he hasn't tried. He _will_ walk. It's as simple as that. He takes Ryan's hand anyway, feels something in himself twist in sympathy because there's blood, and maybe some of it's his, but he knows some of it's Ryan's, too. Once he's up, though, he's light-headed. "Oh, Jesus," he says softly, trying to laugh, and he lets go of Ryan's hand and grabs hold of his shoulder a little too heavily, steps into him. Maybe he’s bleeding more than the thought.  
  
~  
   
Ryan catches Shane around the waist. This height different thing is the worst. Shane’s leaning like an entire story down to lean into Ryan, and short of walking on his tiptoes, Ryan isn’t sure how to help. “Easy, dude.” He doesn’t know why he says it—it’s not like Shane’s doing anything particularly strenuous, but he did seem very sure he could handle walking. “You lost a lot of blood.”  
   
He glances the way he first ran—back towards the town. He doesn’t know if they should go that way or not. Now Shane’s going to have more trouble getting through anything than he is, though. “Should we just go back to the barber shop or something? You need rest.”

~  
  
"No," Shane says, emphatically. All that broken glass, the blood on the wall, Finn's clothes. He doesn't want to go back there. "Let's just keep going. Just, not on the road this time." He pulls away from Ryan slowly, trying not to put too much weight on Ryan's shoulders as he steadies himself.   
  
Fuck, Shane still needs to get his pack on and he's really not looking forward to that. He still hasn't even put any real weight on his leg, but it's fucking throbbing. And Ryan's still... fuck, he's covered in blood.

"You didn't break your nose did you?" Shane asks gently, because the bridge of Ryan's nose is cut, darkish like it’s bruising but he can’t really tell in this light.   
  
He wants… he wants Ryan's eyes on his, properly, just for a second... not these little half-glances Ryan's been giving him. 

Shane reaches up with his free hand and touches Ryan's jaw, tips his chin up. "Let me see." Shane slides his fingers over Ryan's cheek, trying to find some light from somewhere, but it's dark now, especially under the trees.  
  
~  
   
Ryan sucks his cheeks in because this is the most ridiculous thing he’s ever experienced. But Shane’s so tentatively balanced, trying not to put any weight on Ryan like Ryan will just blow away in the next breeze—he can’t risk swatting him away without tipping the balance. He runs his tongue over his bottom lip. There’s a little blood from the cut on his nose, and it’s throbbing like another pulse in his face. But it’s not bad. It was just a bad place for it to hit. It probably looks worse than it is, to be fair to Shane, since any amount of blood running down the front of his face is Halloween costume-worthy.  
   
“No, it barely hit it. It’s not broken.” He’s pretty sure. It hurts, but surely a broken nose would hurt more than this. He catches Shane’s hand with his but doesn’t pull it away. He meets his eyes, hoping his point is stronger that way. “Why are you—you stepped in a _bear trap_. Worry about your leg. I’ll worry about my stupid nose.”  
  
~  
  
There's this weird heated rush in Shane as Ryan sucks in his cheeks and Shane drops his eyes and, wow he really can't figure out where the blood in his body should be going, can he? He puts some weight down on his foot to remind himself of where they fucking are.

It hurts, and he winces, but it's not quite as horrible as he expected. Granted it's not a lot of weight yet, either. He exhales, then looks back up at Ryan, smiles at him, "Yeah, your nose _is_ pretty stupid," he says fondly.

Just then, something snaps in the woods to their right, and it's purposeful. Like someone deliberately stepped on a branch for their attention. 

Shane looks, fingers going fiercely tight on Ryan's sweater as he catches the shape of something, tall, thin step out from the shadowy undergrowth. It fires panic all through him and he moves to push Ryan back. Steps too hard.

"Maybe not the best spot for a romantic rendezvous, guys."

 _Not a zombie_ , Shane thinks unhelpfully, beneath the sick tear of pain up his leg.  
  
~  
   
Ryan fights with Shane’s grip, tries not to let him step in front on his foot—but Shane’s got a lot of limb on him. He doesn’t tug him back immediately because it registers in a rush. It’s not a zombie. It’s a person—a normal one from the looks of it. “Stop being an idiot,” he whispers, because he sees the way Shane reacts to stepping forward. The way it twists up his body like a wire run through it.  
   
Ryan keeps Shane by the waist. He hasn’t let go, not completely, and re-strengthens his grip. Pulls so Shane has to lean into him a little. The guy in front of them is tall, looks a hell of a lot more put together than either of them do, Ryan thinks. And he doesn’t have a gun drawn on them.    
   
“That’s definitely _not_ what was happening,” Ryan says, and it’s petulant, but he can’t help it. He’s holding Shane more protectively than is entirely necessary, but his leg is fucked up. “What are you—” It hits him then. “Wait, is this _your_ fucking trap?” And suddenly he’s mad at this innocent stranger.  
  
~  
  
"What about it?" The guy asks, stepping out of the trees. He's bearded, he's got a baseball cap on. Somehow he looks absurdly at home here in the middle of the woods, and he's not scared, but he's keeping his distance from these two. "Jesus, man... did you guys kill all these?" He asks. That's not good. "Did you get bit?"  
  
~  
  
“No,” Ryan spits it out and it sounds defensive. He doesn't mean for it to, he's just angry. Angry and exhausted. “No one’s bitten, but he stepped in your stupid trap, and we had to kill them. So yeah.” He gestures to the carnage. He needs this guy to not want to kill them. He's keeping his distance, but not in a dangerous way.   
  
  
Ryan's wouldn't usually ask for help, but this is about Shane. He takes the sharpness out of his voice. “Where'd you come from?” He starts as small as he can.   
  
~  
  
"Easy, man," Shane says, quiet as Ryan starts getting all fired up. He never takes his eyes off this guy, but he doesn't even see a weapon. He's either brave or an idiot, or he's just got a better handle on all this than they do.

And now his eyes are on Shane, sliding over him, and Shane feels the want to tense, but forces it out of his limbs.

Shane watches him look between his face and the blood on his pants to Ryan, back to the zombies. 

"Just up the road a ways," the guy says, vaguely. " _You_ did all this? With _what_?" He asks, incredulous. Skeptical.  
  
~  
  
Ryan scowls. “You're right. They just dropped dead. My bad.” He gives a meaningful glance to his hammer on the ground. He adjusts his hand on Shane's waist. This feels like a stand off and he doesn’t want to lose. Shane's leaning into him and he's _hurting_.  
  
“Up the road a ways?” Ryan repeats, almost mocking, but not quite. “Look, he's hurt,” Ryan says uncertainly. “So we can't stand here forever. Can you help, because if not… we need to get somewhere safe.”  
  
~  
  
He considers them a moment, this guy, like he owns these woods, Shane thinks, and he's about to say " _Forget it, we're good_ ," when the guy pipes up: "Is this like a George and Lennie situation here?"

"Jesus," Shane says, but he almost laughs, startled. Who's fucking making literary cracks at a time like this? He almost likes the guy for a moment. "No. It's. No."

"The way I see it is you cheated me out of something I could actually eat because _you_ idiots went blundering through the woods... and you want me to give you shelter. Is that what you mean?"

~  
  
Ryan grits his teeth. Tense as hell. He has to work so his fingers don't dig into Shane. He needs to keep his head. If he doesn't, this could get bad. “All I'm saying is I'm done with this conversation if you're _not_ gonna help.”   
  
They need this guy, but if he can't manage any empathy for the fact that Shane is hurt — he can get fucked. Robbed him of food, honestly. Ryan hasn't seen anything not infected in ages.  
  
~  
  
Shane doesn't like this but he doesn't say anything. He doesn't have any better ideas. He wants to pull Ryan closer but doesn't trust either of their balance that much. He isn’t sure he trusts this guy, either.

"Look... all right," the guy says, "but I don't have enough food for you. And only tonight. I'm kicking you both out at sunrise." He casts one more look at Shane's leg before he goes to the trap to check it out.

"It's too bad it got you and not one of them. They're a lot easier to kill when they're stuck in one place. Catching goddamn zombies more often than food.”  


Dread starts to soak coldly in Shane's chest and he lets Ryan go because— "Hang on, what?" He asks softly, as this guy, with some woodsman’s magic, unchains the trap from the tree. 

"Yeah," he says, making his way back to them. "I need to eat from them, so. Aren't you lucky I clean them well before I set them out again... Otherwise you'd be fucked.”   
  
He looks at Shane like he didn’t just send his emotions to the deepest pit of hell and then drag them straight back out again to this moment like some kind of torture.  
  
“Get your stuff, let's go. Before more of them come."  
  
~  
  
Ryan was kind of putting it together, slowly, before this guy said it, and he almost choked on it. God. He sees the way Shane lets go of him, starts to shut down. Ryan is starting to think he hates this guy, but he can't, because he's letting them stay. Ryan touches Shane's shoulder before he moves to gather their things.   
  
He grabs their stuff, shoves the water and first aid back into Shane's bag and the hammer into his. He pulls one bag over his shoulder and the other over his forearm and then extends Shane's pipe to him. He does it all quickly, a flurry of movement, in part so this jackass doesn't change his mind and in part so Shane can't start trying to do it like an idiot.  
  
He looks over his shoulder at the other guy and manages, “Thank you.” Then he finds Shane again and tries not to look at his leg. “You got it?’  
  
~  
  
"I got it," Shane says, no let quite looking at him. He uses the pipe as crutch, keeps his weight off his foot as much as he can. They're a mess. They have two good legs between them. Great.

Shane hopes they're not about to be robbed of everything they own as well. Or maybe killed and eaten. This guy's got kind of an insane gleam to his eyes.

Regardless, this is the plan now, he guesses, so they follow him through the woods, him and his stupid, awful trap.

"What are you called?" He asks, glancing back them as they go. "If we're gonna be roommates."  
  
~  
   
Shane doesn’t like this. Ryan is keenly aware of it, but he doesn’t really know how to fix it. This guy’s offering to help, and they’re out of options. Ryan doesn’t say anything when Shane refuses his help because he’s refused Shane’s more time  than he can even remember. He follows this new guy back through the woods. There’s no telling where this guy is, and Shane is radiating distrust. It’s possible the guy’s going to hold them at gun point and rob them blind—but hell, they barely have enough to warrant it. The guy seems to have this figured out, enough so that taking anything from Shane and Ryan would be needlessly cruel, and he refuses to believe people are needlessly cruel.  
   
They’re further in when the guy asks their names. Ryan glances at Shane. It isn’t like their names mean anything anymore. What’s this guy gonna do? Steal their identities. Good luck with that. But still, Shane’s information isn’t his to give.  
   
“Uh, Ryan,” Ryan answers. He leaves the rest of it to Shane. It’s such a weird way to ask it—what are you called—like it’s not even a name anymore. Just a word that makes it easier to shout at them when a zombie shows up. He almost asks for the guy’s name in return, but Shane hasn’t answered, so he waits.  
~  
  
As soon as Ryan answers, Shane decides that's the way they're gonna do this.

And he thinks he's been following Ryan's lead for a while now, but he doesn't know since when. Maybe Shane is always thinking about food and supplies and moving almost ceaselessly to the next step, but it's like suddenly he looks to Ryan first. And he isn't sure why. And he doesn't hate it.

"Shane," he says.

"I'm TJ," says the stranger. TJ. Whatever.

Shane pulls a bit of a face and concentrates on not wincing every other step. 

"Where you headed?" TJ asks.

"Out of Illinois," says Shane.

"Yeah? Well. You're almost there."  
  
~  
   
Ryan bets this guy is like Shane. He can probably read a map and do all sorts of other good survival-things. Ryan’s jealous. He wants to have himself together, but he and Jake were barely surviving. They had food, but finding a cabin and a constant source of food? Ryan never even came close. Hell, he would never have imagined hunting was an option out here.  
   
At least Shane doesn’t seem mad about Ryan’s willingness to answer. Ryan keeps looking at him. He’s having a hard time walking. Ryan is too, a little, the fight with Shane and then the fight with zombies hasn’t been overly kind to it. Both of them are tall, and TJ’s walking faster than Shane usually does—so he’s having to step more than usual. But he’s trying not to limp. He thinks he’s doing a good job of it.  
   
 _They’re almost there._  
   
But they’re not going anywhere. They need a destination. They need to do more than survive and run. Ryan glances at Shane’s leg again.  
   
“What kind of food do you even catch in those traps?  Are there still _animals_ out here?”  
  
~  
  
"Yeah, sometimes," TJ says. "Coyotes and deer and stuff. "There's almost as many as there always were, just now they know how to hide from those fucking things. 

Shane squints as something whitish in the distance. It's a fucking... it's a food truck. Before Shane can even wonder how the hell he even got it all the way out here into the woods — maneuvering that thing must have been a son of a bitch — he notices the sign. _TJ's Tacos_.

Shane actually laughs a little, just this short, soft noise before he says, "Is this _your_ fucking truck, man?"

TJ kind of looks at it, like he's never even noticed the sign before. "No," he says shortly. And nothing. No explanation. 

Shane cuts a look at Ryan that's clearly says _Can't wait to spend several hours with this weird guy._  
  
~  
   
Ryan furrows his eyebrows at TJ’s answer. He returns Shane’s look with reciprocated skepticism. With an added, _now you know I felt when I first met you._  
   
“So—there’s just… a truck in the woods, with your name on it… that’s not yours?” Maybe he should leave it alone, but it makes no sense. It doesn’t make sense that it’s in the woods at all—there are so many trees, but that it happens to say TJ and not his. “Okay.”  
   
TJ’s not stopping, though. He just keeps walking, like he’s offended at the mere existence of this truck that isn’t his. It’s a food truck—it seems like a good idea to investigate it, but TJ is not interested, and Ryan gets the feeling if he wanders off, TJ won’t wait.  
  
~  
  
Shane's just about to inquire how much longer they're going to be walking because he can feel blood sliding into his boot and it's pretty much the worst fucking thing, on top of the pain when TJ says, "Here we are."

There's nothing. At first. In the darkness, Shane would've missed it, but then TJ kicks some leaves out of the way of something that is essentially a hole in the ground that Shane thinks might be the portal to hell.

TJ says "Take it or leave it," and disappears inside.

Shane likes this even less. But then, he supposes, it's not like it would be any different, even if TJ had a nice little cottage out there with flowerbeds on the window sills, no one would hear them screaming anyway.

Great. That's a great thought. But there's really nothing for it, and Shane's leg is killing him, and Ryan's struggling, he sees it in the carefulness in his walk. "Let's go, buddy," Shane says, and moves to go in first.  
  
~  
  
This is a nightmare. He can't even see what's in it. He could be the gateway to hell and he'd have no idea. Then again, hell can't be much worse than their current state of affairs.   
  
He takes Shane's arm and tugs him back. “Let me go first just in case he like… tries to attack us or whatever. We both know you're less durable.” He flashes a grin to make it less serious and follows TJ into the hole where he disappeared.   
  
~  
  
He doesn't like it, but he lets him go. They kind of have to slide down, and it's dark down here, but then there's a flare of light and the smell of sulfur. 

And it's bigger than Shane expected, a proper fucking underground dugout, so even though he can't stand up straight (which he's glad he realized before he tried, in the dark) he's kind of impressed.

TJ lights an honest to God lantern and Shane's starting to feel like he's just stepped into Lord of the Rings when TJ moves brusquely past them and wedges this makeshift door into place. 

Shane thinks _That's not holding out against any zombies_. TJ looks at him like he's reading his mind. "It's a deterrent, it confuses them. And there's a way out the back." He looks at Shane who's significantly more hunched than usual. "Anyway, sit down before you crack your head open."

The only places to sit down besides the single chair is the floor and a cot type thing in the corner that must be TJ's bed. 

Shane just sits in the floor, back against the wall. It's a struggle getting down there. Fuck, he hates this.

There's a table with a lantern, knives... it looks like TJ's been living here for years; before the apocalypse even. Shane wonders if he's one of those prepper people, if he started getting ready for the end a decade ago. He wonders how many of those guys are still alive. 

Shane looks back to Ryan, takes in his expression, then looks away. He tries to get the tension out of his shoulders but it won't shake.

~

Shane’s miserable, more miserable than usual. Maybe because the ceiling is too low for him. Ryan really hadn’t ever considered all the downsides to being tall. He’d never been particularly concerned with being not-tall, but now he’s kinda glad he isn’t. It seems to be a constant weight on Shane.  
   
He doesn’t know why he’s thinking about Shane when they’re in a fucking crypt. This TJ guy has a damn stockpile of shit in here, and it’s lit by lanterns. Because they’re in the dark ages. Hell, they are. Ryan would be happy to go back to the middle ages if it meant people instead of zombies. Even if half those people were bandits trying to rob him. God, at least he’d feel normal. He wouldn’t feel so alone. TJ’s on his nerves, but at least it’s a person. It’s proof there’s still people alive—making it work.  
   
Maybe there are whole communities. God, he wants to find one.  
   
“How long have you been here, jesus…”  
   
TJ glances at Ryan like he’s forgotten he’s there. Ryan is getting closer and closer to throttling him. But he did have the decency to tell Ryan to sit down. “Not that long. I just know what to look for and how to prepare.”  
   
Ryan still hasn’t sat down because he doesn’t have to, and he doesn’t know where to sit, and he can’t bring himself to sit on the floor. It’s always a hassle getting up on his leg, and he’s just—got a lot of energy. The adrenaline from before it still roiling through him.  
   
“How to prepare for—okay, well, did you prepare with any medical supplies or do you just stab yourself back to good health?”  
   
He’s not asking for anything—not yet, not really—and he doesn’t know what TJ is going to be okay divulging, but if TJ’s got something and he’s willing, Shane’s leg needs some kind of attention beyond a fucking water bottle.  
  
~  
  
“Yeah, let’s see that leg,” TJ says, and Shane looks for a second like he might refuse because he doesn’t want this guy that close to him. Still, he knows Ryan’s brains might actually explode out of his head if he doesn’t, and Shane wants him to sit down. Being the only one down on the floor while the other two are up and moving sets him more on edge than it should. 

He does as he’s told, rolling his pants up, already unpleasantly crusted in dried blood. The bandages Ryan wrapped around his leg are already almost soaked through.

TJ makes a face that looks rather ominous. It very clearly says _Oh fuck._

“Yeah, you probably need stitches or something.”

“No thanks,” Shane says immediately. No fucking way is he putting himself through that.

“Well... I dunno...” TJ hesitates. “I’ve got surgical gauze, I guess. And this.”

It’s rubbing alcohol. He holds it out vaguely to either of them. He doesn’t want to get too close to them either. All this mutual distrust.  
  
~  
   
Ryan flinches when Shane rolls up his pant leg again, but he brightens at the alcohol. He expected TJ to be stingier, but maybe a guy as together as he seems to be doesn’t have need for medical supplies. Someone needs to air drop an entire plane of first aid to Shane. He’s the kind of idiot that steps in bear traps and gets headaches because he’s too tall or whatever. He probably has a headache now.  
   
“Hey, yeah, that’s—that would be good. We need to disinfect it. Thanks.” TJ’s got this tight grip on the bottle. Uncertainty is running through him like a power source. But he got it out. That’s a good step. Ryan takes it and the surgical gauze since TJ is shying away from them like infected rats. Which, for all intents and purposes, they could be.  
   
But Ryan meets TJ’s eyes with purpose as he pulls away, holds them. “Seriously. Thank you.”  
   
This startles TJ even further, like he’s never heard these words in his life and cannot begin to comprehend them. He mutters something that’s either ‘yeah, sure’ or ‘fuck you.’  
   
Ryan kneels in front of Shane and catches his eyes. Speaking of uncertainty, Shane’s got TJ beat. They’ve both got Ryan beat. He should probably be more uncertain, but they all need this. They need to be able to trust each other.  
   
He pulls at the knot he tied on Shane’s leg, pulling at it. He focuses on TJ so he doesn’t have to think about the churn of nerves coming off Shane, or how much pain he’s about to cause.  
   
“How did you even find this place? Did you—did you dig this yourself?”  
  
~  
  
Shane kind of braces himself, pressing his hands into the floor a couple times like he's going to be able to find something to hold onto, but of course, he doesn't. It's just packed down earth. He wouldn't have let TJ near him, and he doesn't know if he wants to let Ryan either. He wants control of this fuckery that's about to go down.

"It was half started," TJ says. "Kids, I think. From before. Kids are tenacious little fucks."

"Let me do it," Shane says, like Ryan's the only other person in the room with him. The bandages fall away and Shane looks down. It's a bloody mess. It hurts more when he looks at it, so he looks away, back at Ryan.

"Hold up," TJ says, suddenly, takes these two steps across to Ryan and actually reaches out to tug at the neck of his coat. Shane snaps forward, even from his place on the floor and catches hold of TJ's wrist. 

"Back off," Shane says, because he knows exactly what TJ's looking at.

"He's been _bitten_ , man," TJ says, yanks at his wrist. Shane grits his teeth and doesn't let him go, planting his injured foot hard against the ground to brace himself.  
  
“Don't touch him, it's not what you think."  
  
~  
   
“Jesus!” It takes Ryan too long to process everything. He’s just kind of giving Shane the shit to treat his own injury when TJ doesn’t quite grab him. Shane’s all dark eyes and danger and Ryan’s still ten feet behind trying to catch up.  
   
He glances up to TJ, eyes wide. Shane is locked onto TJ’s wrist, almost violently, even as TJ pulls back. Then he says Ryan’s been bitten, and for a second—there’s just this flutter of fear. This horror, as Ryan considers the last few hours and what’s happened. Where he freezes and thinks he has been bitten.  
   
Ice unfurls in his veins, flowering to his fingers. He stares at the floor, and then he gets it. What TJ was reaching for, what Shane’s saying. He lets out a breath and almost laughs. It would be wildly inappropriate, but this guy thinks Shane’s bite is comparable to a zombie bite. Fuck, he went hard but not that hard.  
   
“Yeah, that’s not…” He wants to reach and pull them apart because TJ’s getting angrier with every breath, and Shane’s reaction is not helping. He stands slowly, exposing the bite mark on his neck—because at least TJ can see the skin isn’t broken. It’s ugly, but it’s not zombie ugly.  
   
“It wasn’t—a zombie didn’t bite me. I swear, I would not be this calm if one of those things bit me.”  
  
~  
  
Shane’s looking at it again like looking at it for the first time, and it still turns his stomach in the worst way, makes him hot with guilt. 

TJ’s eyes flicker from Shane to Ryan, and back again, and then Shane does let him go. TJ straightens up, takes a step back, and looks at the bite. “How’d you get it, then?” He asks.  
  
But yeah, okay. It’s not a zombie bite.  
  
~  
   
Ryan narrows his eyes. Pulls a couple of faces. They’re probably not the best faces to make when he only recently got himself acquitted of zombie charges, but… he doesn’t know what to fucking say. He tries to keep his gaze from Shane.  
   
“It was… well… I’m, uh…” He squints at the floor. It’s the only thing that isn’t staring at him. And he’s floundering. In the worst possible way. How do you explain a _bite_? He doesn’t want to say it was Shane, for about four _thousand_ reasons. He almost tests to see if he can reach his own neck, but he’s pretty sure he can’t. “It’s…”

TJ looks suspicious again, but not with the same vehemence. He’s just quizzically waiting for Ryan to finish his explanation. Ryan slips up, glances at Shane and TJ follows his gaze. His eyes widen a fraction.  
   
“I did it,” Ryan blurts out, and it’s just… the worst kind of blurting something out. “With my hands. It was… it’s…” He doesn’t even know how to continue, because TJ had gesturing between the two of them.  
   
“Wait, you two _are_ —”  
   
“No!” Ryan’s saying things too fast. Hurling them at TJ rather than handing them.  
   
“Then is _he_ sick?”  
   
“No!”  
   
“Then did you leave someone behind because you obviously didn’t do that yourself.”  
   
Ryan grabs a chunk of hair in either hand. Blood sticks and messes it all up, but he doesn’t care because this is the worst situation he’s ever experienced in his entire life. “No, I… no, fine, it was—it wasn’t a…” Ryan waves his hands because he can’t get out the word romantic. “It wasn’t a zombie thing, or a… sexual thing…” He trips awkwardly over the word—it comes out all disorganized. “…or whatever.”  
   
TJ’s taken this cautious, contemplative position with his brow furrowed, his arms crossed and his fingers loosely beneath his chin. He might be fighting a smile. “That’s weirder. That’s _significantly_ weirder.”  
   
God fucking damn it.  
  
~  
  
He doesn’t know why he gets so hung up on the way Ryan denies them being a thing, being _something_ , but maybe it’s because he denies it so vehemently, but Shane suddenly feels cold and sort of hollow.

“I did it,” he says, “because my brother died. I was upset, he tried to—” he makes this vague gesture. “Fix it. It was a— bit of a scuffle, wasn’t it, Ryan?” Shane looks at him, his dark eyes, his wild hair. Maybe it’s a bit of a jab, because he didn’t tell Ryan about Finn, and here he is telling this stranger. It’s a low blow because Shane had no right to assume that they were, that they might _be_ anything.   
  
It hurts though.  
  
“Anyway, zombie bites don’t heal like that’s healing. It’s nothing to worry about.”

He drops both their eyes and sets about opening the alcohol like they’ve both just disappeared from his mental awareness.  
  
~  
  
Shane is clearly unhappy with Ryan's answer. Ryan huffs but doesn't say anything directly to Shane. He shrugs at TJ. "Sure, that."

"You got into a scuffle... and you..." TJ seems to pick up on Shane's dismissal. It doesn't bother him like it does Ryan. "He bit you?"

Ryan shrugs again. He wants to bite Shane in all his infinite moodiness. He cringes when Ryan tries to help him with his leg and then gets mad because he poorly explains the bite.

Or he's mad because Ryan didn't want to talk to TJ about this weird shit between them that Shane hasn't even talked about to him. 

"People do weird shit. It's the apocalypse."

TJ looks at Shane. "Well, sorry about your brother.”

Ryan must have a face because TJ tosses him a skeptical glance. Then Shane again. "Just, treat your leg and let's not bite anyone, okay?" He glances back at Ryan. "And clean yourself up, you look like the Texas Chainsaw Massacre."

Ryan rubs at the blood under his eye and offers a _fuck-you_ smile.  
  
~  
  
TJ smiles sarcastically back, but it’s not entirely unfriendly.

Shane has to put in some fucking effort not to make a noise as he pours alcohol over the cuts. It hurts a lot more than he thought it would, and the burn doesn’t go away, and then he needs Ryan to help him anyway because his hands are shaking and he can’t hold the gauze and wrap it at the same time. 

He can’t help thinking about the bandages on Finn’s leg, and how this is just one more thing to remind Shane of how Finn had looked. One more thing he’ll never be able to ask him about.

Shane’s quiet the rest of the night. He doesn’t ignore them, he’s just really far away. And there isn’t much to do, really, except go to bed. They aren’t friends, there’s not a lot to talk about, except this guy knows Shane bit Ryan in a not sexual way, and that’s weird. And worse. On top of that, Shane is already at his breaking point for dealing with people, and he wonders at Ryan’s ability to want to reach out, to want to connect long after Shane is exhausted.

TJ finds them some blankets— not much, he takes one off his own bed, and he just holds the pile out to Ryan in a heap and gives him this shrug like you guys do what you want before he retreats to his own bed in the corner.

“Put out the light when you’re done.”

~  
  
Another awkward situation. They've been sharing beds out of necessity and as far off as Shane's been, Ryan wants it. Wants to feel like he hasn't fucked up again, but hell, Shane barely looked at him when he had to help with his leg.

He doesn't seem to want anything from Ryan right now. Ryan thanks TJ and spreads out one of the blankets for him. 

It'd be weird to share a bed in front of this stranger. Especially after the bite thing. Ryan glances at Shane who's still staring stoically into the middle distance.

"Where do you—should I just?" He's quiet as he gestures with the remaining blanket.   
  
~  
  
Shane blinks and looks at him, confused for a second and then, _oh. Right, of course._

He glances at TJ who is Not Looking At Them and thinks maybe he isn’t a bad guy. And yet Ryan’s blanket’s already laid out on the floor across from Shane and too far to touch and Shane gets it. He probably would have made the same decision. “Yeah, here,” he says, reaching out and taking it. He catches Ryan’s eyes. “Thanks.”

He doesn’t look for long, already shifting to make his own little bed, pulling the blanket around himself like a sleeping bag. It’s fucking cold but he can’t complain. About it. TJ didn’t have to offer them blankets at all.  
  
~  
  
Ryan leaves Shane to do his own thing. He is so distant and it sucks. But whatever. It's part of Shane. These moments when he's not there. When he's just Ryan, well... and random guys named TJ.

He kills the light and half trips over his own feet onto the blanket. He makes it grateful enough and curls his blanket around himself. 

As soon as he's there, closing his eyes and thinking about needing to sleep, his face is aching from the hammer and the tree and whatever else hit it. His hands are stiff from cuts. It'd been background before now, but now there's Jake and a thousand reasons not to sleep.

He actually tugs the blanket over his head to bury further into it. Like it can steal away the visions of that apartment. It doesn't but he closes his eyes anyway.

~  
  
Shane’s quiet for a _long_ time, but he isn’t sleeping. His leg throbs in time with his heartbeat, this constant annoying ache. Every movement from TJ grates at him, and he can hear from Ryan’s breath that he isn’t sleeping.

 _Christ_ , Shane is cold.

He feels like he lays there long enough for morning, but it’s not morning yet. For all he knows it’s only been an hour or so. What the fuck is time anyway, anymore?

TJ starts snoring softly, just that heavy deep breathing, and it’s almost better than knowing he was awake, too.

Shane can just barely make Ryan out, huddled as he is beneath the blanket. The woods are eerily quiet. He closes his eyes and imagines leaving at sun-up tomorrow with his leg and Ryan’s and tries to figure out how they’re going to survive until the sun-up after that, and after and after.

It’s the fucking apocalypse and here he is giving a shit about some stranger’s opinion — who probably doesn’t actually give a shit anyway — and freezing his ass off on a dirt floor. And Ryan’s over there alone probably reliving Jake being bitten for the thousandth time, and Shane’s done. This is stupid.

He sits up, tries not to jar his leg, but he gathers his blanket up and crosses the space between Ryan and himself at a low crouch. He touches his arm through the blanket, and doesn’t say anything, just nudges him over so there’s space for him on Ryan’s blanket.  
  
~  
  
Ryan is too aware of every breath Shane or TJ takes. And he's too aware of how cold it is, and getting colder. He hates how he can't just sleep. He's exhausted. But he misses Shane, and it's so dumb, but he does.   
  
He reimagines conversations with Jake, tries not to let them drift into those final few days. Where Jake was angry and sick. But mostly he's too tired to focus and he ends up thinking about Shane's hands around his waist… and he needs to stop.   
  
He has no idea how long it's been. He's trying to count sheep but they keep changing into zombies and attacking each other. Honestly, it was cliche to count sheep anyway. But he nearly yelps when something touches his arm.  
  
And then, oh, oh, it's Shane. Ryan didn't even hear him move, but it's Shane and…   
  
Ryan just scoots himself over so Shane can get on. And maybe he's embarrassed thinking about TJ but he's too relieved to care.  
  
~  
  
Shane gets his own blanket over them both, spreading it carefully, then he huddles down against Ryan until they’re about face to face and whispers “Hey,” And it’s almost mischievous. He grins, but it’s mostly relief and his fingers brush Ryan’s stomach as he hesitates, wondering whether he should wrap his arm around him or not. He wants to. Even the few seconds across the room’s left him covered in goosebumps.  
  
~  
  
Shane gets closer than Ryan expects him to. He opens his mouth to complain, to ask Shane what he’s doing, but then Shane’s got this look on his face and Ryan knows _exactly_ what he’s doing. “Hi.”  
  
It’s enough. Shane’s over here, and after today… it’s enough that he is. It makes sense Shane would care less what TJ thought. He isn’t the most socially conscious the person Ryan’s ever met. Even before all this, Ryan doubts he was. So Ryan slips his arms around Shane’s waist and presses into him, face just beneath his throat, careful of his leg. Of their legs, really. And it feels like the first time he’s breathed since he lied down.  
  
~  
  
The touch surprises him, somehow, the way Ryan huddles down against him and for a second he’s right back in the cabin, when Ryan had turned into him with such sudden desperation…  
  
He wonders if the cabin will ever stop feeling like home.  
  
He doubts he’ll ever go back there. He wraps his own arm around Ryan, fingers in his hair, tucks his face down into it. It smells familiar, but also like blood and sweat — like fear, but Shane doesn’t pull away. He matches Ryan’s breath with his own, stroking the soft hair just behind Ryan’s ear over and over.  
  
He wonders if things will ever stop being hard. If they’ll ever get used to this kind of life. He wonders if they’ll always end up sleeping on dirt floors, if they’ll always be this cold, this hungry, this hurt.  
  
“You know, you kind of make this apocalypse thing bearable,” Shane murmurs into his hair. And maybe he means, _thanks for putting up with me._  
  
 _I’m not going anywhere._ That’s what Ryan had said (after he’d asked Shane if he was out of his fucking mind).  
  
How are they going to get through tomorrow?  
  
How has he wasted so much time, already? Shane keeps missing people — not missing, like he’s lost them. The ache of that comes after. Once they’re gone. No, he keeps missing them, like missing their intentions, missing what they offer. He keeps giving up on chances to connect. He’s got Ryan in his fucking arms and he can’t say what he wants to, do what he wants to.  
  
He knows exactly what it is — what he should say, but it’s so impossible. Really, he can think of a thousand reasons why he couldn’t. He can’t stop thinking _You don’t deserve him_. After all, look at Finn. Look at his parents. All these people that had tried… and tried. Look at all the people Shane had ever worn down, fraying them at their edges, through the very center of them, until they couldn’t bear it anymore.  
  
Shane presses the words that are for Ryan into the top of his mouth with his tongue until he can swallow them down, swallow against Ryan’s skin, keep them buried somewhere, beneath his ribs.  
  
~  
  
Shane's breathing into his hair. It's almost enough to make Ryan tired, but he keeps playing today back. That zombie's mouth around his pant leg. The nightmare of Shane's leg. That split second where he didn't know where Shane was.

It's so much. Everything in him is pounding through his blood, pooling in the cuts and bruises so they scrape and groan. He clings to Shane because it's all he's got. And he doesn't even know what it is. It's enough. What Shane can give him has to be enough. But Ryan wants more. He wants to understand, to be able to own this weird sleeping arrangement as a thing. To know he is something to Shane.

But he's not going to be another person that asks too much from Shane.

He can't. 

"Yeah, well, don't step into anymore traps." Ryan can't imagine making this easier for Shane. He feels like this useless extra limb Shane's trying to tend to. He helped him today. Ryan knows he did, but it never feels like enough.

God, he misses his mom. He always does when he's lost in Shane because he's never been lost in anyone without her to guide him through it, and he's never been as lost in someone as he is in Shane. He's drowning.

She'd probably say he shouldn't be drowning. That he knows how to swim. And she'd explain what it meant, and then he'd fix this and he'd kiss Shane's stupid small mouth and it would be over or started. But he can't. Because, without his Mom, without Jake, he doesn't know what it would mean if it was over. How he'd cope.

He's late when he says, "You scared the shit out of me" but he says it anyway.  
  
~  
  
Shane wants to say _It’s okay now_ , but it’s not, and Ryan’s not an idiot, so he just says “I’m sorry,” and then — he fights it, but not hard enough. This isn’t such a dangerous thing to say, anyway not like the words he swallowed down — “You scared me, too.”  
  
Here they are again, though, whispering in the dark, like it’s the only time they can really, properly talk. And he thinks about Ryan saying how he can’t breathe when Shane puts his hands on him, but he’s breathing now. Right?  
  
It’s just when they try for more that…  
  
So maybe he won’t. Anymore.  
  
Maybe Ryan saying _slow down_ really meant _stop_. Meant this is enough, or maybe he just… maybe he really thinks Shane doesn’t have it in him to handle Ryan, that Shane’s too hollow, too empty inside.   
  
And Shane’s okay with that, he thinks. He tells himself. He’s got this terrifying, overwhelming word coiled around his rib rungs and pulling at him, altering the very rhythm of his heart, but yeah. It’s probably not enough. So they can stop. Shane thinks the word would be worse for Ryan than Shane’s fingers around his throat. It would be… it wouldn’t be good for Ryan.  
  
~  
   
Ryan has to work through how he scared Shane. It takes him way too long to get to the reasoning. He did take on a large group of zombies right in front of Shane. It was probably scary, especially being stuck to a tree with a bear trap. But he’s tired, and his thoughts are slow, and it takes him a long time to work through it. It’s easier with Shane there, to at least relax. Sleep still dances around him. It’s warmer with Shane, safer, but it doesn’t change what’s going on in his head.  
   
Ryan doesn’t move. He’s tired enough that it isn’t that hard to lie still. Some part of him wants to move, to kick things around—to reposition himself where the ground is digging into him. But another part of him doesn’t want to. And he doesn’t want to keep Shane awake either. He doesn’t know if Shane’s here for Ryan’s benefit or his own, but he doesn’t want Shane to regret the choice.  
   
It takes Shane a while to doze off. He stops moving, stops the gentle way he’s stroking Ryan’s hair—he just stops moving. His breathing levels out and it’s gentler against Ryan’s scalp. It isn’t less soothing, but it’s another winked out consciousness leaving Ryan to be furious at the way his mind clings to it now. He never slept easily, but he slept. When he was tired, he slept.  
   
He does doze, though. Tonight, he does. Because things change. There’s no TJ, and Jake’s there sometimes. Back in the apartment. Like he always is when Ryan dreams. Sometimes Ryan’s mother is there telling him something he can’t hear. Then he’s back in his room before his dad came in. Before everything changed. And there’s that footage from New York again—and Jake’s face streaked with soot when they were just clear of a fucking blast radius.  
   
He doesn’t think Disneyland was part of that—it was closer to the coast. He has to consider it, though. That it was. Shane would probably bring all this stuff up if Ryan ever admitted where he wanted to go, what he thought. He’s skeptical of people, of places, of everything, and Ryan is going to have to make a case if Shane’s going to listen to him.  
   
He dreams about that too, about trying to talk to Shane. They don’t hear each other, like with Ryan’s mother, it’s garbled—like it’s underwater. They just keep shouting things at each other that neither of them hears. Ryan’s distantly aware it’s a dream, that time is passing, and he’s still lying there in a dugout curled up next to Shane—but only distantly. Just like he’s distantly aware of the exhaustion that creeps in on him with every second he can’t get his body to fully rest. Can’t his body to stop believing Jake will be screaming when he wakes up.  
   
There’s no light in here, so Ryan doesn’t know what time it is or how long he sleeps or doesn’t sleep for. He just knows that he’s not sleeping enough. That he’s wasting every night he’s got, and every day he wakes up his body hurts more and works less because he can’t shake this stupid shit going on with him. Eventually, his body gives up. Late enough that dawn has already bled into the sky. But still, he falls asleep.  
  
~  
  
TJ snaps awake like he usually does at whatever o’clock it is. It seems to be around the same time every day, judging by the light when he does venture outside, but this morning is different. This morning he’s not alone here, and he can hear them breathing softly — it’s barely noticeable, but in this small space, in this hyper-awareness he’s had to force into his reality, into ensuring his existence, he hears it, locks in on it.   
  
When he pushes himself up to light the lantern, he navigates easily through the dark (he’s made _sure_ he could, everything’s always put back in the same place just for that reason, because it’s always dark down here.)  
  
Light flares up and he’s not even all that shocked to see what he does — one space on the floor empty, and the two of them… well. He wonders why they even bothered pretending it wasn’t like that.  
  
~  
  
The light coming to life startles Ryan out of his painfully short sleep. He almost groans but registers Shane, and it's a normal register. Something common. Like his glasses on the night stand. Comfortable. He doesn't make a sound. His body is crusted with half-sleep, but it shatters off him when he sees TJ looking.

TJ is not normal or good. TJ is like a piranha on his nightstand. Ryan sits up, untangles himself from Shane as fast as he can without throwing him across the room or jostling him. Not necessarily in that order.

Ryan holds TJ's eyes, floundering and rubbing at his own. "This isn't... It's not... Okay, actually, why am I explaining this to you?"

TJ shrugs. "I was wondering the same thing." He glances at the door, and Ryan's sure it's wondering when he can ask them to leave. He's already said he can't feed them. "You look like shit. Blanket not comfortable enough for you?"

Ryan thinks there's a joke in there. He isn't going to get into his issues so he latches onto it. "Yeah, I'm used to five star hotels so..."

TJ almost smiles. Almost. "Sorry to disappoint."

There's a ghost of something on TJ's lips. Ryan bets it's something about wasting opportunities to sleep, a warning. It's not something Ryan isn't intimately aware of so he's glad TJ keeps it to himself.

"We'll go as soon as he wakes up," Ryan says softly. "Thanks for this. The medical stuff, the weird hole in the ground... We needed it." Ryan looks at Shane. He looks softer in sleep. He's soft, anyway, but it's smaller now. And Ryan remembers his leg and his eyes soften too.

TJ glances at Shane. Then back to Ryan. "You two are certainly a mess." Light catches his eyes and he casts them away. Guilt, maybe. "Take your time leaving, but like I said, no food."

~  
  
When he wakes up, Ryan is still with him, and Shane’s aware of movement and the only thing that keeps him from panicking is how calm Ryan is, how close. He opens his eyes anyway.  
  
Light. How long has he been out? It’s a little unnerving that he slept that hard because when he sits up, his hair a literal impossibility and his headache gone. He catches TJ’s eyes at the table and realizes that he didn’t move back to his own place on the floor like he sort of half-meant to. He meets Ryan’s eyes. _Oops_.  
  
It’s done now, though. And he kind of doesn’t care. Whatever TJ thinks will probably be wrong anyway. _Shane_ doesn’t even know what this is.  
  
“Guess we’re going,” Shane says, voice hoarse with sleep.  
  
TJ tosses something that catches the light and it lands on the blankets near Shane’s hip. It’s a car key. “Your insane friend says you guys need a car.”  
  
“You’ve got one just lying around, have you?” Shane asks, picking it up, sliding his thumb over the ridges.  
  
TJ shrugs. “It’s mine.”  
  
Shane’s eyes narrow in confusion.  
  
“Look,” TJ says, “driving anywhere’s a death wish. You get stranded out there with no gas and no shelter for miles?” he shrugs. “Those windows won’t stop them. But it’s your funeral.”  
  
Shane holds tight to the key. “Why’re you doing this?”  
  
TJ doesn’t look up from whatever he’s doing over there at the table. “Like I said. I’m not using it. Send me a postcard or something.”


	12. Part 12

Part 12

So okay, they’re going. TJ’s car is this little orangey Buick or something. It’s definitely from the 90s. Shane really doesn’t know cars, but it looks like a grandpa car, and it’s been painted fucking orange. He starts laughing, out there in the woods, leaning on the fucking pipe like a cane. “Oh my god, I _love_ it.”  
  
So they go west. Ryan drives because Shane’s leg still hurts like a son of a bitch, but it’s not hot. That’s good, that means it’s not infected. It’s not swelling any more than it has. Shane feels bad for Ryan driving with that leg, but he’s been doing better. At least Shane didn’t fuck him up for good when he helped set the bones in place.  
  
The first time Shane siphons gas is a pretty fucking terrible experience, but he gets better at it after that. They really were almost on the border of Illinois and Iowa — they could have walked from TJ’s. There’s stuff in the car. There’s CD’s, there’s an aux cord for a phone. Shane debates on plugging Finn’s in, but the battery’s at 26% already and he doesn’t want to waste it. He still hasn’t looked at the pictures, the emails, the notes. He’s scared. Sometimes he just holds it in his hands in the passenger seat, debating, but he never turns it back on.  
  
He tries to stay awake, keep Ryan company and mostly he does. They do watches at night, two hours at a time by Shane’s watch which, he knows, will run out of battery power soon, too.  
  
He feels sort of like everything’s running down, sometimes, in those dark hours while Ryan tries to sleep and Shane tries to keep himself awake. Usually he feels it in the hopeless darkness of three a.m. when he can’t even imagine morning.  
  
When the sun comes up and his watch is over, and he can sleep a little while Ryan drives, he reaches into the back seat where Ryan is and shakes his shoulder softly. “Hey, buddy. Sun’s coming up.”  
  
And Ryan squints at him in the morning grey and Shane stops feeling like everything’s winding down to an ending.  
  
He holds onto those moments. All of them.  
  
~  
   
Ryan doesn’t know how to feel about this car. Shane likes it. Of course he does. It’s a terrible orangey-color, but it’s a car and TJ just gives it to them. It makes sense, what he says about being stranded—but surely he could find a use for it eventually. To just give it away seems… like a lot. Ryan has no idea how to thank someone for that, especially when it seems so irrelevant to TJ.  
   
Ryan drives. He’s glad he’s got the excuse of Shane’s leg because he wants to drive anyway. He never did well riding passenger back before all this shit. Now he doesn’t know how he’d cope with it. There are less cars on the road, but there are also zombies. So he drives. He keeps his hands at ten and two and stares at the road so hard he’s almost glaring. His leg hurts like a bitch. It’s his left so he doesn’t have to do much with it. Only the slight bend he has to keep it at bothers him.  
   
Shane tries hard to stay awake while Ryan drives. But he’s mostly quiet so Ryan loses himself in driving, because fuck if it isn’t better than walking. Shane plays with Finn’s phone, holds it like crystal. He’s probably debating whether to play the music. It’s running out of battery, though. And Shane still hasn’t looked at it properly, so Ryan’s glad he decides against it. He doesn’t blame Shane for putting it off, this final piece of Finn—this thing that’ll mean he’s gone for good, forever. With nothing of him left. But he hopes Shane eventually does look.  
   
They fall into a pattern. They siphon gas (that’s a nightmare the first time), drive, then keep watch while the other sleeps. Ryan sleeps a little better in the car, mostly because it’s in such small increments. And the car feels surreal, liminal, in a way that nowhere else ever did. He still doesn’t sleep enough, though. He has to blink too much while he drives, bounce his leg, drum his hands on the wheel, do anything he can to keep from fading. Because that’s when his body wants to sleep the most. When it knows he can’t.  
   
Time passes faster now. Days pass and it’s not constant walking. He’s barely slept when Shane wakes him up to coax him back into driving. He bites back a groan, because it’s not enough—it’s never enough sleep, but he gets into the driver seat and drives again. Drives, drives, drives. They’re in Iowa now. Have been for ages—they were essentially at the border when they started. Ryan hopes Shane’s relieved, but he can’t tell.  
   
Shane sleeps some. He used to like driving by himself. It was quiet. Usually he’d have music, something to occupy his mind—and back then his mind didn’t wrap and coil like barbwire, tighter and tighter every second he spent in it. Back then he didn’t hate being alone with himself. Now he does. Now it’s all guilt and uncertainty and fear, and anger. All these things he hates. They’re all inside him, lodged there like shrapnel from a broken bone.  
   
He isn’t alone for too long at a time. Shane pulls himself awake in bursts. He’s trying. He’s always trying, but it’s a good time for him to sleep. It makes sense. Ryan follows all the signs he can. Some of them are fine, untouched, like it’s another day on the highway. But some are splattered in blood and grime—some aren’t there at all and he’s got to hope he’s still going west. If he ends up back at TJ’s stupid hovel in the ground, he’s going to be pissed. The signs keep changing, though. He thinks that’s a good sign.  
   
The sun finally sets. His body is starting to crumple inwards so he finds an exit and parks in an abandoned gas station. It’s deserted. He doubts zombies will be a problem, but he and Shane check the gas station anyway. It’s as much an excuse to stretch as anything else. Shane’s so folded up he looks like a fucking accordion. They find some extra food, some sodas, and a blue Gatorade. Ryan has to work so hard not to chug it right then and there. Because fucking _Gatorade_. He doesn’t, though—they save it.  
   
There’s a little gas to siphon, but they resolve to do it in the morning when there’s more light. They get back in the car and Ryan climbs into the back. He drops his elbows onto his knees and runs his hands over his face. Driving is exhausting in this strange, stiff way. Different than walking. Certainly less taxing, but harder to shake off.  
   
“You know, somehow, I don’t think this is the worst road trip I’ve ever been on.”  
  
~  
  
Shane glances back at him from the driver’s seat. He always sits there when Ryan’s sleeping in the back. Just in case. “You’ve been on a worse one?” he asks, laughing a little. “Tell me about it.” He’s scanning the road again as he speaks, the darkness on all sides of them. Nothing’s moving out there. “On second thought, wait,” he says, and without getting out of the car like a normal person — in part because the doors make noise no matter how carefully they open and close them — Shane reaches over and pulls the passenger seat forward enough to climb between them into the back.  
  
It’s probably hilarious. He barely fits in the car at all, let alone trying to get from the front seat to the back seat with all of his limbs. He hates how much of himself he has to be aware of at any one time. He kind of collapses into the back seat beside Ryan, wincing as he knocks his leg against something. “Now tell me.”  
  
~  
   
It’s the picture of chaos. Shane tries to climb into the back. Ryan is so stunned that Shane would even attempt this, for no given reason, he can’t even say anything. It looks like two giant sea creatures duking it out for control of the fucking ocean. There’s limbs everywhere. It’s hilarious. Ryan doesn’t realize that he’s started to laugh until he tries to say, “What are you doing?” and it comes out almost as a wheeze.  
   
But Shane gets back there. Looks like he’s been through both World Wars when he finally slams into the backseat. Ryan can’t begin to imagine what would possess him to do this. “You didn’t have to—whatever. I’m having trouble understanding that choice, but okay.” He shakes his head. “And it’s not… I dunno, you’re letting me drive, for one thing—a lot of my friends wanted to drive as much as I did. And they drove like lunatics. I know this is the zombie apocalypse or whatever, but nothing compares to clutching the seat frantically and watching the car you’re in narrowly miss seven others.”  
   
He leans back in the seat. He doesn’t know how he’s going to lie down with Shane next to him. He likes him here, though—closer—so he isn’t going to bring it up until it’s absolutely necessary. “Also it’s just two of us so it’s not crowded. This one probably isn’t even in the bottom five.” He chews his lip and glances out the window like he saw movement. There’s nothing. “The scenery sucks, and we are in desperate need of a destination, but… at least you’re not a dick.” He waffles. “Eh. Mostly.”  
  
~  
  
He’s smiling, and leans into the car door with one hand tucked comically beneath his chin like a six year old’s school portrait. “I’m the epitome of road trip partners. Helpful,” he says. He’s not, he never drives. “Just... _overflowing_ with good advice when it comes to directions.” Again, Shane has the map, but the road signs are a mess, so they get turned around too often. Shane’s missed more than one turnoff, increasingly frustrated with himself each time. Ryan’s been putting up with that. Shane hates driving. Shane doesn’t even like being in _cars_.  
  
“I’ve never been on a road trip,” Shane says, folding himself into a more normal position. “Not a real one. We were going to go to L.A., actually, and maybe see the grand canyon and stuff. My friend Matt and I, but it never happened.” The apocalypse happened first. “Think we would’ve run into each other there? In the _big city_ ,” Shane says it like he thinks ‘the big city’ is ridiculous. Like he thinks Ryan’s ridiculous for being from anywhere near there.  
  
~  
   
Shane looks like an idiot. It’s taking everything in Ryan not to roll his eyes. Shane hasn’t been particularly helpful with directions. “You can’t exactly be helpful when we’re not going anywhere specific.” It’s true. They’re just vaguely going west. A few wrong turns aren’t going to change much. They’ve had to backtrack once or twice, but it’s minor. And even if they hadn’t, Ryan doubts it would’ve gone that poorly.  
   
He laughs when Shane finally loses the stupid pose. Then he calls LA the big city and it’s the most obnoxious thing Ryan’s ever heard. “Oh yeah, definitely, I’m _sure_ we would’ve run into each other, since it’s not like there’s four million people in LA or anything. Actually, I stood at the corner and greeted all fifty thousand cars that came through every morning. Like a greeter at Wal Mart.”  
  
~  
  
“I could see you having that job. ‘Welcome to LA, we all have— enormous smiles and great teeth! Wow, look at me, I’m Ryan Bergara, I’ve never experienced weather in my life!’ You— you would’ve taken one look at me and gone:” Shane tips his chin towards some imaginary person and speaks in a different voice. A Ryan voice, multiplied by ten. “Look at that idiot. Out of towner. Ew, what a tourist, he doesn’t even brush his hair—”  
  
~  
   
Ryan laughs. It pushes some of the exhaustion out of him. It’s a good cover for the smile. For the fact that he really likes that Shane said he has good teeth. It’s an incredibly stupid thing to care about. So he’s glad he has an excuse to laugh anyway. “Never experienced weath—I have experienced _weather_. Just because I don’t live in a freaking igloo.” He’s still smiling as he tries to glare at Shane. “And yeah, I would have kicked you out.” Ryan takes on a voice, slightly more flattering than the one Shane used for him. “He looks like he’s scared of the sun, and it’s probably a legitimate hazard since he’s taller than most skyscrapers.”  
  
~  
  
Shane makes a couple noises like he’s trying to speak, but then just dissolves into soft laughter. “Okay,” he says, agreeing, almost reluctantly. He looks at him for a moment, and it’s quick and too soft, and then he looks away, out the window.  
  
He thinks that Ryan should sleep. He’s keeping him up, here, even if it’s nice. It’s so nice just to be able to talk, to laugh. But he came all the way back here and he doesn’t want to struggle into the front seat again. He doesn’t want to stop talking yet. It’s irresponsible, selfish. He’ll be the one who gets to doze while they drive tomorrow, while Ryan struggles to keep himself awake.  
  
“C’mere,” Shane says, and reaches out to him, flicking his shoulder with the backs of his fingers.  
  
~  
   
Ryan starts, pulls his face into something resembling uncertainty. He wants to do it. It’s automatic. He just wants to listen. Because there’s something about Shane, about the way his voice softens a little around the middle syllables. Ryan resists, however briefly. He narrows his eyes. Still half-smiling. “For what?” he asks even as he slides himself over just a little, closer, and watching Shane curiously.  
  
~  
  
Shane meets his eyes in this startled, almost-impressed way. Like he’s delighted with that answer. And he’s all dark eyes and this almost-smile, but no.  
  
And they’re not safe enough now, anyway.  
  
_Slow down_ maybe means _stop_ and yet he’s still sliding his hand around the back of Ryan’s neck, fingers sliding beneath the collar of his sweater and his heart is still beating out this trapped rhythm against his ribs, but— “For _sleep_ ,” Shane says, and draws him down a little.  
  
~  
   
Shane distracts him with the look. Like Ryan’s surprised him. Ryan’s still excited about it when Shane reaches out and grabs his neck. It startles him. Knocks the wind out of him because he didn’t expect it. He _should’ve_ expected it—maybe vaguely did, hoped for it in some stupid way, but he didn’t really expect it.  Electricity sparks along his veins, to his heart, jumpstarting it again and again—until Ryan’s sure it’s going to explode.  
   
He flails, chokes out this squeak of a sound as Shane pulls him down. Shane doesn’t pull hard, or far, but Ryan’s panic and gravity do the rest. He lands with his head in Shane’s lap, still trying to process what Shane said. And slowly, he realizes it’s _sleep_. Every knob and dial he’s got is turned all the way up so he can’t _believe_ Shane expects him to sleep—like this? Does Shane expect him to sleep like this?  
   
Ryan’s got one eye closed where he landed hard against Shane. He doesn’t trust himself to open the other for risk of his heartbeat actually killing him. He doesn’t have to do much of anything to look up. “Still bossy.”  
  
~  
  
He laughs at his gracelessness. “You love it,” he tells him, mostly playful. He runs his fingers over Ryan’s hair once, gets it out of his eyes, then momentarily doesn’t know what to do. His hand hovers there, over him, before he just goes back to his hair again, brushing at it vaguely.  
  
And it’s a lot somehow. Somehow even just this is a lot and he’d be absolutely fucking lying if he said he didn’t know why. Shane used to drape himself over his friends, his good friends. He could put his arm around them, put his head on their shoulders. If they were friends he sometimes slept with, it was nothing like this. Ryan’s eyes alone can break him down, he doesn’t even have to be touching him. Shane doesn’t look at him for a moment, stares absently at the seat in front of him, and forces the tension out of his legs, adjusts them so they’re a little less bent.  
  
~  
   
Ryan blows air out of his mouth but he doesn’t deny it. Shane’s not looking at him, and Ryan is about to fall to pieces. He already is in pieces. Hell, he fell into Shane’s lap, and he doesn’t know if part of him didn’t mean to do it—like if Shane kept his hand there, Ryan wouldn’t be able to control what happened next. And he needs to control it—control all of this, until he figures it out.  
   
But now his head’s in Shane’s lap, and even the way Shane brushes his hair, just the one time, is pulling him apart in strips. He can feel his heartbeat in his hands. He doesn’t know what else to do so he reaches up and flicks the bottom of Shane’s chin.  
   
“I take back what I said. You are definitely a dick.”  
  
~  
  
Shane makes a short, irritated sound and draws his head back a little. He rubs at the spot, then lays his fingers over Ryan’s eyes gently. “Sleep, Ryan. Stop horsing around.”  
  
He smiles a little though, but it fades as his eyes flicker to Ryan’s lips. He feels like he’s taking something, looking at him like this, like he shouldn’t, because Ryan doesn’t know, and it pulls at something in Shane that he’s supposed to be ignoring.  
  
_Stop_ , he thinks, for the two hundredth time since TJ’s. _Stop_.  
  
He can’t, though. He can’t, but _God_ he’s trying.  
  
~  
  
"I thought you were attacking me," Ryan says, and it's petulant, but not biting. Almost pouting. "You're gonna have to give me a second to calm down, sir."He's trying so hard to be cavalier, unaffected, but even Shane's hand over his eyes so much touch. It's soft and restrictive and Ryan feels it like silk and storms. They haven't done this in weeks. Ryan thought… he doesn't know what he thought, what he thinks. He huffs and closes his eyes but all he sees is Shane. All he feels is Shane.  
  
All he wants is Shane.~  
  
Shane feels like falling, like he’s missed a step, but it’s in slow motion, the way it spreads out inside him, all slow and unfurling like honey, all molten gold, hot and heavy. His eyes are on Ryan again, and he keeps his hand over his eyes, ‘cause Shane’s scared of what his own will say, of what his face will tell Ryan if Ryan looks up. Shane runs his thumb over the eyebrow he can reach, smoothing it, and then he trails his fingertips gently over Ryan’s eyelids, his eyelashes.  
  
“Shh,” he says, feeling himself coming down again, calmer. He slides two fingers down over the straight bridge of Ryan’s nose, thinks about touching his lips. How soft they are. How he _knows_ that.  
  
He doesn’t. Doesn't touch them.  
  
He traces the edge of Ryan’s ear, slides his knuckles over his cheekbone to the outer corner of his eye. “Are you asleep?” he asks, just to be an asshole, a smile in his voice.  
  
~  
  
_Jesus fucking Christ on a crutch._  
   
He can’t do this. It’s taking everything in him to keep his face neutral. Shane’s got a hand over his eyes, and Ryan is _still_ worried. His lack of control unfurls through him like diluting ink. He’s just got his hands around it. He’s barely keeping it together. Shane is playing this back enough that it’s not… it’s not what it usually is. But, it’s the same for Ryan. Neck or mouth or fucking ear, Ryan falls apart at Shane’s touch. He’s so slow and trailing, leaving ripples in Ryan like a bird over water.  
   
Ryan squeezes his eyes shut after Shane brushes his eyelids. Tries not to react to the chill oscillating through him—the way his skin prickles. He’s never been touched so softly, so purposefully, like the whisper before a scream. It’s soothing. Ryan _knows_ it’s soothing, but right now his pulse is loud enough that he worries Shane will hear it. He worries it’ll shake the damn car.  
   
He pulls a mocking sort of voice, and it only just barely cracks, as he says, “Yeah, absolutely— _sound_ asleep.”  
  
~  
  
“You need to try harder, man,” Shane says, brushes the corner of Ryan’s mouth where his smile tips higher on that side, but never actually touches his lips, and then his fingers are back in Ryan’s hair again.  
  
“I’ll wake you in a couple hours,” he says, soft, eyes on the windows again.  
  
~  
  
"I _am_ trying hard." He is. Well, he isn't. He doesn't know how to start when he's so wrapped up in where Shane touches and how it lights a fire beneath his skin. "Stop pressuring me!"

He inhales, then exhales, and it shakes. It's probably obvious but Shane knows he has trouble sleeping. It could be that. He readjusts himself on Shane's laugh and closes his eyes gently. He has to sleep. Needs to. And this shouldn't matter.  
  
~  
  
It takes a while, but Ryan eventually does fall asleep. Shane stays so, so still. He braces his free elbow against the door and keeps his eyes on the windows. Nothing moves. Morning is hours and hours away, but it doesn’t seem so far, like this. He loses himself a little in his thoughts.  
  
He starts to drift a couple times, but he just presses his fingers against the bridge of his nose, against his eyelids, until he sees sparks. Once or twice, he gets really close, feels his head snap up, but then he just pushes his heel into the ground and pain spikes through his leg. Shane’s hand’s migrates from Ryan’s hair to his arm in an effort to keep him a little warmer.  
  
Morning comes slowly, but it paints the sky this incredible pink and gold and Shane leans his temple against the window, eyes on the sky. How can things be so beautiful, still? They’re literally parked in front of a sign that’s been blackened with something that’s all gore, and half torn off so he has no idea what it might have said. There’s destruction everywhere, but... The sky is beautiful. Ryan’s breath keeps him steady. He’s exhausted, but he’s still going, somehow. Finn is dead and Jake is dead and they don’t know where they’re going or if they’ll even make it. But he kind of feels okay.  
  
~  
   
Morning brushes over Ryan. It’s the light that pulls him awake, out of this sticking, clinging sleepfulness. All of him sticks together like melted and re-dried wax. He slept. And it’s bizarre, and weird, and so unfamiliar because he didn’t dream or fall between waking and sleeping like a thin sheet of ice. He slept fairly soundly, so it takes him a long time to pull everything back into focus. The apocalypse, the car—Shane.  
   
The pulls him upright so fast he almost hits his head on Shane’s. He’s still blinking, trying to teach his eyes how to see again and focusing on Shane. He’d definitely said he’d wake Ryan up in a couple hours, and now the sun’s peeking into the car—and it’s been a hell of a lot longer than a few hours. He’s almost too impressed that he even fell asleep in Shane’s lap to be mad, but he decides he’s going to at least make a passable effort at annoyed.  
   
Because Shane is awake, which means he was up all night, which is ridiculous. “What the hell, dude? It’s… it’s _morning_.” They’re weirdly close, but Ryan’s going to ride the wave annoyance straight past any weirdness. “Why didn’t you wake me up?”  
  
~  
  
Shane meets his eyes, both of them slightly bleary for different reasons and its— he knew this was coming, and he’d planned how to handle it while the hours passed darkly by, but that all goes out the window as he laughs softly and reaches out to smooth down Ryan’s hair where it’s sticking up and says “Well, I dunno, you just looked so darn cute,” he says — someone else’s voice, and smiles at him. He means it, though. It’s why he says it in a voice that isn’t his.  
  
He leans back into the seat, stifling a yawn. Then he shrugs his shoulders to stretch something in his back, until his muscles quiver, before he drops back into relaxation, eyes flickering back to Ryan. “You’re up, driver,” he tells him.  
  
~  
   
It isn’t the worst thing Shane could’ve done. Shane can sleep while Ryan drives. It’s logical, but it makes Ryan want to throttle him. _So darn cute_ his ass. Shane just can’t stop being the parent in this relationship for twelve seconds. But whatever, Ryan’s driving. Shane’s letting him have that much. He was trying to be nice. As patronizing as he’s chosen to be about it. Ryan grabs the hat where it’s resting in the front passenger seat and slams it into Shane’s shoulder.  
   
“Next time, I will throw you out of this car and run you over with it.” He climbs between the seats and settles into the driver’s seat again. It goes a lot better for him than it did for Shane last night. Ryan’s got a lot less limb to worry about. “Don’t act like you didn’t do this so you can’t be responsible for any more poor directional choices.”  
   
He glares at Shane in the mirror one last time before he cranks the engine, and promptly slams the gas and then the brakes so Shane jerks forward then back. “Whoops.”  
  
~  
  
Shane tumbles forward and back, and makes a sharp little sound as he leans over his leg too hard, but he’s laughing. “ _Easy_ , man! Easy.”

He moves so that he’s leaning between the front seats, awkwardly, since the passenger seat was pulled forward so far. He leaned his elbows on both, hanging obnoxiously over Ryan’s shoulder.

“I’m hungry,” he says. Like a kid. Like there’s not food in the backpacks. He doesn’t want that though. Maybe he just wants to annoy Ryan. Maybe he just wants to stay close to him.  
  
~  
   
Ryan glances over his shoulder. For all his irritation at Shane, he does feel better today. His body’s responding faster. All of him is. “You really don’t have a sense of self-preservation, do you? I could slam the gas and send you exploding out the window. And then I would run you over.” He doesn’t, though. He just puts the car into reverse and actually backs out of the parking spot this time. He likes that Shane’s leaned up, as annoying as it ought to be—he likes the closeness. And he will never admit that aloud.  
   
“You want me to stop at a McDonalds and grab a happy meal of human body parts?”  
  
~  
  
Shane ducks his head, almost all the way down to touch Ryan’s shoulder, and laughs. “I’ll pass.”

He watches the road for a moment, like that, then shifts so his fingers fall forward and brush Ryan’s collarbone through two layers of fabric as if by accident. He lingers there longer than he should, feeling all these things he told himself he wouldn’t.

He’s still bad at feeling. He can’t pull himself back from wanting too much of it.

 _Where’s the off switch?_ He wonders. _How do I stop…?_  
  
~  
  
Ryan bites his lip in this involuntary panic that bursts through him like his foot is on his own accelerator. Shane is all leaned over the seat and accidental touches and Ryan's so aware of it.  
  
He takes a breath and catches a hand in Shane's hair. He scratches almost, this massaging motion as he tugs.  
  
He should push back harder, but it's so gentle. Too gentle. Almost reluctant. “You need sleep, you idiot.”  
  
~  
  
That touch sparks through him, and he does his damnedest not to lean into it even as Ryan kind of pushes him away. But he’s right.

He draws back, eyes on Ryan’s reflection in the rearview for a second before he agrees. He manages to fit himself into the backseat, pulling his sweater off to use as a pillow.

He folds himself up as small as he can on the seat and eventually does drop off. Ryan’s a good driver. Shane hates cars, he hates _sleeping_ in them, but he feels safe with Ryan.

He wakes up sometime in the late afternoon when the car slows. The traffic doesn’t warrant many stops these days, and so stopping feels strange.

Shane has one leg bent against the back seat and the other on the floor, one arm flung over his face. “Hm? What’s happening?” he asks without even opening his eyes, because Ryan’s not being loud enough to be panicking.  
  
~  
   
Shane sleeps most of the day, and as righteously satisfied as Ryan is—he hates it. It’s easier than the two-hour watch windows at first, but at least those were only two hours. Now he’s got to be in this quiet, awful space of silence with just his own mind for hours. He mindlessly presses buttons on the radio, but then it comes on and there’s static and Shane makes some kind of noise like he’s waking up, so Ryan doesn’t do that again. Ryan’s body slowly catches back up to him after the sleep. The cut on his nose still hurts, and his leg still hates the all-day driving. Throbs and hurts in intervals. He even manages to get a little headache from driving directly into the sun all afternoon.  
   
As much as he wants him to be awake, he doesn’t want him to wake up. He does his best with the signage. He gets turned around a couple times, but overall, he does pretty well. He also does pretty well not staring into the rearview mirror at Shane asleep with his head on his sweater like a pillow. He changes positions a few times when Ryan has to slow down for a turn—or to completely turn around. And it’s cute. It’s very, unfortunately cute. And okay, Ryan’s not doing that good of a job not watching him.  
   
He drives past sundown, a little farther than he usually goes, mostly because he doesn’t know where to stop. He sees a billboard for Disneyland. It pangs through him like teeth on his spine. He wants it. He wants to believe there’s something to it. That the one place he could always go, could always feel better about, isn’t fucking ruined. It’s stupid—absolutely absurd to think it wouldn’t be. But he hopes. It gets his heart pumping too fast and he just… forgets to stop for a ways. He finally does turn off, and as luck would have it—there’s more than a gas station.  
   
There’s a hotel. And it’s a nice one. A Hilton that’s tall enough to have at least ten stories. He brightens, but tries to keep it even—because it could be completely overrun with zombies. It could be a shit hole, but surely there’s at least one bed still in there. Maybe a fucking vending machine they can break the glass on.  
   
The parking lot is, obviously, deserted so Ryan stops the car out front, where cars used to unpack luggage and move on. He doubts he’ll be in anyone’s way. He glances through the glass doors, and the lobby is dark, but it looks nice. All fake-gold surfaces and plush couches. That’s all Ryan can make out from here.  
   
Shane’s already getting up at the full-stop so Ryan looks back at him. Shane’s got one arm thrown over his eyes, and it’s… still cute. “Wake up, sleeping beauty. I think I found a better place to sleep than the car. Maybe.”  
  
~  
  
Shane swings himself slowly up to sitting, squinting through the dark, squinting at Ryan. “It’s dark already,” he says, like this isn’t obvious.

He leans forward between the seats again, following Ryan’s gaze. “Nice,” he says. “Just like a nice...horror movie.”

He wants to say something about Ryan not letting him sleep so long but decides to leave it. Maybe they’re even now.“You wanna go check it out?” He wonders where they are, now. What state. He wonders if Ryan saw any zombies on the way.  
  
~  
   
“No,” Ryan says, very seriously. “No, I just thought we would sit out here and kinda… admire the… the lobby from the car.” He grins back at Shane. He’s probably too alive right now. He’s probably too happy that Shane’s awake again. “And, hold up, it’s dark? No way! Wow, I have no idea how I managed to make it this far without your astute observations.” His smile fades into something less wicked as he pushes open the car door.  
   
“We’re in South Africa now, by the way. You slept for a long time.” They aren’t. They’re in Nebraska, but he’ll get there eventually. He stretches as he steps out of the car and every bone he has cracks in relief simultaneously as he steps up the curb and towards the doors.  
  
~  
  
Shane lets Ryan do this bit in peace but he follows him out quickly, before he can get too far. They take everything they need which, aside from the car, is everything they own, and make their way together to the hotel.

Shane whistles as they move through the darkened lobby. It’s nice. Like really nice. Shane couldn’t have afforded it, ever. His whistle echoes around the walls and he’s tense but pretends he isn’t. “It’s like The Shining. Please don’t murder me with an axe tonight.” Their footsteps echo. It feels like they’re alone here, but zombies, he’s noticed, have this uncanny way of not feeling like a presence until they’re on top of you.

Shane drapes his forearm over Ryan’s shoulders, leans into his back as he turns him towards the elevators. “Look down that dark hallway, Ryan, tell me if you see any creepy twins.”  
  
~  
   
Ryan is fully expecting to be attacked by a zombie. This place is massive. And dark. And the damage is pretty minimal, all things considered. There’s some overturned chairs, papers strewn about behind the lobby desk, but overall it’s not that bad. Nebraska isn’t exactly a touristy area, so maybe there weren’t that many people here. He doesn’t know. It’s just dark and deserted. And dark and deserted hallways have never been his favorite thing. Nor even in the top one thousand. He digs through the bags and flicks on the flashlight. Ryan’s pulse makes his hands feel swollen. Yeah, okay, this is freakier than he thought it’d be.  
   
“I will absolutely murder you with an axe tonight.” Shane pushes him towards the elevators, a hallway, and Ryan pretends not to wince as he shines the light down the corridor. Then over to the sign hung on the wall with arrows. It’s got _Restrooms_ pointed to the left, _Concierge_ and _Front Desk_ pointed behind them, _Elevators_ to the right, and _Ballroom_ and _Conference Room A-C_ down the long hallway.  
   
He shines his light down the hall and catches the doors lining the sides of it. “Yeah, there’s two creepy twins. They said they’re cool leaving me alone since you have more limb than they could possibly eat.” He starts down the hallway like he’s not bothered by the doors. He is, but he likes to pretend he isn’t. They’re all closed, but there’s nothing but a stairwell in the hallway itself.  
   
He turns so the light spills across Shane’s feet. “Should we check these rooms or just… go upstairs and hope they don’t learn how to operate door handles?”  
  
~  
  
“Oh, you’re definitely better to eat,” Shane said. “There’s more meat on your bones. I’d be all gristle.”

He knows this kind of joke isn’t funny anymore. Not when it’s entirely possible that they could get eaten.

He presses the elevator button just because and to his surprise, it lights up. “Hey—“ he says, and in any other situation it might be hilarious because he sounds pretty horrified, staring at that little yellowy light, but then the elevator chimes and it opens up. Shane expects blood or a rushing zombie but instead, too-bright electric light spills out over him.

“Am I still dreaming?” he asks, like he thinks he must still be asleep in the back of TJ’s car. The elevator slides shut again, and darkness descends once more, but it doesn’t go anywhere else, just sits there.

Shane looks at Ryan.  
  
~  
   
Ryan jumps when the elevator opens. He’s geared himself up for something to lunge out at him, so much so that even the soft swoosh of the doors jerks him back a step. He’s so stunned that he doesn’t move until it slides shut again.  
   
He shakes his head and looks up to Shane. “Wow, I didn’t see that coming.” He looks at the button again. “Maybe you are dreaming.” He flashes the light down the hallway again when something flickers in his vision. But it’s nothing. “We may as well use it. If it’s opening, it’s safe. Pretty sure they have some kind of… safety feature or whatever, where they just don’t operate if they’re broken.” He looks down at Shane’s leg. “And you’re not really fit for stairs right now.” He presses the button again and the doors open another time. Ryan steps in and wags his eyebrows at Shane. “C’mon, let’s be _brave_.”  
  
~  
  
Something excited, inspired flickered through him at that, but Shane doesn’t want to be brave. Ryan has already stepped into the elevator, though, and so there’s nothing to do but follow. He’s right about the stairs.

He stands closer than he should and says “If we get stuck in here I’m going to eat _you_ ,” as the doors slide shut.

His fingers hover over the buttons. Not two. Two is all tied up with Jake, and not the top floor, that seems like asking for trouble. “Pick a number, Ryan. This is your magical elevator ride.”  
  
~  
   
Ryan scoffs. Even as he tries not to think about how charged elevators tend to be in these situations, what they lead to, because nothing is leading anywhere tonight. Shane’s been so spotty lately. Ryan kinda thinks he’s trying to end it, but then he does things like pull Ryan into his lap and drape over his seat, and… wow, Ryan really has no idea. He just knows Shane’s got him hanging by a thread, trying so hard to expect nothing.  
   
“You can certainly try.”  
   
He presses the button for the seventh floor (not because he wants longer in the elevator, that’s really not why—seven is lucky, that’s definitely the only reason) and the elevator whirs to life. The little black box overhead that should display the floors isn’t on. Apparently everything doesn’t have power, but the elevator moves—there’s this comfortable hum through the walls that assures them they aren’t stuck. But it’s slow, kind of dragging, and he’d be lying if he wasn’t a little nervous they’re going to have to crawl up an elevator shaft to get free.  
   
“I see what you mean,” Ryan says, very unenthused, “this is _certainly_ magical.”  
  
~  
  
Shane huffs out a laugh. “Yeah.” He makes the mistake of looking at Ryan and his dark eyes and the way his lips are parted and feels, for one strange, wild moment, that they were thinking the same thing, but they’re _talking_ about elevators, so it’s impossible, right?

Right?

It feels, again, surreal in its normality. Like nerves; a not-date that ends like one anyway, and Shane feels like he’s been in a handful of elevator rides like his one, going up to friends’ apartments, strangers’ dorms, and knowing exactly what’s going to happen as soon as they lock the door behind them.

It’s weirdly intense, and he’s gotten lost in his own head. Like this is just that moment again, only this time it’s not just a friend, it’s not a girl who names her cactuses like etching her loneliness into something solid. It’s with _Ryan_ , and it means so much more.  
  
It means— Shane’s breath hitches oddly and he takes a step towards him before his mind, lost in a different time, pre-apocalypse; a half-imagined scenario — a night out together, a chance meeting that ends up being…  
  
His mind can’t catch up. He’s lost in Ryan and the way the electric light makes his eyes more brown than black in a way Shane hasn’t seen yet.  
  
_Magical_ , he hears Ryan say, seconds after he’s said it.  
  
Yeah, sure. That.  
  
~  
   
It takes him a second to notice—that Shane’s eyes are on him. He isn’t just looking at him. He’s looking at him in the way that Shane does, the way that makes Ryan feels like he’s taking up more space than he actually is. Like he’s bigger than his bones and body. Shane looks at Ryan, sometimes, like he’s the artist that drew him into being, like he understands every shadow and shape under his skin. Even the ones Ryan doesn’t. Ryan takes in a breath to try and bring himself back into control. But he can’t, because Shane doesn’t stop _looking_ at him. Looking and looking and looking, like there’s something in Ryan worth looking at. And it’s alien, as much as Ryan feels like there isn’t lately—it’s even weirder than it would’ve been two years ago.  
   
No one’s looked at him like this before. Even the girls he thought he’d spend his life with. Even the girls who said they loved him. So he doesn’t know what this is, this look, this ancient, ethereal thing that glows and glitters behind Shane’s eyes. Pulses at his pupils until there’s too much black in his brown eyes.  
   
Then Shane steps forward and Ryan doesn’t breathe—he can’t breathe. He wonders if he didn’t imagine the step, but no… Shane’s closer now. Ryan can feel his breath. Shane’s still watching him, and Ryan feels it churning in his veins, crackling up from his toes to nestle and burrow into his chest until it casts sparks of it into his throat. And then he’s thinking about Shane’s lips on his neck, because he’s staring at his lips, and how they’re delicate slips of pink like they belong in a sketch or a sculpture. And Ryan wants them, wants Shane—in this apocalyptic way. This way doesn’t seem to fit in a world that’s already dead.  
   
He takes a step towards him. He doesn’t mean to do it—he just does. Because this wildness, this want, tearing through him won’t let him _think_. It just needs to be closer—it needs more than this. More than this elevator, more than this moment.  
   
The door dings. Ryan crashes into himself so hard it whites out his vision. His hand snaps out to rest solidly against Shane’s chest. Maybe because he couldn’t fully stop the need to touch, or maybe because it was the only way he could. He doesn’t know, but for some reason, he laughs and cocks his head before he looks out onto the seventh floor.  
  
~  
  
Reality. Air. It rushes back into Shane like a frigid wave — the ocean in December. He blinks at Ryan, feels his lungs shudder under the onslaught, wonders if Ryan can feel it beneath his palm, and then the moment’s breaking, clinging to them in tendrils, but fading fast.

He follows his gaze. “Gosh,” Shane says, probably ironically. Like he’s a cartoon from the 1940s. “It sure is dark out there.”  
  
~  
  
Ryan is still laughing when he shoves Shane gently. It's almost a relief to be able to dispel some of the energy churning through him. He walks out of the elevator, looking idly for vending machines, but there's just an ice one.

He opens the first room down the left hallway. The locks are off since the powers out so it comes open without a key. He tries the light switch, but nothing.

He doesn't need it to appreciate the way the room opens up. He's picked a room with a king bed, not two doubles, and he's weirdly pleased. A TV and dresser are in front of it against the wall. He checks the bathroom and it's got two sinks, and a decently sized shower and bathtub combo. He doesn't have it in him to check the water so he doesn't go in. He walks further into the room.

"Holy shit." There's a whole section of the room with a giant mirror and a couch at the back of the room. A refrigerator sits beside it, under a dresser with a tray of water bottles and—

"Is that a fucking mini bar?" He's pretty sure he's looking at honest to god alcohol. A couple of small bottles of what might be wine and other liquor. He's stunned into stillness.

"You are definitely still dreaming."  
  
~  
  
Shane’s still on edge but he follows Ryan and doesn’t say anything because he doesn’t want to spoil his happiness. He laughs at the minibar, almost overwhelmed, but he's already back to scanning the room with his eyes from his place just behind Ryan’s shoulder. He turns and wanders away to check the closet in the hall, the shower curtain where it shadows the wall, the space behind the bathroom door.

Tentatively he turns the tap on and water gushes out. “Holy shit!” Shane calls, because there’s toothpaste, soap. There’s _soap_. “This is the nicest place I’ve ever been in, Ryan!”  
  
Shane steps out into the main room again, looking brighter than before. He doesn’t want to sit on the bed, not in his clothes which feel grimy, gross. “Did you check for any ghouls under the bed?” He drops to his knees to check, but there’s nothing so he sits back on his heels, hands loose between his knees and grins up at Ryan through the flashlight dim. “Don’t wake me up.”  
  
~  
   
Ryan doesn’t realize Shane’s still freaking out. Ryan let the moment in the elevator and the adrenaline of the room throw him for a second. Because, of course, Shane’s the one who remembers to check the closet—and Ryan has to work not to fling himself off the fucking balcony. It feels like an insult to Jake, but Shane perks up because there isn’t anything he can find. He checks under the bed, and Ryan’s having to rewind the conversation to remember what he said.  
   
He may have heard water, but he’s not sure. He’s just looking at Shane on his knees, looking happier with himself having checked everything. Ryan’s still frustrated, but he smiles when he says, “So toothpaste and soap is the nicest place you’ve ever been, huh? That explains a lot.”  
  
~  
  
Shane raises his eyebrows. “I meant for you. So I don’t have to spend all this time in a tiny car with your disgusting self anymore.” Shane climbs to his feet and comes closer to Ryan, to the bar. It’s probably not a good idea, for so many reasons.

He touches a bottle of something that looks black in the dark. “What do you think?” He _wants_ to get drunk. He wants to _shower_. He wants...

His eyes flicker to Ryan, too fast, then away before Ryan can meet his eyes. Whatever Ryan wants, that’s what he wants.  
  
~  
   
It’s charged, Ryan thinks, _maybe_. The way Shane asks him what he thinks—what he wants to do. God, Ryan knows exactly what he wants to do—but he isn’t about to go there. Not when he was the one who told Shane to slow down. Not when he’s seen Shane balk, time after time. But Shane’s so close to him, and it’s dark—and this hotel room feels like it belongs in another world. Not safe like what happened with Jake, not even like the barber shop—this doesn’t just feel safe. It feels removed from everything outside. He knows that’s a dangerous thought, but it does.  
   
Ryan grabs another one of the bottles. It’s small, definitely a red wine from the label. “I don’t know. If there’s soap, maybe shower first, and then…” He looks around the room. “I dunno. We could…” He licks his lip as he stares at the bottle. “Scope things out downstairs or something… if I’m gonna drink, and I really wanna drink—I would like at least _mild_ reassurance that a zombie isn’t going to eat me tonight.”  
   
The place is too big for there to be _nothing_. And yeah, maybe the fact that Shane was the one who remembered the closet again is eating at him.  
  
~  
  
“I didn’t check to see if there was hot water,” Shane says, “but yeah, go ahead. Take the flashlight with you so you don’t slip and die or something.”

Absently he brushes at his face. He needs to shave, and his eyes trail Ryan’s jawline. “You want the razor or? I want to clean it first,” Shane says. The last time they used to, it was to cut Finn free.  
  
Free. What a word  
  
Shane hopes he’s free. Hopes that thing that changed him didn’t fuck up whatever happens to people after they die. Maybe nothing. Shane is inclined towards that, decomposition, nurture the earth, whatever… but if it is something, something more, he wants Finn to have it. He wants his parents to have it, and Ryan’s parents and Jake, and their friends…  
  
He can’t think about this. He digs the razor and the red rope out of the bag. It’s been tangled and untangled over and over. He’s been working on it in the car at intervals. At this point he’s just starting over. It’s ridiculous, but it’s something to do while he sits and waits for Ryan in the dark.  
  
~  
   
Ryan has still not learned how the hell to use the razor. And the idea of Shane, with the razor, tonight nearly knocks him to the floor. “Uh, you can… clean it after I—we’ll figure it out later.” He does need to shave. Or he does want to. For more reasons than one.  
   
And he shouldn’t be thinking of that damn razor like this after they used it to cut Finn out of his bindings back at Shane’s parents’ house.  
   
He grabs a cleaner set of clothes and walks into the bathroom. He sets the flashlight on the counter and faces it up so it illuminates the space as he shuts the door. He turns on the shower water and waits. He doesn’t imagine it’ll get hot, or even warm, but it’s better than no water. He slides his clothes off and checks again. It’s not… that cold. It’s certainly not warm, but it isn’t terrible. He’ll fucking take it. It’s weird. He glances at the door and thinks about Shane on the other side of it—they’ve been close to naked with each other before. Hell, Shane’s seen Ryan without his clothes on—he saw him that first night.  
   
But Ryan’s head is back in the elevator, and just… fuck, okay. He needs to take a shower. He gets under the water. It’s colder than expected, but it feels so nice to have water running over him that he doesn’t care.  He takes his time with the soap—does approximately forty layers of it. There’s so much grime on him. All this stuff he’s gotten used to. It sucks because it’s going to come back. They won’t have soap forever, but they have it tonight—and holy shit it feels good. He isn’t as thorough with the shampoo since he doesn’t want Shane to have to wander into another room to wash his own hair. He closes his eyes and lets the mostly cold water run over him. He needs it, because he’s not wearing clothes, and he’s thinking about Shane—and he really needs to fucking stop. He trails a hand over the hair along his jaw and—damn it. He’s thinking about the razor in all the ways he shouldn’t.  
   
And so he sits there for longer than he should. Because the water pressure sucks and it’s not letting up, and he thinks, maybe just for right now—he doesn’t have to worry about it.  
  
~  
  
Shane settles in the chair beside the window because there's a little bit of light left and he can use it to see what he's doing with the rope. He doesn't normally look at it, just figures it all out by touch, but here, his eyes keep wandering to the bed and thinking about— about the mini bar and the wine and Ryan in the shower.

He's thinking about that night in the cabin with the razor and the way the firelight had glinted in Ryan's eyes. He's thinking about the elevator and the way Ryan had stepped closer before he'd stopped him and Shane cannot fucking understand what that _means_.

Ryan said he wanted it. He thought. Hadn't he said that? But Shane feels like it changes, alters like shadows as the sun moves through the sky. He feels like it's only darkness he can trust.

 _It's dark now_ , Shane thinks.

It's dark, now, and Ryan's been in there long enough for Shane to wonder if he should go knock on the door and ask if he's died, but he almost doesn't trust himself to get so close to him like that, with the water pouring down over him, doesn't trust himself to hear Ryan's response, whatever it is, and not just... step inside.

He remembers the way water mats Ryan's eyelashes, and the way it collects in the dips of his collarbones and how much Shane had wanted to put his mouth there the first night. Jesus Christ, _the first night._

It takes him a moment to realize that his fingers have gone still, that he's staring into the middle distance without seeing anything at all, and that he's holding himself so tense that he's shaking. The water in the bathroom keeps running and Shane's got this ache, now, and all this possibility builds in his heart, and it says _go to him, kiss him, tell him..._

He blinks, letting go of the rope to press his fingers against his forehead. His mind tells him no.

Slow down.

Stop.  
  
~  
  
Ryan eventually stops the water because it's getting ridiculous. He dries off, tousling his hair into absurdity. He tries not to think about Shane outside, about the razor.

But when he goes to pull on his new clothes he realizes he's missing something critical. "Fuck."

He pulls the towel around his waist and glances at the door. He doesn't want to risk shouting. It's not like he wasn't lying in his underwear with Shane a couple weeks ago. It's fine. The only difference is the way water drips and clings to dark pieces of his hair.

He opens the door. "Hey, I'm..." He isn't sure how to finish as he peeks around the corner to find Shane. "I forgot... Can you—can you, uh, grab my boxers out of my bag?”  
  
~  
  
Shane looks up and kind of freezes a little and then laughs softly. “Jesus, man,” he says and gets to his feet.

He goes to Ryan’s bag and kind of rummages through for his boxers. He figures as he does it, keeping his eyes fixed on what he’s doing, that he could just bring him the bag, but that’s not what Ryan asked for.

He finds them and stands up, feeling weird and sort of light headed and... something else. Waiting. This waiting feeling permeates every part of him.

He goes to the door where the flashlight illuminates the bathroom, and makes Ryan’s wet hair shiny and Shane looks at the floor, at the counter, at the tub, at anything but at Ryan but he is so, so aware of him.

He has this vivid mental image of what the water is doing in the hollows of his body. The slow slide of water down the column of his throat, down over his chest, his thighs.

“I think you’re doing this on purpose,” Shane says, and his voice comes out hoarse. He holds out the fabric in one hand, the other closing tight on the door frame.

Shane looks at him.

What a fucking mistake.

Ryan’s lips are wet. Shane wets his own and drags his gaze away, to Ryan’s eyes.  
  
~  
   
Ryan realizes halfway through Shane digging through his bag that he could’ve probably asked for the bag. But he didn’t, and now it seems weird to change his mind. He holds the towel too tight. Goosebumps spread over him in the open air. He’s too aware of Shane, in all his clothes, in no way thinking about touching Ryan, but god. Ryan is thinking about it.  
   
He hasn’t even processed that Shane has his hands on Ryan’s boxers, which is juvenile really, but it’s got his mind in flashing in all these bright colors. Shane comes over, almost sluggishly—Ryan tries not to read too much into it. But Shane won’t look at him. He’s staring at the ground, past Ryan, but not at Ryan, as he accuses him of doing this on purpose.  
   
Ryan laughs because it pings this surge of electricity holding in his chest. It explodes through him and all he can do is laugh to contain it. Or, contain it in a way that isn’t… wildly inappropriate. Ryan takes the boxers, but his fingers brush Shane’s as they did. He’s pretty sure Shane licked his lips—which is probably nothing. But Ryan sees it anyway. He meet Shane’s eyes, and that quiet from the elevator creeps back into him. He sees Shane’s mouth. His face.  
   
He wanted to kiss him. On the elevator. He _would_ have kissed him.  
   
“I forgot my _underwear_ on purpose? What? So I’d have a chance to come out here and wow you with my shirtless body?” Ryan is teasing him. It reminds him of the first night, when he’d been so nervous about his body in front of Shane—so uncertain, and then the moment Shane had come in. All nerves and missed glances… Ryan likes it, wants it—wants to have an effect on Shane the way Shane does on him. With everything he does.  
   
“You got me.” He takes a step back into the bathroom, but he watches Shane for longer than he should. Thinks about Shane longer than he should, and what the water would feel like with both of them under it. What Shane would feel like soaked and…  
   
Ryan shuts the door.  
  
~  
  
Shane steps back, and the light from the flashlight Ryan took into the bathroom disappears and he’s left standing in the dark. He feels like Ryan took all the oxygen in the room with him.  
  
He doesn’t move for a moment. Considers the mini bar and how much damage he could do in the next five minutes while Ryan gets dressed and then decides on best not. That would only make everything harder, and he needs to not be drunk if there’s zombies.

He hits the door gently with his knuckles. “Hurry up. You’d better have left some of that soap.” He says it in this totally unaffected voice. He can feel his pulse pounding through him with every beat of his heart.  
  
~  
  
Ryan dries another round and pulls his clothes on. His heart is pounding too hard so he can only move in jerking bursts. Shane's still standing when Ryan walks back out. Clothed, this time. Thank god.

"There were two bars. You're good." He grabs Shane's shoulder and shakes it reassuringly as he walks by him. The touch lasts longer than it should before Ryan goes to sit on the bed. The razor catches some impossible light and glares at him.

He closes his eyes and tries but to think about it. "Here, did you wanna clean this?"  
  
~  
  
“Yeah,” Shane says, moving to take it. He doesn’t know what he feels as he does. His eyes linger on Ryan for a moment but he looks away before Ryan can look up at him.  
  
He crouches and goes meticulously through his bag, pulling out the things he needs, being careful not to forget anything, and half thinking that he _should_ , just to annoy Ryan. He doesn’t though, in the end.  
  
Standing, he raises his eyebrows at Ryan, nods his head at the mini bar. “No crazy parties while I’m away,” he teases before he turns and heads to the bathroom where the flashlight is still glowing.  
  
He shuts the door before he sets everything down. The razor is resting innocently on top of his pile of clean — cleaner — clothes. It looks like it’s never cut ties from the remains of someone’s wrist. Like it’s never held someone hostage with the gentlest of touches.  
  
But then, Shane doesn’t know if it was the razor that did that, or his hands. _I forget how to breathe when you put your hands on me._  
  
Shane exhales and braces his hands against the edge of the counter, closing his eyes for a moment as he leans into it, the bracing cold sturdiness of it. He squeezes until his heart calms down. When he’s steadier, he takes the razor and the soap and runs the water and, using a face cloth he cleans the blade. After that, he uses his fingers, and carefully makes sure there’s nothing left on it that could possibly lead to an infection. It glints kind of menacingly in the flashlight dark.  
  
When he finishes, he dries it and folds it back up, setting it on the counter again before he meets his own eyes in glass. Ryan had told him to stop looking at the mirror like he could protect him from whatever Shane saw there. Now, like this, in the dimmer light his eyes could almost be Finn’s, smoke-dark grey. Shane feels like Finn’s always been darker, broader, more substantial. Now, with Shane’s paler hair, his shadow of a beard, the way he’s too thin and hollowed out, his tired eyes… he could be Finn’s ghost. If ghosts were real.  
  
Shane wonders if Ryan were to come in here and stand next to him if he would feel more real, or if Ryan’s presence would only overshadow Shane’s. Shane thinks he probably wouldn’t even notice, if they were to try. Ryan’s eyes are magnetic in the dim light — darker than the darkness around them, and somehow all the more beautiful for it. Shane would only notice Ryan. It wouldn’t matter what his own reflection was doing.  
  
He’s wasting time. He kind of has this fear that Ryan will go wandering off without him on some wild idea or something and the paranoia coils up and up in Shane until he actually considers pushing the door open to tell Ryan not to go anywhere, but he bets that would just make Ryan do it.  
  
So he doesn’t.  
  
He turns and turns on the water in the shower and it’s not as frigid as he expected but he’s still shivering as he steps into it. He scrubs his hair, first. It’s easier now that it’s shorter and he feels all the uneven places, now that it’s wet, but it hardly matters. And it doesn’t matter how not-hot the water is, he uses the soap until it’s practically a sliver because he’s half fucking forgotten what clean skin feels like.  
  
The shampoo smells chemical, somehow, beneath the whatever-it-is it’s meant to smell like, and he wonders if Ryan’s hair will pick it up, if Shane won’t be able to find the familiarity of _Ryan_ beneath it, or if he could even try to. Let alone if he should.  
  
He shouldn’t.  
  
But he’s already thinking about being clean and clean sheets and Ryan’s body tucked against his in the bed, later. He thinks about how warm Ryan feels to Shane, who always feels cold, and wonders how much of his skin he could expose. He wonders if Ryan would always have listened to him when he told him to chose the state of undress, or if it’s just that he listens now, because it’s the apocalypse, and Ryan is kind and needs… touch. Needs something. Needs to please, maybe.  
  
If this room happened to have two beds, would they have each taken one of them? What would Ryan want? Shane’s always the one that asks, he’s always the one that basically crawls into Ryan’s bed. Blankets. Whatever.  
  
Everyone needs something, though, and the way Ryan tucked himself into Shane’s chest on the floor in TJ’s dugout felt like needing... and Shane tries to give everything to him, but he’s never been so terrified he won’t be able to give enough. He’s never been so terrified to be wrong about someone.  
  
And he wonders if Ryan will brave the razor on his own, or if he’ll trust Shane with it, and if it will be the same as before or not. He wonders if they’ve lost something, somewhere along the way because they are too different, or not enough, or too much, and he wonders if the touch will just be empty, now.  
  
There’s this constant ache that lingers in his chest and in his stomach that’s nothing like the ache that he felt when he was listening to Ryan shower. This is different, deeper... _This_ is the frightening thing — not the idea of what Ryan could _do_ to him with his mouth, what Shane’s hands could do to Ryan — the frightening thing is this feeling Shane has about him. For him. And what that means and how much he has to lose.  
  
Sex has never been difficult for Shane. It’s never been particularly over-thought or over-complicated because, he realizes, it’s never meant anything special. Sex was just part of life. Another verb: Eating, walking, watching films, running late. Sex was part of Shane’s running Series of Unfortunate Events, but with relationships. Kissing, touching, fucking eventually became disappointing, hurting, fighting, moving out, moving on.  
  
Ryan is not someone that fits into Shane’s usual patterns because Ryan’s not a color-inside-the-lines kind of person for Shane. He explodes out of Shane’s understanding of other humans — he radiates emotion and overwhelm and inspires it in Shane, like sparklers on the Fourth of July. He’s all heat and light and when Shane’s looking at him, holding him, he can’t see anything else. Ryan is too blinding. Ryan is not step by step.  He’s not 1) kissing 2) touching 3) fucking. He’s completely outside of How Things Work as Understood by Shane Madej. Ryan is watching, needing, longing, touching. Ryan is breathing or not breathing because of Shane, and Shane is scared that the pattern will only be skewed for so long. That the pattern will always end with disappointing, hurting, fighting, moving on. Finishing.  
  
Finished.  
  
And Shane can’t. He can’t disappoint Ryan. All of the final steps are the worst. They’re all horrible and upsetting and, fuck, Shane has all this guilt for all of the people who’ve been hurt by him in the past, but he could bear it. He has been bearing it. Sometimes it’s something he can set down and leave behind, but other times — with the people he really cared about — it’s like this yoke across his shoulders, getting heavier with each fleeting feeling he cannot grasp.  
  
Shane can’t bear the idea of disappointing Ryan, or hurting him, really hurting him, even by accident. He wants to stop the pattern before it starts, but he doesn’t know how to. And sometimes, sometimes it seems like Ryan wants him and like Shane could give himself over properly, completely. (And maybe Shane wants to believe Ryan so badly when he says that Shane is fine, is good enough, the he forgets that he isn’t.) And a moment later Ryan pushes him away, anyway, and maybe it’s because Ryan knows that Shane is incapable. Maybe Ryan _wants_ to accept Shane, but always stops him because he knows he can’t, ultimately. That Shane is impenetrable and will always be hollow anyway.  
  
But he doesn’t feel hollow now. Now, he just doesn’t know if Ryan’s belief in Shane’s enoughness and Shane’s newfound ability to feel _anything_ properly at all, will line up. Fit together like little puzzle pieces, or if this is just going to be like a meteor shower — there, and overwhelming in its immensity, but fleeting, gone just as fast as it came… not the feeling itself, but the _ability_ to feel it. Like he’s broken. Like there’s a disconnect between his heart and his mind.  
  
The water’s getting colder already. He’s been standing beneath it, still, eyes closed because the room is dark. When he opens them, the world floods back in and he starts shivering hard. He quickly rinses his hair one more time, then shuts it off quickly. He steps out of the shower and just wraps a towel around his shoulders for a second until he generates some body heat, and then quickly sets about getting dressed.  
  
~  
   
Ryan fiddles with the red rope. He’s not quite sure how it’s more tangled now than when Shane started, but whatever. He doesn’t spend long with it. He just undoes a couple of the nearest knots and throws himself back onto the bed. It’s clean. Maybe dusty in the way that things that sit, untouched, for too long are—but clean.  
   
He glances at the bar, at the wine. He could drink it now. Save himself the heartache of thinking about that razor again. Maybe drunk it wouldn’t be quite so overwhelming. Maybe Shane’s hands wouldn’t feel like the sun gliding over the surface of his skin. But he was the one who said he wanted to make sure downstairs was clear before they got wrecked. They should both be pretty lightweight at this point—so the mini bar should more than suffice. And, god, there’s probably more in the other rooms. Maybe they could just do this whole zombie apocalypse thing drunk.  
   
But it scares him. Because if he lets himself drink, then he’s going to let himself do everything else he wants. He’s pretty sure if he’d had even an ounce of alcohol in him, Shane would be slammed back in the shower, soaking wet with Ryan’s mouth and water. Ryan drags his good leg up bent. He still can’t quite manage with the other leg. He drapes the crook of his elbow over his eyes. He needs to get it together. Fuck, answers—he needs answers.  
   
Some part of him wants to slam open the door to the bathroom and insist Shane tell him what he wants. Because that’s what Ryan wants. And it’s enough. Ryan wants to shake Shane and scream it—because he sees it in his eyes sometimes, this weird, melancholy uncertainty, and he knows Shane doesn’t believe him. He’s too caught up in his own bullshit to.  
   
But then again, so is Ryan.  
   
It’s fair, really, to be caught up in your own bullshit during the apocalypse, Ryan decides. But god, he wishes they could sort it out. He wishes they could—god, but what would he do if it was fucking? What if that’s what Shane wants? The thrill of fucking someone, just like all those other times in bathrooms with boys. Ryan’s done it before. But—maybe that, maybe he couldn’t do that. Maybe he’s lying when he promises Shane whatever he can give is enough, because touching Shane like that, feeling him, having him—and going no further. Ryan doesn’t know if he would survive it. He doesn’t know if something like that could detonate inside him and leave anything but hollowed out remains.  
   
Maybe that’s why he keeps shutting the door in Shane’s face. Maybe that’s why he said slow down. For Shane, yeah, but for Ryan too. Because it’s scary—to think Shane doesn’t want more. Ryan doesn’t even know if it is—the way Shane looks at him, in this larger than life bewilderment—he doesn’t feel like it. It feels like more than hands and moans in a bathroom stall. But Ryan’s scared of it—scared because Shane is strange and enigmatic and he doesn’t fit anything Ryan’s encountered before. He’s been so good at reading people his entire life, but Shane is different.  
   
And he wants his mother, again, for the millionth time since he’s met Shane. He’s a grown-ass man. It’s absurd how many times he’s wanted his fucking mom. But he needs her to hit him over the head and tell him what to do. Or, fuck, at this point he’d just take Jake saying something so stupid it inspired Ryan the other direction.  
   
_You over-complicate everything, dude. Just fuck him._  
   
Ryan snorts. God, he misses Jake. He misses the easiness of a brother, of something that wasn’t so overwhelmingly fragile Ryan was afraid to move, to break it. He couldn’t lose Jake. Not… in the sense that he worries he can lose Shane. Shane’s in his fucking veins like Jake never could be. In every ache and gasp of breath. Shane’s there.  
   
But he did lose Jake. He lost Jake in the only way it’s possible to completely lose someone. He could lose Shane before he ever even has him any other way. Before he ever tries.  
   
The water stops. Finally—or maybe not, maybe Ryan’s just been so lost in his own head that it feels like Shane’s been gone a while. He doesn’t moved, and doesn’t speak, because he’s trying not to rush Shane. In more ways than one.  
   
His mom would not tell him to just fuck Shane. She would probably smack him for even having that thought in the vicinity of hers. But she’d probably say to stop over-complicating things. To stop thinking, for three seconds, and breathe.  
   
But that’s the thing with Shane, Ryan doesn’t know how to.  
  
~  
  
Shane shaves before he puts his shirt on because he… he doesn’t know. He needs the razor to be normal for a moment. He needs it to stop winking at him through the dark, charged, every time the light hits it the wrong way.  
  
It doesn’t take long. Not like with Ryan where he was so, so careful. Shane shaved in the cabin for months without a mirror, and now he’s got one, and he can avoid his own eyes and just get the job done, and he’s finished and fully dressed in under ten minutes. He cleans the blade again, leaves it on the counter, and comes back out into the other room, fingers subconsciously brushing his jawline.  
  
God, he feels _nervous_. It’s kind of awful.  
  
Ryan is on the bed, looks almost like he might be sleeping and Shane says his name softly from the edge of the bed, standing there uncertainly.  
  
~  
   
Okay, now he’s sure Shane’s taking a long time. He stays where he is. Trying to force himself to just… chill. But that’s not an easy thing to do when surrounded by the apocalypse. It’s also not an easy thing to do when Shane is in the other room taking a shower—or, well, the water’s off so Ryan doesn’t know what he’s doing now.  
   
He focuses on breathing, on not thinking about all these different things—like Shane’s mouth or his hands or his eyes. Or any of them. Or the bottle of unopened wine right beside him that he could easily throw back in under two minutes. Because that bottle would lead to him doing more than thinking about Shane.  
   
Shane’s voice startles him when it comes. He’s been popping in and out of reality and his own mind. He throws his arm back and sits up. Blinks. Shane’s clean-shaven. It’s weird—the shape of his jaw is so much clearer now, sharp against the dark.  
   
“Oh hey,” he says, “you shaved.” Like Shane didn’t know.  
  
~  
  
“Yeah,” Shane says, and he’s frowning a little. “Are you okay?” he asks, and wishes he sounded more casual than he does. Something’s off though, about Ryan, but he can’t tell what. It knots in his chest, like the rope. He wants to sit on the bed beside him but it’s too much, too close. If he sits on the bed he’ll want to reach out and touch Ryan’s damp hair and if he does that...

So Shane stays where he is, just looks, just wants. He almost doesn’t know what he’d do without this soft ever-humming ache of all of it, if it were to disappear.  
  
~  
   
Shane’s just standing there. Not coming closer. It’s frustrating, but Ryan gets it. He shut the door in Shane’s face. He’s giving out certain signals, maybe Shane’s just… responding to them. God, he’s tired. Shane asks if he’s okay and he’s just… circling the drain. He is okay, well, as okay as he’s been. He doesn’t have any real reason not to be. Other than this want, and this overwhelming urge that he can’t… make himself what he needs to. For Shane. He certainly couldn’t for Jake.  
   
Ryan stands up and tries to coax himself into normal, more into the okay that he should be given the luck they’ve had tonight. “Yeah. I mean as okay as one can be surrounded by flesh-eating zombies.”  
   
He feels himself slipping, and god, he just wants some fucking wine.  
  
~  
  
“Yeah,” Shane says, and it’s this low, tired thing. He wants to fix it. He reaches out, makes contact like it doesn’t sear all the way through his fingers and down his spine. He touches Ryan’s shoulder, thumb brushing the warm skin of his neck where the collar of his shirt ends. “But, c’mon. Let’s scope this place out. Let’s see what we can find. How often do you get to wander through an abandoned hotel?” He lets him go, goes to scope out the bottles at the bar. There’s champagne. Shane flicks it with a fingernail so it sings out softly in the dark.

He can fix this. He can be this person, this enthusiastic, recklessly positive person. He just hopes the universe helps him out. “C’mon. Grab that light. We’ll take a bottle of something, let’s _explore_.”  
  
~  
   
Ryan jolts. He’s pretty sure Shane’s doing this for his benefit. The way he’s gone from uncertain to springing out the door so fast. It’s not natural. Damn it. Ryan is so tired of Shane trying so hard for him, constantly. Ryan barely know what’s wrong with him. He barely knows if anything is wrong, and here Shane is, trying to be this peppy, bounce of a person.  
   
Ryan snaps his teeth over his lip at Shane’s touch, at the way his thumb brushes Ryan’s neck. He thinks about the razor, almost mentions wanting to try it himself—or hell, asking Shane to do it. But now… he doesn’t know what would happen. He doesn’t know what happens when he combines this broken part of himself with the part that only exists to please Shane. It feels dangerous.  
   
“Shane,” Ryan says, and it’s softer in the dark. “You don’t have to… you don’t have to do that.” He stares into the bathroom where the flashlight’s still illuminating the shadows. “I’m down to explore, but you don’t have… do cartwheels or anything.” He smiles, and it’s like his voice, soft but sincere. “I’m fine. Really.”  
  
~  
  
_Say my name_ , Shane thinks. _Keep saying it._ He looks up at him from across the room. "I'm not," he tells him. Lies. "I want to go." He picks up the bottle of champagne because why the _fuck_ not. He just won't get drunk. They'll be fine. He forces himself to believe it.

"I'm going to open this bottle," Shane says, not looking at him anymore. "So we can't waste it." He's undoing the foil, untwisting the metal to get the cork out. He glances up. "Come on, Ryan," he says, softly, hopefully. He almost laughs it out, because he doesn't know how else to say it. "You're not going to make me drink alone, are you?"  
  
~  
  
Ryan's not thrilled with this. But Shane's begging with his eyes and his… everything and Ryan cannot say no. He grabs the flashlight and sighs. “You are a very strange person.”  
  
But what if there are zombies? Fuck, without Shane, Ryan would've forgotten to check the fucking closet again. Sober. He can't trust himself drinking.  
  
And yet he snatches the bottle and finishes Shane's job with the cork before he takes a drink and raises his eyebrows.  
  
It's dry. This explosion of crisp, dried fruit, that clings to sweetness for a heartbeat and bursts into bubbles in his throat. It's not awful.  
  
He extends it back to Shane. “But I won't make you drink alone.”  
  
~  
  
Shane watches him, watches him swallow, watches the smoke and foam of the liquor and he feels a little like he needs to sit down.

When he reaches out to take the bottle he meets Ryan’s fingers, Ryan’s eyes. “I know,” he says, and he doesn’t mean about being strange. That’s just a given.

He holds his eyes a moment longer, then takes a drink. The bottle’s a little unwieldy, but he takes two long swallows and then says, “Wow.” He feels it inside him, warm and fizzing. He smiles at Ryan, something wicked and dark in his expression. This could be fun.

“Let’s go,” he says, and slips around him to grab the pipe.  
  
~  
  
Shane grabs the pipe so Ryan wrestles the hammer out of his bag and follows Shane into the hallway. He can't make himself talk. Shane's trying to make this better, whatever it is. Maybe it's Jake. Maybe it's this endless chasm between him and Shane. Or maybe it's just all the death.  
  
“I wonder if there's vending machines anywhere. I would happily murder some zombies for a root beer.”  
  
~  
  
“Let’s see if we can find you one,” Shane says, then immediately follows it up with, “I want some milk,” like that’s a normal thing to say. Like that’s related to root beer at all. He grabs the flashlight and waits for Ryan in the doorway, and then they go.  
  
“Do you think there’s a reason all our little ghoulie friends are hiding?” Shane asks as they walk down the hallway. Because that seems to be the theme. It puts him on edge. “Too many stairs for them, maybe?” he asks, trying to lighten the mood. His plan isn’t working as well as he’d hoped, but damned if he’s not still trying.  
  
~  
  
Ryan flashes the light over the walls like zombies might just materialize from the wallpaper. It’s eerily quiet here, for such a big place. There must have been people here before the outbreak. So where have they gone? Then again, where is everyone? So many times they’ve been places and things should’ve been taken, haven’t been. People weren’t expecting this to last forever. They weren’t expecting to need rations and Mr. Goodbars and Doritos to keep them alive. They were just trying to get away.  
  
He doesn’t know what everyone could’ve done differently. What choices could’ve led to a better future, a better outcome. Probably nothing. A virus like this… it’s not something you prepare for. Not really. No matter how many fucking movies you watch.  
  
“It’s pretty quiet. I’m sure if there were that many we’d hear them groaning.” But then, that’s the kind of stupid thinking that got Jake killed. “Or they got eaten by Jack Nicholson. Can you imagine him as a zombie? Yikes.”  
  
His light finds a vending machine, and he perks up for a second. But there’s nothing inside but off-brand potato chips and other snacks. He shouldn’t be disappointed. It’s food. But he is. “Got a dollar?” It’s a joke, but it’s off-beat so it almost sounds like he’s seriously asking. He moves the light back to the machine. “Oh, it’s a dollar seventy-five anyway. For _cheese crackers_? Everything’s a rip-off.”  
  
~  
  
Shane taps the glass with his pipe, wondering vaguely how much noise it would make to smash it. For cheese crackers. But not really for cheese crackers. For Ryan.  
  
“Let’s see if we can find the kitchens,” Shane says, pretending he doesn’t hate the piss poor selection in this vending machine and the fact that they don’t, in fact, have a dollar seventy-five between them, then turns in almost slow motion and taps Ryan’s shoulder with the pipe, making a little knocking sound with his tongue. He’s being ridiculous, he knows it.  
  
 “C’mon,” he says, taking a few steps down the hall. “Do you think Cowboy Barnyard is a zombie?” he asks, turning to walk backwards a couple steps to look at Ryan  
  
~  
   
Ryan furrows his brow and pulls an exaggerated shrug. Because Shane’s still pushing too hard. Ryan wants him to stop, kind of. He doesn’t want Shane to have to do this, or feel like he has to do this, because he feels like it’s feed into this pattern. This self-fulfilling prophecy where Shane thinks he’s not enough and so he acts this way until he’s so tired he can’t give anymore. And then things just falls apart, or Shane falls apart. And he gets tired of being this—this thing that he isn’t.  
   
Ryan flips the hammer in his hand, catches it on the spin, as he walks after Shane. It actually takes him a second to realize who Shane means. “Pretty sure Cowboy Barnyard isn’t a person, so I’m gonna go ahead and say no.”  
  
~  
  
It’s like a bucket of cold water and Shane blinks in the face of it, something shuttering a little behind his eyes, then he says, “Hm, lucky guy,” and turns, leading the way. They have to take the elevators again and Shane presses the button. It opens immediately. No one else has called it, in all the time they were in the room.  
  
He hates waiting for elevators but he thinks he kind of hates this more.  
  
“Kitchen’s probably downstairs somewhere, right? Near the—…” he trails off, stepping into the elevator, going all the way to the back corner because he doesn’t want a replay of before, and he doesn’t want to know how he’ll feel if nothing happens. If maybe it doesn’t even occur to Ryan.  
  
His leg hurts, and he drops his eyes to his boots, shifting his weight. What if he can’t fix this?  
  
~  
   
Ryan follows Shane in. Elevator, part 2. This would a very strange choice if they were filming a movie. Or it’d be at the end of the movie, after everything—not an hour after the first almost-kiss. Shane’s quiet. Ryan is furious with himself. Even if he doesn’t want Shane to do this, staying in this weird headspace is making it worse. What comes out isn’t exactly… good. It’s horrible. He doesn’t know why he says it.  
   
“I wonder why people like fucking in elevators so much.” He hears himself out loud and has to fight not to wince. But he’s here now. No turning back. “Or is that just the movies? I don’t think I’ve ever seen people make out in an elevator in real life. Can you imagine just going to work one morning and Sally and Steven are just banging one out in the corner?”  
  
~  
  
“S— _Who_ —?” Shane begins, and kind of laughs. “I… yeah, I guess I’d never really thought about it. Maybe it’s the…” he feels half-breathless. “The time limit. Before your floor comes up. Maybe it’s like an accident,” he adds. The doors slide shut. He determinedly doesn’t look at Ryan. “I’ve made out in an elevator,” he admits, sort of softly, like he thinks Ryan’s going to judge him for it. “By accident.”  
  
Neither of them have pushed a button for the floor they want to go to. Shane wonders if he should, but he feels like his spine’s been soldered to the wall.  
  
~  
  
Shane is ramrod straight against the wall. Slouched but still… glued. And someone needs to hit the button. God damn it, this would be easier if Ryan could make out with him, but then Shane might be over it and Ryan would be…  
  
_Don't overcomplicate it._  
  
“I've never… I guess I've never been so overcome by passion.” But he has. He was earlier. “Or brave enough to follow through.” Ryan glances at the button and moves to press it, but he stops short, laughs. “Wait, you… by _accident_?”  
  
~  
  
Shane starts waving his hands around like he’s trying to gather thoughts from the air in front of him like water in a bathtub. “There was some drinking,” he starts, simultaneously awkward and offhand. “Standing was difficult, you know, he… you know.”  
  
He wishes he hadn’t started talking about this. Especially not where there’s a bottle of champagne they’ve barely touched between them, and that moment in this very elevator before, but he’s getting snagged on something else, too. “You haven’t? _You_ haven’t ever been so ‘overcome by passion’?” he repeats, quoting Ryan.  
  
Because Ryan is so… it’s obvious. It’s all over him, it’s in his eyes and the way he gets so caught up in everything, the way he talks about things. Maybe it’s not _sexual_ , but Ryan is filled with passion. And Shane’s looking at him now, even if he didn’t mean to.  
  
 “I don’t believe you.”  
  
~  
  
Ryan's smile widens. He laughs. "What? Jesus, what kind of wild child do you think I was? Laps until you puke and then sex in an elevator?" He looks away. "No. I'm weird about stuff like that, it's... I always wanted to make sure it meant something..." How has he still not pressed this button? "The only time I ever..."

 _Uh, no. Let's not go there._ He presses the button. "I've certainly never accidentally made out with anyone."  
  
~  
  
Shane’s watching him like Ryan’s the only illuminated thing in a dark room. _Only time you’ve ever what?_ he wonders, but he can’t bring himself to ask. He bends down to retrieve the opened bottle from the floor where he’s set it and take another drink, a smaller one, lets the liquid touch his lips for a moment too long, to make it seem like he’s drinking more than it is. “Here, trade,” he says, and offers the bottle for the flashlight Ryan’s still holding. The elevator shudders to a halt and Shane’s the first one out.  
  
“ _I_ puked later,” he says, like they’re still talking about this. “After the elevator so… that’s about how that night went.”  
  
He doesn’t know why he tells him. Doesn’t know why exactly he feels like it’s important that Ryan knows that Shane doesn’t look back on it fondly or anything. It was kind of awful, really.  
  
_I always wanted to make sure it meant something…_  
  
But Shane had never been concerned about that.  
  
And it feels like a light’s been switched on somewhere, soft and luminescent. A tiny fractured piece of understanding. Something that makes him want to reach out and touch, see if he can get it to glow brighter.  
  
~  
   
Ryan takes the bottle and takes a long, long drink from it. Something about that exercise in the elevator has him in dire need. Actually it isn’t something, it’s Shane. And how he feels like he’s going to say something to Shane one time, and Shane’s going to call him on it—and, ugh. He follows Shane out of the elevator, missing the flashlight, even with the hammer in his other hand. He liked controlling the light. At least he was controlling something.  
   
He’s jealous, a little, of whoever Shane made out with in an elevator. In whoever managed to overwhelm him enough that it happened. Even if he… puked after it. Which, maybe Ryan shouldn’t be jealous, but the idea of doing that in an elevator, with Shane. It makes his heart race. But that’s the thing, Ryan does always need to know it means something, and he can’t tell with Shane. Sometimes, he can’t.  
   
“Well, I assume that was less because you made out with someone in an elevator and more because of the drinking.”  
  
~  
  
Shane stops at the edge of the main lobby and looks over his shoulder at Ryan. “Are you calling me a lightweight? You’re the one _nursing_ that bottle.”  
  
He’s egging him on. He absolutely is. And maybe it’s not fair, but he doesn’t care. Or rather, he does. He cares a lot. He wants Ryan to not have to care for a little while, he wants to take some of the weight off Ryan’s shoulders that he feels has been there since Shane bit him. Since Finn. Since Jake. Since fucking zombies.  
  
He fights the urge to reach out and smooth his palm over the bite mark he’s made as Ryan comes close enough to touch. It’s mostly healed now, but Shane knows where it is. He doesn’t reach out. He sets out again, letting the flashlight guide them down a dark hallway. “What next, Ryan?” he asks. “Should we choose a door?” He reaches out as he passes and tries the handle of a large set of double doors, pushing, then pulling. It swings open almost silently, a soft rush of air. It’s a huge room and initially that immense darkness makes him balk, but there’s not a single sound from inside.  
  
He shines the light in. The floor picks up the light and throws it back into his eyes oddly, like he’s found veins of silver and gold there. The wall directly across from him is almost too far away to be seen, but as he plays the light to either side, his heart hammering out some bassline to a video game horror theme, he sees that they’re almost ornate. “I found a fancy room,” he half-whispers. There’s chandeliers on the ceiling. The crystals catch the flashlight beam.  
  
The openness, the stillness of it is overwhelming, but it draws him — this tentative promise of quiet and dark. He takes a step inside.  
  
~  
   
Ryan takes another drink of the bottle. Shane’s goading him, but it doesn’t stop him from rising to it. He almost snaps something about Shane trying to get him drunk. He follows Shane, and the light, down the hallway. He doesn’t have any idea which door when Shane asks him. It doesn’t matter. Shane reaches and opens one anyway.  
   
Ryan peeks around Shane as he casts light into this massive, black hole of a room. It seems like a horrible idea. There’s no telling what’s in there. Well, there is telling, and it’s probably zombies. A whole hoard of them. Ryan can just see this horrible mob of them descending some stairs in the back. He takes another drink, which is probably the worst thing he could do to prepare for an impending death by zombies. But whatever.  
   
Shane takes a step inside and Ryan’s eyes go wide. “What’re you—are you crazy? We don’t know what’s in there.” He follows, reluctantly, because he doesn’t want to leave Shane in there alone. He’ll probably trip and get eaten. Ryan always thinks eaten, he realizes, he never thinks turned. Maybe because he doesn’t know how to face that.  
   
~  
  
Shane doesn’t look back as he ventures further in, as quietly as he can. He thinks _maybe everywhere is as dangerous as everywhere else, and nothing matters_ , but he keeps that thought to himself. “I don’t think there’s anything in here,” he murmurs, but the stairs have caught his eye now. He moves towards them. If something comes out of there, it’s not like they have a lot of obstacles to deal with to get out.  
  
And suddenly he hates everything so much more than he usually does. He’s exhausted with being careful all the time, he’s always so afraid that it’s paralyzing everything in him, his veins petrifying, his muscles seizing up in tension until there’s this tight pull in every part of his body every time he moves. Each time he puts weight on his right leg in the wrong way it jolts painfully up his calf, even though it’s healing.  
  
But he can deal with that.  
  
What he can’t deal with is Ryan, behind him. Or rather, it’s the fact that Ryan’s curiosity and belief in the goodness of others is battered until it crumples inward and cuts at him with jagged edges, it’s the way he sometimes pulls his sleeves down over his fingers like he’s trying to hide the heart that’s been bleeding out on his sleeve for as long as Shane’s known him.  
  
_Fuck_ this fear.  
  
So Shane fills his lungs and shouts into the darkness, sudden and echoing. “Hello!?” He waves the flashlight around a little wildly. There’s nothing in here, and the light bounces off one of the many reflective little surfaces and flutters weirdly off the walls. He moves towards the stairs where there might actually be something lurking. _Come on_ , he thinks. _Let me show you what I think of you and your little apocalypse._  
  
“Are there any hungry little ghoulies in here?! It’s dinner time!”  
  
~  
   
Shane’s first yell ruptures his insides. Ryan jumps into the air and has to hold back his own scream with his teeth. It’s the loudest Shane’s ever been, and they are in a giant dark room in a giant hotel with god knows what. He can’t even begin to process it. His mouth hangs open, staring at Shane’s back, body drawn up on a thousand strings. Tension coils through him until his blood feels so thick it’s like he’s got magma in his veins.  
   
And Shane doesn’t even stop. He starts towards the stairs. Ryan’s heart clatters in his head, in his chest, through all of him. Loud enough to bring a jitter through his body. Ryan follows after him in a kind of half-run. Shane’s lost his fucking mind, and Ryan’s lucky to still have his hand on this bottle of champagne. He needs another drink, but he’s shaking too hard to get it to his lips.  
   
Shane yells again.  
   
“Jesus _Christ_! What the fuck, man?!” He stumbles a few feet behind Shane, staring at the stairs. Anticipation races through him and beats against his walls like a storm-shattered river. He’s waiting for something to scream, to groan, to lurch from beyond the staircase or from the doors behind them. He sees it—a thousand times, he sees this bloody, tattered mess as those things tear them limb from limb. And he can’t do anything because Shane’s lost his goddamn mind.  
   
Ryan clenches his jaw. He’s got one hand on the hammer and the other on this bottle—so he can’t grab Shane. He can’t bodily yank him out of here. But time passes and nothing comes. It’s a miracle, really. But nothing comes.  
   
So Ryan doesn’t know why he whispers when he says, “Do you want to die, you freaking lunatic?”  
  
~  
  
Shane’s got this expression like he wants to smile, but he doesn’t. He just cups his pipe hand against his ear and says in a stage whisper “I _don’t_ think there’s anyone here, Ryan.” He drops the act and moves into the room with more confidence than a moment ago.“Holy shit. There’s a Victrola here. Or a gramophone or whatever. Is Victrola a brand? Look at this.”

Shane’s got the light on this huge gramophone on a stand. He’s not quite meeting Ryan’s eyes but he says “Ryan, look,” like Ryan can’t see the thing from where he’s standing.  
  
~  
  
Ryan's flustered. Nothing's here but something could have been. He's out of breath. Blood still pounding against his insides. He can feel it in his teeth.

Shane wanders around but Ryan's struggling to shake off the fear. The horror of what could have happened. He stares at the gramophone where Shane's pointing the light. It would be cool if he wasn't potentially going into shock.

He takes another drink. Another long one. It burns and smokes along his throat and pools warmer in his stomach. He has to loosen his grip on the hammer to move. The room makes him feel like he's back in time.

"Yeah, I will when I stop having a heart attack."  
  
~  
  
He knows he scared him. His heart’s skipping like it’s trying to find a rhythm between his own at rest and Ryan’s wild, terrified one, and failing.

He touches the needle, just lifts it absently and static crackles from the mouth of the Victrola. Shane jumps and drops the needle, a breath bursting from his chest. He’d forgotten these things worked without electricity which is ridiculous because that was literally why they were invented. To play music before electricity. He looks up, a little sheepish. “Oops.”  
  
~  
  
Ryan jumps again when static rips from the gramophone. He walks over though, and he's drinking again because it's helping and he's going to wind up dead if he doesn't relax.

"So you're trying to kill me. That's cool." He inspects the gramophone like it might spring to life and kill him. He's almost light headed. Right, he hasn't had alcohol in nearly a year. "You _would_ be fascinated with this. It's from the 1800s when you were obviously born."  
  
~  
  
“You’re right, I was. I’m way older than you. There’s a record here…” he looks up at Ryan. “Dare you to play it, Bergara.”

He lets his name linger in his mouth, wets his lips, reaches for the champagne again, because Ryan’s a little glassy-eyed and he wants him happy but he doesn’t want him wasted.  
  
~  
  
Ryan notices Shane reach and clutches the bottle to his chest. He walks back and it's almost a stumble. "No, fuck you. You don't get to pull that shit with the screaming and take the alcohol."

He takes another drink, mostly to spite Shane, then frowns at the record. "And why would I play it? It's probably all classical bullshit. Look how pretentious it is." He taps the handle of the hammer to it's mouth. It's echoes off the walls. "I'm not here to waltz with zombies. Or anyone. Because waltzing is dumb."  
  
~  
  
“Okay. Have you waltzed before?” Shane asks. He hesitates a second, then puts the needle down on the record. It crackles for a second, then starts to play something he doesn’t recognize. Something that is definitely not classical or 1800s.

Shane starts to laugh. “1980s?” His heart is pounding. It’s a lot, the music and the darkness. Ryan. “Are you one of those guys that doesn’t dance because it’s uncool?”  
  
~  
  
“I have not.” The music isn't classical. Potentially not even waltz music. He can't place it but it seems distinctly 80s. God, Shane looks like he belongs here in some nice suit or something. Ryan is looking more than he ought to be so he spins to look at the room.  
  
“It's too dark in here.” It's pointless to say, not like they have lights. He thinks about it, for a second: dancing with Shane. It's absurd. “Are those candles?”  
  
There's a few lining the area in front of the gramophone. Framing what could be a dance floor. So they aren't the first ones to find this since the world ended.  
  
~  
  
They are candles. Shane goes still, seriousness sweeping over him really fast. Just because zombies didn’t come flooding down the steps, doesn’t mean people aren’t up there. Or anywhere. But then, he thinks, somehow this little collection of candles doesn’t exactly call up the sort of people who strike terror into Shane’s heart. It looks like they were just trying to make the best of things. Just like Shane’s trying to do.

“Yeah,” he says, and moves closer to inspect. His foot hits something that skitters a little across the floor. A lighter. He crouches, awkwardly on his leg, to pick it up and doesn’t stand again.

Is this a gift or a trap? Maybe it’s something in between. Shane lays the pipe down and flicks the lighter. The fire catches in his eyes as he looks up at Ryan. He hopes for the best. Or at least for something half decent. “What do you think?”  
  
~  
   
Ryan’s still processing what it means that there are candles everywhere. He thinks it probably means that there are people around. Not threatening people, probably, since threatening people wouldn’t set up a bunch of candles around a dance floor. Shit, unless they were doing some kind of ritual sacrifice or something. Oh god. No, that was less likely than just… needing light.  
   
Shane wanders off and starts lighting the candles. Ryan barely registers that there’s a lighter. For a split second, he thinks Shane is willing these candles to life with something inside him. And that doesn’t strike Ryan as all that strange. He’s so otherworldy sometimes—it stands to reason that he could look at a candle and light it. But… he’s probably to calm, to quiet, to conjure fire. If he was going to conjure anything it would be air or earth… even water. Not fire.  
   
Ryan would probably conjure fire. Ryan would probably conjure useless bursts of noise or something that was more likely to get them killed than help them. Shane would do something helpful. He’s been standing there, watching Shane do this, listening to this weird eighties music for too long.  
   
“Uh…” He doesn’t know what Shane said, so he doesn’t say anything beyond that. It seems like the best thing to do. He walks over to Shane who’s still crouched, lighting the candles. He sets the hammer and the bottle of champagne down and grabs the candle Shane lit. He uses it to light another one. He jumps at the way the light whispers to life. He’s nervous around the heat, but it doesn’t burn as he lights another one—going the opposite direction as Shane.  
   
“Why are we lighting candles?” It occurs to him that he just started doing it because Shane was, with no real reason. “Oh, we could have a séance.” He doesn’t know why it’s exciting to talk to dead people when they’re surrounded by them, or why his brain goes there first. “Wait no. That’s a terrible idea.” He pauses like he can erase that he ever said it and goes back to, “Why are we lighting candles?”  
  
~  
  
“Uh, the better to see you with, my dear,” Shane says, starting to laugh through his words about halfway through, but it’s soft. “I don’t know. Maybe it’ll open some secret door, like in a video game?”  
  
He’s not watching him, for once. There’s something calming about the fire, about the light, in this room. It catches and glints in impossible places, along the silver cracking through the floor, against the chandeliers high overhead.  
  
It’s so weird. The music is very synth-y. It’s not exactly _loud_ , but it’s louder than he expected one of these things to be. He’s trying to place the artist as the little circle of light gets brighter and brighter. Ryan steps into his peripheral and Shane stops and sets the candle he’s using to light down on the floor and just watches Ryan who is only a couple feet away. Or rather, Shane watches his hands, his olive skin in the firelight, because he remembers what Ryan’s eyes look like in low light, and he’s not ready for that. Not yet.  
  
~  
   
Ryan works his way around the circle, and he’s just lighting candles. Completely unaware of the rest of the world happening so he almost runs into Shane. He jumps back. He didn’t expect to run back into him, and yet—here he is. Which makes logical sense. It is a circle. But whatever. The firelight is making his usually pale skin ember soft. Ryan wants to touch it more than usual, which he isn’t going to do because that would be awkward. In fact, it’s a little awkward that they’ve come around this circle and Ryan almost ran into him.  
   
He throws his arms out once the circle is complete. “Well, we did it. What do we win?” Nothing happens. Shane was wrong. There’s no secret door. “Well, at least no ancient demon rose from the depths of hell to kill us. That’s a positive.” The room glints in the dim light. Metal from the stair banister catches the shadow and flames at odd intervals. He turns to see everything. This is a really big room. “It’s very Sixteen Candles. I don’t think there was a ballroom in that movie, but there were candles and 80’s music.”    
  
~  
  
Shane straightens up and, God, he’s _so_ much taller than Ryan. He forgets sometimes, because they’re not always this close or because it’s actually physically impossible somehow, because Ryan takes up so much space in his head that seeing him here, looking small and tensed against the world because he can’t even steel himself against it…  
  
He’s just talking. He going on and on about the candles and Shane’s just watching him from the edge of his vision, his eyes on the flames flickering at their feet, then up, at the light flickering everywhere. He knows it could all be shattered in a split second, they could die in this room, or any room, or anywhere… that’s what this world means. He remembers that people were saying that this was the rapture or something, or that humans deserved this somehow. Some of them even said that it was Mother Nature, coming to reclaim what was rightfully hers, but Shane doesn’t believe in any of that. He thinks that this is all just a shitty thing that picked a shitty time to happen.  
  
He wonders if it would be better to be born After, and not before. If people will be born into this and grow up like this, and if it will be fine for them. He wonders if it would be easier that way. He looks at Ryan, full on _looks_ at him for a little too long, and knows that it would never be easier for him.  
  
He knows he should keep this going; this casual, easy conversation that Ryan’s trying desperately, a little drunkenly for. And Shane knows he’s _supposed_ to keep it going so it doesn’t turn into something else, but he can’t look away from the light reflecting in Ryan’s eyes, and what comes out when he opens his mouth is “This is sort of beautiful, actually.” He loses his nerve a little, and cuts his eyes away. “Even with the 80s music. _Especially_ with the 80s music.”  
  
~  
   
Shane decides to talk about the candles being beautiful. And he would. He would talk about that instead of something normal people would say. Ryan pulls the sleeves of his sweater down over his hands. He’s done with the candles, and it’s not… that cold in here, but it’s not warm. And it’s something to do while he’s thinking about the word beautiful and the way Shane uses it so casually. The way it feels huge to him, even when he’s dazed from the tiny bit of alcohol he drank.  
   
But Shane’s the kind of person that uses words like that and it’s fine. He’s just… himself. Existing and not giving a shit about how it’s perceived. Ryan is not like that. Ryan worries about how everything is perceived. It’s the apocalypse. There’s no one to perceive. It’s not like a zombie is going to be like, ‘hey, that was a little weird, you know—maybe don’t next time.’ But there was TJ, and the guy with the nice hair from the department store. And there’s Shane. Even though Shane’s different. Ryan worries in a different way when it’s Shane.  
   
“Your _face_ is beautiful.” He considers this and shakes his head. “Wait, god damn it.” He’s just short of embarrassed he said it, but he really meant it as a joke—it just so happens, he could have earnestly meant it. In a different context. So he shouldn’t be embarrassed.  
  
~  
  
Shane’s eyebrows do about seven things at once, which is great because maybe they’ll distract Ryan from his eyes which go wide. And his face flickers between shocked and laughing and confused and he laughs but it comes out weird. Sort of too hoarse and too tight, like it’s clinging to his sternum on the way out. “All right, buddy,” he says. “You’re cut off.” Shane goes over to the bottle and picks it up, takes a drink. He looks at Ryan at exactly the wrong moments as he lowers the bottle, because the song ends, and a soft, crackling silence fills the air between them, and Shane’s retreated like a suspicious wild creature, and he knows — he _knows_ how Ryan meant it. He meant it as an insult, but Shane’s mind did something with the words and the tone (surely it was his mind and not Ryan’s actual fucking intent) and it’s done something to his heart.  
  
The next song starts and it’s so jarringly familiar that Shane actually gasps. He makes it theatrical about halfway through. “Ryan!” He says, waving at him like Ryan was distracted by all the _other_ people that aren’t in the room. It’s easy to do this. He lets all the tension and— and hope (it’s hope, he knows it, and he _hates_ it, but that’s for later) out in this wild excitement. He funnels it all into this ridiculous Shane’s-kind-of-a-weird guy attitude and laughs out loud. “Ryan, it’s ff- it’s, uh, it’s _Top Gun_.” That’s not what the song’s called. It’s the movie it’s from, but that’s why he knows it.  
  
~  
   
Ryan’s eyebrows shoot up at the song. He’d been kind of indignant with Shane acting all stupid about the alcohol. He’s slightly drunk, but nowhere near levels that require someone to say you’re cut off. Shane acts like Ryan licked his face instead of commented on it. Oh god, why did he even think that? What the fuck? Jesus, maybe Shane’s right.  
   
Shane’s reacting to the song, and it drags a smile across Ryan’s face. Because he does know this song, because so self-respecting film student, or really, no self-respecting person doesn’t know Top Gun. Shane even knows it. That’s monumental. Then he laughs, because my god, Shane seems fucking excited about this song.  
   
“It’s 'Take My Breath Away', you _philistine_.”  
  
~  
  
“Ryan, shut up!” Shane says, and God, he wants to reach for him. He doesn’t even know why, and of _course_ , he doesn’t. Instead he throws his arms out to the side, all of his limbs just everywhere, champagne still in hand. The liquid sloshes around in the bottle and he takes another drink before he sets it down and spins away from it, back to Ryan with surprising elegance as he straightens back up.  
  
He’s avoiding Ryan’s eyes as he wobbles his arms around on either side of him like a snake charmer or something. He kind of weaves his body back and forth like his hips aren’t even connected with the rest of him. He’s such an idiot. He just embraces it. “Oh, should I be waltzing?” he asks Ryan, finally meeting his eyes. He’s accepted his fate now. Ryan will either abandon him here to face the apocalypse alone with his stupid, too-long limbs and his ridiculous broken fucking brain and that’s… it’s probably better to get it out of the way.  
  
He’s thinking all this, and yet, he grins at him and it’s genuine. He takes hold of some invisible partner, someone somehow taller than him and starts doing the waltz. For some reason, Shane is the woman, stepping backwards.  
  
~  
   
“What is—is this actually happening right now or have I had too much to drink?”  
   
Ryan is horrified. Truly, he is. This might be the worst thing he’s ever experienced. Ever. And he’s kinda drunk. He’s drunk, and it’s still horrible. But it’s because he’s drunk that he starts to laugh. If he was sober, he doesn’t know what he’d do. Potentially tackle Shane to the ground and demand he stop this nonsense right now. It reminds Ryan, honest to god, of those inflatable tube things outside car dealerships. Vaguely.  
   
He covers his face, squeezes his temple so his eyes are soft under his fingers. It’s horrible, and it’s hilarious. And he doesn’t know whether to laugh or cry, but he’s already laughing so he keeps with that. Shane’s had less to drink than him. He’s sure. He’s skinnier, but he’s taller, so there’s no way he’s been that affected by the alcohol. Or maybe he has. Oh Christ.  
   
“No. This—wh, stop. This… this has to stop.”  
   
He steps into this hellscape that Shane seems to be dancing is and grabs his hands. It feels like the only way to stop him from—whatever the fuck he’s doing. Shane drags him a little for a second because Ryan’s laughing and he can’t get a full grip on his strength, but Ryan eventually grinds them both to a halt. He doesn’t immediately let go, partially because he’s afraid Shane will launch back into that circus nightmare and partially because he likes holding both of Shane’s hands. So they just stand there like there halfway to dancing, or whatever the hell Shane was just doing. But still.  
   
He meets Shane’s eyes, tries to do it firmly—but there’s a laugh still scraping at the corners of his face. “You’re insane.”  
  
~  
  
Shane laughs, startled by the touch and he stills beneath it because it’s a lot to take in, and he honestly doesn’t know if he can hold himself upright _and_ deal with Ryan’s hands in his. They feel cold, but Shane’s flushed, and he’s just been flailing around so…  
  
“Me?” Shane asks, He kind of shimmies his shoulders at him without pulling away. He raises his eyebrows in a challenge, because Ryan looks like he’s about to die as a result of Shane being the worst. “We don’t have to waltz,” he says, because he is, definitely, insane and he links the fingers of his right hand with Ryan’s, twines them, feels the shift and pull of the delicate bones beneath his fingers and his smile fades a little.  
  
~  
   
_Oh_.  
   
He doesn’t know why he didn’t expect this, but he didn’t expect it. He was thinking about it earlier, but he didn’t expect it, and now Shane’s fingers are laced in his and his brain is going completely off the rails as he stares down at their linked hands. His eyes widen and he keeps his eyes on their hands—can’t look at Shane’s face. He kinda wishes he’d grabbed another drink of that champagne because there’s a firework show happening inside him. He doesn’t know how to hold it.  
   
He bites down on his lip. His laugh comes out hoarse and stuttered. Shane says we don’t have to waltz, and it’s this soft, gentle thing, like he’s trying to… Ryan doesn’t know. Ryan doesn’t know but his whole body is infected with whatever it is, and it’s burning too hot.  
   
He wants this. On some awful, terrible level. He does want this. They’re in a deserted hotel, in a deserted world, and the last alive person they saw lived in an underground bunker. And yeah, okay, there’s the whole thing of whatever is between them being bigger for Ryan than it is for Shane. There’s the fact that dancing is potentially going to make everything worse. Ryan slips his left hand out of Shane’s and slides it up his arm until it’s gripping his shoulder.  
   
He doesn’t look at Shane, just stares and stares at his own hand for too long before he finally looks at Shane—trying to be casual, eyes wide like it’s the biggest nonissue on the planet. Like his heart isn’t about to cleave right out of his chest. “Oh, don’t stop on my behalf.”  
  
~  
  
Shane’s heart’s racing like he was the one that just did that high-speed car chase in Top Gun himself, but he’s not thinking about that, now. All he can feel is Ryan’s hand on his shoulder, the way his fingers press into him like— it’s grounding, arresting somehow, like Ryan is a real live person, which is something Shane forgets sometimes, about people… about the world. Not in the human sense, but in the sense of the possibility, the _ability_ to reach out and touch. And how real it is.  
  
He spends so much time in his own head that he forgets sometimes, but this is different. Shane’s never been as overwhelmed by _anyone_ as he is by Ryan.  
  
“Oh, I won’t,” he says, and he sounds soft beneath the cocksure lilt, and as if to prove it, he moves, steps, just a little, so that their movement doesn’t exactly stop, they’re still sort of moving, but he has no idea if it’s to the music or not.  
  
He’s terrified that he’s going to misread this, that he _is_ misreading it. His hand’s just hovering in midair and his eyes are fixed on Ryan’s. He wants to search them, search his face, because it’s easier. It’s easier than looking at him. Everything in the entire world is easier than meeting Ryan’s eyes right now, but he makes himself do it. Everything’s there, anyway. Everything Shane needs to figure out this situation. Everything he needs to…  
  
Shane’s fingers slide over Ryan’s hip, very gently, like he’s trying to touch water without creating ripples. He knows it’s supposed to be on his waist but fuck rules. That would feel like a middle school dance and also Shane doesn’t _really_ know how to waltz anyway. He just… he slides his hand around to Ryan’s spine, but doesn’t press. He’s uncertain, fingers curled. He ghosts over the place between two vertebrae with his fingertips, gentle, and his breath escapes him too shallowly. He blinks, desperate to drop out of the intensity of this moment, but he doesn’t look away, and he doesn’t know anymore if he’s testing himself, or Ryan.  
  
~  
   
Okay, okay. Ryan’s trying to get his hands to not tremble in Shane’s. It’s so stupid. But it’s not, is it? This is something. This is dancing, and dancing… well, maybe it doesn’t mean anything to people like Shane. But to Ryan. This is big. He’d be lying to himself if he didn’t acknowledge that this was big. Shane’s only half-moving. Which is a pretty big contrast to the nonsense he was pulling just a second ago. But he’s got a hand on Ryan’s hip and it’s etched there. It’s all these gentle, feathered lines across his bones. Straight through his skin.  
   
Ryan tightens his grip, not hard, but enough to be… maybe too much… but he’s holding Shane’s shoulder hard. Ryan has no clue what it means to waltz. He’s pretty sure it’s just a couple steps, at least the basic waltz. He’s seen it in movie. He laughs, because Shane’s as unsure as he feels. He pulls him back another step and closes on eye, looking up at Shane apologetically because it’s an awkward, fumbling movement.  
   
“I’m starting to think you don’t know how to waltz, _sir_.”  
  
~  
  
“I do,” he says, and he smiles like he can’t stop it, and there’s all this warmth spilling inside him. “It’s a 3/4 signature.” Ryan’s stepped back, but Shane hadn’t been ready for it. His fingers tighten absently, desperately, because for a second he thinks Ryan’s going to pull away, but he doesn’t. And Shane’s squeezing his fingers now where they’re still linking hands and he steps forward again, leading Ryan in this half-wrong rendition of the waltz, drops his eyes and counts the steps like he’s a dance instructor. “Two, three, stay with me, Ryan,” he says. He means ‘keep up’, but it comes out different, somehow.  
  
He adjusts his hand on Ryan’s back, stepping closer, until they’re almost too close. Too close to do the waltz properly without tripping on another another, and he spreads his palm against the small of Ryan’s back, so close that his lips almost brush Ryan’s forehead. He turns his face away a little, so they don’t.  
  
~  
   
Ryan stutters a few of the steps. Okay, Shane does know how to waltz. Ryan’s hold on Shane’s shoulder tightens again, because if he doesn’t, he’s going to trip or hit Shane’s legs. He’s holding himself so rigid, muscles all coiled until his arms go taut with strain. Taut with strain and something else. Because Shane knows what he’s doing and listening to him is… Ryan swallows. He bites his lip. He wants to watch Shane, but he keeps having to glance down at his feet. It’s the only way they follow what they’re supposed to do. He laughs and it feels like all the butterflies in his stomach burst out of his mouth. Except they’re definitely still fluttering around in his stomach too.  
   
He can’t even take a breath to talk. There’s this music, and it’s swelling to these crescendos that ricochet through Ryan. They turn this moment into something beyond music and steps. The lyrics sink into him in these waves of feeling, this thick, consuming heat that pushes at his skin until it becomes something else. Until he comes something else. But Shane’s hands don’t. They stay the same. This anchor into reality. This magnet pulling him from it. And then Shane pulls him closer, and Ryan holds his breath.  
   
Shane’s mouth is so close to him, and then Shane looks away and Ryan trips, stumbles so his hips and chest ram into Shane. He’s got so much tension in his muscles that he doesn’t hit too hard, but they touch in all these stark, bright ways.  
   
“Shit,” Ryan pulls back, teeth gritted, clinging to Shane’s hand so tight it starts to hurt. He tries to loosen his grip, to get himself back together. But he’s panting as he looks at Shane, trying to untangle his feet—the music whispers back into the chorus. So Ryan doesn’t feel like he’s letting the song down quite so much. But it keeps saying, _take my breath away_ and Ryan needs Shane to stop stealing his.  
  
~  
  
His arms tense as he tries to catch him, keep him up, keep them both up, and he’s looking at him again. He’s got this tension in his _bones_ that he’s tightened against because he doesn’t know what will happen if he doesn’t. Maybe he’ll just collapse. He laughs a little when Ryan swears and says “You got it,” but Ryan doesn’t, and Shane doesn’t care. He stops for a second, stops both of them to sort themselves out, but then he realizes he doesn’t need to. He doesn’t want to.  
  
They’re still for a second, maybe two, and then Shane pulls his fingers from Ryan’s, feels their knuckles catch. He brushes his elbow, the blade of his shoulder, then pulls him against his chest, fingers curling around the back of his neck. He steps, pulls him a little into this kind of half movement, one hand still at the small of his back, because he doesn’t know if he can just stand here and hold him.  
  
No, he definitely can’t. He can feel himself shaking now, as much as he tried to stop it, and he hopes Ryan _can’t_ feel it because it’s stupid. It’s so stupid.  
  
~  
   
Ryan still hasn’t quite got it together when Shane pulls him forward. It’s a hand on the back of his neck. And oh god, he wants to run. To get away from here. But he doesn’t—not really. It’s terrifying how easily he could melt into this touch. How he sort of does. This mostly innocent, gentle thing on the back of his neck. Shane’s other hand is still at his back, and Ryan’s pressed against him, and it’s this gentle, safe place he’s landed in. He might hear Shane’s heartbeat, or that might just be his own beating louder and stronger than it ever has.  
   
He changes his grip on Shane’s shoulder. It’s awkward this close. Shane’s tall, but he doesn’t require that much of Ryan’s arm—so Ryan loops his arm around Shane neck. His hand rests against the side of it. Skimming all the crests and valleys in the side of his throat. It’s overwhelming. This closeness—this intimacy. Ryan isn’t even sure if they’re moving. He can’t tell the difference. The floor is tilting beneath him anyway. And it has nothing to do with the alcohol.  
   
His cheek is against Shane’s chest, and his hand’s got nothing to do, so he brings it in front of him. He gets a hold of the fabric of Shane’s sweater. It’s right over where Shane might put his hand during the national anthem. Where Ryan thought the heart was for a good third of his life. But that’s not where Shane’s heart is—Shane’s heart is beneath Ryan’s cheek.  
   
“I most certainly do not have this,” and he means it about more than the dance, but yeah, the dance too.  
  
~  
  
He shuts his eyes just for a moment, face against Ryan’s hair where he smells like hotel shampoo. He thinks _you could, though._  
  
The song’s fading out. They have a handful of seconds maybe before everything changes again, before the next song starts, before this moment’s gone. Silence falls and Shane’s brown eyes flicker open. It’s just static-quiet and candlelight, and— “Ry....” Shane says, on the edge of something. _Stop, stop._ He draws in a breath that’s shallow and a bit too fast.  
  
_It’s perfect right now_ , he thinks to himself. _Why’re you trying to ruin it?_  
  
So he shuts up, exhales against his hair. His fingers leave Ryan’s neck and slide over his cheekbone, and behind his ear, then settle again. Okay. This is good. It’s enough, because it has to be.


	13. Part 13

Part 13

Some part of Ryan is still waiting for the end of Shane's sentence. For him to finish Ryan's name. But he doesn't want him to finish the name. Shane always says this half version of his new, a nickname, when it's a good moment. Ryan's noticed. He's glad this is a good moment. But if he looks up, now that the music's faded, he'll take it too far.

He can't even bring himself to ask Shane to continue what he'd meant to say. Ryan just grips his sweater tighter. The silence is too much so he says, without looking up, without moving, "I'm still better at this than you are at basketball."  
  
~  
  
Shane laughs silently, but his chest shakes against Ryan’s. The next song starts but he hardly hears it. He doesn’t let him go, though, because Ryan’s still holding on. He doesn’t open his eyes. The moment still feels surreal and he’s clinging to it even as it's starting to slide through his fingers.  
  
“So. Phenomenal, then,” he says, softly. “Because I am very good at basketball.”  
  
~  
  
"Right, phenomenal."

Ryan flounders in the moment. It turns into nothing but waiting, waiting for Shane to pull back. For himself to break in two. He laughs against Shane before he slides his hand back around and rests it on Shane's shoulder. His other stays on his chest.

He should step back, but he doesn't have it in him to break Shane's hold so now he's just standing here with his mouth close enough to kiss him if he got onto his toes. He doesn't. He is firmly on the ground. Sorta.

"Okay, that was slightly more fun than a séance. But no less dangerous."  
  
~  
  
When Ryan pulls back, even that little bit, Shane has to let go.  
  
He steps back, marginally, starts untangling Ryan’s fingers from his sweater like he’s unhooking a kitten, and all this emptiness floods back in as the warmth rushes out. It’s like opening the windows to a storm in winter. He exhales once, almost frustrated with how he is, but then he’s got Ryan’s hand in his and he pulls it to his mouth, presses his lips against his palm, eyes closed. He smells a little bit like candle wax, but his hands are warm now.  
  
Yeah. It’s dangerous all right.  
  
His eyes flicker to Ryan’s, and then he lets him go.  
  
~  
  
Shane doesn't say anything. He lets Ryan go and there's this fantastically awkward silence. Ryan can't stand it so he looks around at the still burning candles. There's music too. Distantly, but Ryan still thinks it's 80s.

This is why he hates these moments. They end like this, with Shane sort of malfunctioned like Ryan's taken too much from him. Ryan walks over to the champagne bottle and takes another drink, then he blows out one of the candles.

"Should we go back upstairs? I'm positive the elevator is going to stop working and we're gonna have to climb seven flights of stairs and I'm gonna scream."  
  
~  
  
“Are you propositioning me?” Shane jokes.  
  
Or maybe doesn’t joke. But he follows Ryan’s lead and starts putting the candles out as well. He reaches the gramophone and reaches out, lifting the needle and silence falls. True silence.  
  
If the elevators don’t work, he thinks he could sleep here, in this little circle of light. Like somehow, in some fairy-tale logic, it might protect them.  
  
~  
  
Fuck Shane for going all silent and then… opening his mouth to make Ryan look like some kind of… ugh. Ryan is trying to laugh it off. He does laugh, a little, but mostly it’s nervous, incoherent stammering. It’s worse when Shane stops the music, and there’s this all-encompassing silence. Ryan hates it. He wants to start the record again.  
  
“No,” he finally gets out. “That is not… at all what I meant.” He blows out another candle. He’s blown out a lot in his rush to delete what sounded like a proposition from the universe. It’s not that he… wouldn’t like that, in some sense, but it feels impersonal. A joke. A late-night in a club bathroom.  
  
And then he’s thinking about it, and he’s drunk, and…  
  
“Uh, weird question, but… was it weird for you, at all, admitting you were attracted to guys?” He doesn’t look up. He cannot look up because he has no idea what he’s _doing_. Shane’s not going to get this. Shane is… Shane. He doesn’t care how people perceive him. He just weaves in and out of the universe like there’s a set of doors specifically for him. He wouldn't freak out about it not like Ryan.  
  
“Ignore that. If you want to.”  
  
~  
  
Shane looks at Ryan quickly before he can stop himself. It takes him a moment to actually get his mind around the fact that this is actually — that that’s something that Ryan actually just said and he wonders…  
  
He pushes those thoughts away because this is about Ryan, and not him. Or maybe it is about him, since Ryan’s asking, and he tries to put himself back there to remember how it felt.  
  
“You mean to myself,” Shane says, “or to other people?” He hesitates a second, and then blows out a couple more candles, giving Ryan some space, trying not to overwhelm him with Shane’s silences which someone told him once were ‘Weird and overwhelming.’ He’s moving slowly though, all of him focused on Ryan. He’s still _listening_ , he’s just not looking at him. He’s just doing something with his hands.  
  
“Both were weird, at first, yeah. In different ways.”  
  
~  
   
“Yeah?” Ryan says because it’s all he’s got on his tongue. He’s here now, so he has to keep going. He can’t really erase the moment he’s created. As much as he wants to. He doesn’t even _know_ if he means for others or for himself. He was afraid of how people might react, of how his parents might. But he hadn’t even gotten that far. He was still stuck on… himself reacting. So it’s about him more than anything. If it wasn’t about him, it wouldn’t matter anymore. But it does. Kinda.  
   
He’s still going with the candles. He’s not looking at Shane, and he’s pretty sure Shane’s not looking at him because he’s engineered the worst moment in history. “To yourself, I guess. I mean it… feels outside of being normal. For me.” He laughs. “Which is pretty irrelevant now, considering it’s the fucking apocalypse. And it’s not like it isn’t normal. It’s just… not what—it’s different. It’s not like it feels wrong or anything, it’s just harder to settle into. I’m not good at dealing with it when I fall outside my own expectations.”  
   
He hasn’t even asked Shane anything. He’s just talking. He thinks he should ask, but he doesn’t know if he has a right to ask more than he already has. He probably didn’t have a right to ask that. “How’d you even… so you just saw a guy one day and were like, hey, I wanna…” He gestures aimlessly with his hand. Shane said he doesn’t date, so Ryan doesn’t know what to say here. “Be with this guy, and just do it? I mean, unless he’s straight… which, well, eventually there was a not-straight guy that you… just… did normal intimacy things with.”  
  
~  
  
He makes this soft nose that might be a sigh, but he’s not annoyed. It’s weird thinking back about all this. “I guess I just… I mean, no there was a long time between figuring it out and actually doing something about it, I wasn’t exactly… I mean people weren’t uh, _lining_ up to get a piece of me in high school or anything,” Shane says.  
  
There’s two candles left and he leaves them, because otherwise they have nothing but the flashlight, and the candles aren’t running on batteries. He crouches there on the floor, thinking back, but it hurts his knees so he stands up again. “Figuring it out was just sort of... uh, you know, a process. It took a while to even realize that other guys weren’t necessarily looking at guys that way… you know, when you’re twelve and thirteen society starts filtering in in a big way and my friends started to just… be really aware of how they acted. You stop being allowed to put your arm around someone, or there’s like a time limit on it or something. He wrinkled his nose. “Anyway, I was the weird kid that didn’t figure it out… so, those friends…” Shane makes a vague hand motion. _They left._  
  
He’s looking at the way the remaining light flickers over things in the dark remembering that. How they sort of started to drift away, little by little and then all at once. Like they’d had some sort of secret club meeting without him. He takes a long breath and sort of makes a face like _this is boring_. “It’s a long—…” he shakes his head, quickly, waves the thought away. “I told… my brother first. Because if anyone was going to get it, it was Finn.” Finn always got it. Shane's silences, his inability to connect. “You know, he always just… got it. And I was a kid so… he was my big brother, so it felt like nothing else mattered if he was cool with it. That’s what he said, he said ‘If you like guys, that’s cool,’ and I was like ‘Oh, cool, then,’ and that made me feel sort of unapologetic about how I was. And then I just kind of embraced it, like… it was just one more weird thing about… about Shane.”  
  
Shane shrugs. “It was weird, it was hard, I guess, sometimes. I met better people. Our views were the same, we had this pretty solid understanding of like… what we wanted and how casual things would be, or not casual… it was this peripheral understanding of a what-if scenario, so when things set up to happen between us I just… fell into it. And then you get used to it or… and new people, different people don’t seem so— scary or something. It’s just…” He shrugs. He’s kind of bummed out now, because all those people are gone, probably, or they’re out there struggling and Shane doesn’t know which is worse. “Something to do with a person you care about. Or… you know, someone who you feel like it with. People are people. They’re all kind of the same, when you get down to the… the bare bones of it. I just don’t think it really matters, I guess.”  
  
~  
   
It’s more information than he knows what to do with. He’s got all these images of Shane as a little kid putting his arms around people, and Shane talking to Finn about… not being straight. It’s a lot. All these memories that aren’t his, that are trying to form in his mind. That are trying to make him sad about things that are gone—things he never had. And he’s mad, mad about friends that left Shane for not fitting into their boxes and mad because he’s not sure if he wouldn’t have been like that, at one point, before he’d figured everything out. He was absolutely one of the ones following those rules. Rules meant so much to Ryan.  
   
But this was just _one more weird thing about Shane_. Ryan thinks that a lot, that Shane isn’t normal—but it’s… a good thing. He can’t tell if Shane sees it that way or not. He doesn’t seem upset by it, the way he wields the word, but he doesn’t seem entirely at peace. He can’t be—not with how much he talks about not being enough. But maybe that’s something separate, maybe he’s okay with most of it. Ryan wants him to be. Ryan wishes he could show Shane how he sees him—wonders how he’d react to it.  
   
People are people. Ryan’s told himself that before too. It’s logical he’s attracted to all of them. It’s almost odd that he’d only be attracted to girls—or any one gender. Why? He doesn’t quite understand it, and yet he’s tried for so long to push it on himself.  
   
“Yeah… that seems like a healthy coping strategy.” He looks to the two candles Shane’s left lit. He doesn’t know where to go. He hasn’t known where to go since he opened his mouth. Since the dance. “Healthier than mine, anyway.”  
  
~  
  
Shane doesn’t like those words. It doesn’t have to be a ‘coping strategy,’ but maybe Ryan’s not there yet. He can’t push him.

“What’s yours? Your coping strategy?” He asks, quietly. And he’s looking at Ryan in the last of their light, trying to see how he processes everything, in his eyes, but he can’t quite figure it out. He has a feeling he’s not going to like it, but he doesn’t know why. Or maybe Ryan just won’t tell him. Maybe it’s not Shane’s business. Maybe Shane is Ryan’s coping strategy — just someone who gets him, for now. 

But okay. Yeah. He’ll be that. If that’s what Ryan needs, he’ll be that.  
  
~  
   
This feels pivotal. Shane is looking at him now and Ryan’s still not looking at Shane. Jesus, he shouldn’t have even brought it up. Shane’s tensed. Ryan can feel it over the few steps between them. And Ryan feels like he’s at a precipice—he feels like he could screw this up. Like he could throw himself off some ledge in Shane’s mind and not be able to recover from it. Shane’s talking about this so mature and normal. He has his shit together, and Ryan doesn’t. And maybe that’s the whole reason Shane is afraid to take another step. Because Ryan is a goddamn mess.  
   
And this is going to prove him right in every conceivable way.  
   
Ryan could refuse to tell him, but that seems infinitely worse. Jesus, Shane’s going to think he murders animals to deal with his weird, gay feelings. Which is significantly worse than the real story. Probably. Ryan shrugs, like he doesn’t know his own strategies for dealing with this. He looks at the bottle of champagne and the hammer. Shane hasn’t had any champagne (or hammer) since they’ve been in here. There’s still about half of it left.  
   
Ryan wants another drink. That’s going to look worse. Hell, it already looks bad that he’s been standing here looking at everything in the room except for Shane with his soul-seeing eyes. “Well, I couldn’t… really, get up enough courage to actively… be with a guy. I had no idea how to even approach guys. I mean, yeah, people are people but society is society and it’s different trying to impress a guy than it is a girl. Most guys, anyway. I didn’t exactly… even if I could get off my own bullshit of not knowing what it was or how to process it or how I was going to explain it… I didn’t know how to approach anyone.”  
   
He might be coming up with excuses. He can’t tell. He’s telling the truth, but he’s not talking about what he was thinking about. He’s not talking about getting drunk and blowing some guy in a bathroom whose face he can barely remember the next morning. He grits his teeth. It’s not just his teeth. His fingernails are biting into his palm where he’s squeezed them too hard. He doesn’t want to talk about this. But he doesn’t think he’s got a choice right now.  
   
“I… guess I liked a guy I worked with, or, I did… I know I did. I had a thing for him, and… I’m pretty sure he was straight. He _seemed_ straight. He certainly wasn’t paying attention to me, so… instead of getting over it or talking to him…” God, he wants to die. He wants to light himself on fire with the fucking candles. His blood scratches against his veins, his skin, until he wants to tear himself open and let it bleed out of him.  
   
“I went to a… bar, a bar for…” He hopes that’ll speak for itself. “And I got black out drunk and…” He throws up his hands. “Well, did what you do in bars.” There are all these flashes now, still, half-remembered. Hands and pain and grunts. The kind of skin to skin contact that drags and burns and hurts. And, this underlying current of something… something he wanted, maybe needed. Something he felt but could never quite find. Not there. “It happened three times. And I don’t—it made it worse, because, like I said, I don’t… do that shit without it meaning something. And it didn’t mean anything. Those guys didn’t even know who I was. It didn’t matter to them.” He tries to unclench his hand but he’s left little indentations on his palm. “It made it worse. Because even after I stopped, it’d made something I was already struggling with… even harder to think about. For some people, it probably would’ve been fine, maybe even healthy, but… it was pretty much the stupidest thing I could’ve done.”  
   
Aside from saying it all to Shane right now.  
  
~  
  
Shane hurts for him. He’s never been there, or felt like that, but it hurts anyway. He wants to apologize but for what? Maybe he just wants the right words to say.

And beneath all of that he’s thinking about what he and Ryan have done and all the times Ryan’s said they should slow down and Shane wonders — like he has before — but like a deluge this time, flooding his mind, if Ryan’s just doing all this with Shane for all the wrong reasons. Like maybe he’s trying to give back or he’s just curious and Shane is safe or... or maybe Shane is taking advantage here, and that thought makes him feel sick.

He just wants to fix this and he doesn’t know how.

And it feels like Ryan wants to be in his arms. Sometimes. Shane likes to think he’d know by now if Ryan was lying.

And then there’s the opposite end of all of this, where Ryan trusts Shane so much, and Shane will only hurt him.

“It’s not stupid,” he says softly. He kind of hates those people that did that with Ryan. Maybe he’s jealous. _Or maybe_ , he thinks, _they should have taken one look at Ryan’s eyes and known they should be less careless. That this was— could be... different. Special._

That Ryan was special.

“It wasn’t stupid, it was just a way in. Or.” He swallows. “Jesus, didn’t you tell _anyone_?” How long has he been alone with this?  
  
~  
   
Ryan has too much noise inside him. It’s this loud, crackling sound like the speakers turned up way too loud. He looks at Shane but then he looks away because that makes it worse. He’s never said this before, to anyone. He hadn’t put that together before Shane puts it out, and now he does. He was so wrapped up in saying it to Shane, in how it might affect their relationship—that he didn’t… it’s weird. Saying it. Admitting that he did it.  
   
Ryan yanks his sleeves over his hands because he has to have something to do. It’s like he doesn’t want to be seen right now, and going to get the bottle of champagne now just seems… it’s too much. Too much movement. Like all the noise inside him will burst out and tear through the room. Jesus, it would probably kill poor Shane.  
   
“Oh, it was stupid.” He chews on his lip since his hands are occupied. He hasn’t stopped fidgeting since he started the story, but he can’t bring himself to do more. His breaths are even clipped because too much of them will rock his body. “And no, I didn’t tell anyone. I was embarrassed. That’s not something you just… drop on people.” He doesn’t mention that the first person he thinks about talking to is his mom. About the fact that she’d have _murdered_ him. “I mentioned the whole liking guys thing to Jake, once the apocalypse happened. But not what happened. He probably would’ve thought I was joking.”  
  
~  
  
Jesus, Shane hates this. He wants to go to him but he also thinks that if he were Ryan he’d want him to stay the hell away and so he just stands there like an idiot. 

“Why’d you tell me?” He asks, because it’s the only thing he can think of. Because all the other sentiments that exist for when you’re not socially appropriate and terrified seem like they’d just fall flat. 

It was completely different for Ryan, Shane gets that, and something’s gnawing at him, but it’s way in the back of his mind and he can’t quite figure it out, yet. 

Instead, he wonders if Ryan would’ve told anyone at all if not for the apocalypse.  
  
~  
   
Ryan finally looks at Shane. It takes every ounce of strength in his body to keep his eyes on him. To not monitor ever twitch and shift of Shane’s body—to not take it as some condemnation of everything Ryan’s ever done. He shrugs. He feels like that’s all he’s been doing since the music stopped. Shrugging. His existence is a perpetual fucking shrug right now.  
   
“You seem to have yourself figured out. On some level, so I thought… I’m not really sure. Sometimes I just talk around you and can’t stop talking…” He looks away, then. His energy runs out.  
  
~  
  
_Fuck_ , Shane thinks as he watches Ryan tugging at his sleeves. And he thinks about how uncertain he’d been and how Finn has been the one person he could think of going to, and how Finn hasn’t thought it was a joke, but then, it’s not like he and Ryan are very similar, or had very similar pasts.

But Ryan told _him_ , and maybe it’s because there’s no one else to tell but it feels significant, somehow and Shane’s doing a spectacularly bad job of handling it.

“Thanks, I...” he starts. “I mean for...” 

He’s literally the only person to tell. It’s just him. He’s not special, there’s no competition.

“That... that sucks, Ryan,” he says, just digging that hole deeper and deeper. Great.

“I mean, I don’t care what you— talk to me. You can. Talk to me, just.” _Jesus Christ shut up_ , he thinks. _He’ll never want to talk to you again at this rate._ He runs his thumb over his second knuckles, hand in a fist, fidgeting, like Ryan’s energy’s transferred into him.  
  
~  
   
Shane’s response is almost manic. Ryan doesn’t blame him for it. It’s a weird thing to respond to. That’s why he hasn’t told anyone about it. Because how do you even keep the conversation up when someone admits to that? Or, admits to it on the level that Ryan has. That it was this massive, idiotic mistake that may have stunted his sexuality permanently. But Shane is telling him to talk, so he must not completely hate this. Hate Ryan.  
   
He half-smiles, but his heart isn’t in it. His heart’s still lodged in his damn throat, making it almost impossible to talk. “It’s not… I didn’t tell you for the sympathy points. It’s not a big deal. It was my fault, so don’t feel bad for me or whatever.” He kicks at the ground, idle and unsteady. “I’m sorry. This is weird. I made it weird. Let’s just… forget it.”  
   
He wishes a zombie would leap through the door and rip his face off. He wishes he could come right out and ask Shane if he’s good enough for more with him. With Shane. If he ever would’ve been right for a guy, or even, in the long run—a girl. Or if it’s some weird, malfunctioned part of him that doesn’t really ever turn off or on. It just is. Too much. And it’s Ryan’s thing to deal with on his own.  
  
~  
  
“You didn’t... make it weird,” he says. “It’s not— no, Jesus, it’s not your _fault_. You’re allowed to make mistakes, that’s normal, there’s no rule book or whatever… It bet you hate that,” he adds, smiling suddenly. “You need a play by play of how things are done. You need someone to tell you how to not be straight. Don’t you? You need to do it right.”  
  
He thinks that’s it. Whereas Shane’s never really given a shit how things are done. Fuck rules, when they’re useless. When they don’t apply. Straight didn’t apply to him, so fuck it. Ryan can’t, though. Ryan’s not like that.  
  
~  
   
This time, Ryan’s smile is more genuine, because that’s absolutely true. Ryan hates it when things aren’t defined. It’s probably why he fell apart when he started to think he wasn’t straight. He had non-straight friends. That wasn’t really the problem. It was applying it to himself. It was even getting himself to admit to it, and how he should admit to it. He’d never been around anyone coming out, or thinking about coming out, every person in his life was just who they were and that was that. Kind of like Shane, but maybe a little less… fluid.  
   
“Yeah,” he says, “I’m a big fan of rules. I even looked up shit online, but there’s not exactly a guidebook.” He takes a breath as he meets Shane’s eyes. “I’d love to be like you with your… weird, dumb swagger and your devil-may-care attitude you’ve got going on, but I’m definitely not.”  
  
~  
  
He ducks his head before he has a defined expression but the one that flickered there was surprise, humor. “I’m not... it’s not. You don’t want to be like that,” he says, because he pales in comparison to Ryan in every possible way, and Shane’s like this because he doesn’t care and— “You give a shit. And you should.” He crouches and blows out the last two candles and, in the darkness that follows says “That’s what’s good about you… one of the things.” He doesn’t look up once. “Anyone would be lucky to be with you, because you care about things like that.”

Something clenches tightly in his throat and he swallows. Starts collecting their things in the dark.  
  
~

Ryan is glad Shane killed the candles because there’s a lot of heat in his face right now. Maybe it’s just a turn of phrase, but it’s… a very specific turn of phrase because Shane said anyone, and Shane might be, could be, included in that. And he says one of the things, like there are several things that are good about Ryan. Jesus Christ, Ryan’s going to combust. He opens his mouth to say something, but he can’t figure out anything that wouldn’t make him look like an idiot.

It takes him ages before he finds something that isn’t just an incoherent stretch of syllables. “I do want to be like that. It’s… you obviously give a shit too. Just about the things that actually matter.”

~  
  
“Yeah but what actually matters isn’t the same for everyone.” He straightens up. “I don’t...” he looks at Ryan through the dark and says “I care about stuff, I just do it wrong. It’s not a great...” He sighs like he’s trying to just stop breathing altogether.  
  
“Anyway, you’re fine. What you did before is fine. Starting somewhere’s probably a hell of a lot better than not starting at all. And Jesus Christ, Ryan. You’ve got so much feeling in you, you’d probably explode if you couldn’t express it with more than the female part of the population, so.” He shrugs. “That’s just biological. Glad you didn’t blow up. Now come on, let’s go find food.”  
  
~  
  
Ryan's pouting, a bit. He doesn't like how Shane talks about himself. It's just understood that he's lesser. "That's not... No." Shane wants to move on and Ryan's tempted to let it end. Escape this hell, but he can't. "You need to work on... Stop insulting yourself all the time. Yeah, what matters is different for everyone. That's true. That's the point. You don't just get to decide how you care is wrong. Anyone would be lucky to be with you."

He grabs the bottle of champagne and his hammer. He almost trips in the dark. "It's not wrong. It's just you. And you've made me feel more seen than anyone I've ever met, so... You can't suck that bad."

He doesn't want it to be another moment Shane has to respond to, like before, at the mall. So he takes another drink and sets it at Shane's feet. Exchanging it for the flashlight again. "Now take that away for me before I tell you anymore embarrassing stories."  
  
~  
  
For a second actually can’t breathe. He’s got all these things Ryan’s said to him that settle inside him all peaceful and warm and somehow violently overwhelming at once. _I forget how to breathe when you put your hands on me..._

And now this, too.

And Shane can’t even look at him now because the truth is, it feels like Ryan’s the only thing he _can_ see and he is blinding. Everything else is sunspots and discolored darkness. Shane doesn’t want to look away from Ryan, but it’s too much. It’s painful. And he doesn’t want to look at him either, sometimes, because it’s more than he should ever be capable of staring into.

Shane takes the bottle, toys with it a little, then takes a long drink until he gathers himself.

“I want to hear more embarrassing stories, though,” he calls out, smiling a little. 

Ryan’s wrong, he thinks, because he’s never been with Shane. Is the part after the initial rush, the part where they realize what they’re left with that changes their minds.  
  
~  
  
Ryan walks all the way to the ballroom door before he looks back. "Of course you do." Shane has the bottle and looks like he's taken a drink. He seems okay, maybe. Not great but he never really is. He opens the door and watches Shane, casting the light on his feet.

"Come on, I still want a Root Beer."  
  
~  
  
They actually find one. Turns out it’s pretty impossible to break a vending machine without making an ungodly amount of noise, but there’s already been shouting and music so what harm can a little more recklessness do?  
  
This isn’t like him, Shane thinks, as he watches Ryan tug the Root Beer out of its little spiral in the vending machine wall. “Watch the glass,” he says, absently, because there’s still jagged pieces attached. It isn’t like Shane to be so reckless, but his eyes are on Ryan, trying to see any and all the ways he looks a little brighter because, hey, he’s got his Root Beer. They’ve found it. Shane watches the way his throat moves when he swallows it and he wishes it wasn’t just… warm pop, wishes that it was better, colder, wishes that he dished out a fucking buck fifty for it instead of smashing the machine open with Ryan (wishes he had a buck fifty), and thinks, beneath that, that being with Ryan is a kind of high. He feels almost fearless. Or like he wants to be.  
  
He wants to fix everything. He wants to make the world as beautiful and meaningful and forgiving as it should be, for Ryan. And maybe it’s that thought that paralyzes Shane, even when they go back up to the seventh floor, to the room they’d chosen at random, even after they’ve re-checked all its hiding places and locked themselves in, Shane thinks that he could pour himself a glass of something, some liquid courage, and then maybe offer that same glass to Ryan and it wouldn’t be black-out drunk, It would just be easy to speak, to _exist_ without overthinking everything. Maybe Shane could push him gently against the bar and pin him there and fold himself against Ryan’s sharp and soft places and kiss him, taste the whiskey on his tongue, hold him like he had, downstairs, by the small of his back and the back of his neck and kiss him until he forgets his own fucking name, and all he knows is Ryan’s.  
  
Maybe Shane could erase every regret Ryan’s had, in every bar, and replace it with his own hands, his own mouth, his own body until it felt right to Ryan. Until it stopped feeling like a mistake, or like it was stupid.  
  
And maybe, somehow, the things Ryan says about Shane being enough would be true.  
  
_Okay_ , he thinks to himself, _so do it._  
  
He goes to the mini bar and his hands shake as he finds this tiny bottle of scotch. It’s scotch, not whiskey so his fantasy is already not off to a great start. He pours it into the glass meant for water because he’s not drinking scotch out of a tiny _plastic_ bottle, and then takes a drink. It hits harder than the champagne. It sears down his throat and sparks in his gums — making them feel almost numb — before it sits hot and familiar in his chest and Shane looks up at Ryan and thinks _go on, do it._  
  
Shane clears his throat and it’s so jarring in the quiet. He looks away fast and says: “Now what?”  
  
Wow. Nailed it. Not exactly the effect he was going for. Jesus _Christ_. He winces and then takes another swallow of the alcohol and sets the glass down very, very carefully instead of slamming it down like he wants to do. He wants to shake himself. ‘ _Now what?_ ’  
  
He feels like he could be fearless until it comes down to what this is, between them, and what it might and might never be. And then he gets so fucking terrified he feels sick.  
  
It’s just _how much_ Shane wants to make everything good, how much he wants to paint this brighter world for Ryan to exist in, but doesn’t know how. He’s not that person. It’s too much for him. It’s too big. That’s what holds him back from all of it.  
  
From Ryan.  
  
~  
  
Ryan has almost forgotten everything he said to Shane in favor of the Root Beer. It was warm, slightly flat, but probably the best soft drink he’s ever had in his life. The carbonation nearly knocks him over—it’s been so long since he had any. But still, it’s something he can be happy about. It’s something he can think about that isn’t boys in bathrooms and analyzing Shane’s facial expressions. Shane says it wasn’t stupid, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t callous. It doesn’t mean Ryan isn’t an immature son of a bitch who has no business being with anyone, let alone Shane.  
   
They get back up to the room. Shane’s walking around like he’s in a daze. Ryan isn’t quite sure it’s a bad one, but he’s not sure it’s a good one either. It probably has a lot to do with Ryan randomly spilling all his deep, dark secrets. Ryan wants to scream that it’s not always like that for him, that he does legitimately know how to feel things. For guys. For Shane. He wants to shake Shane and tell him that this thing between them is so much bigger than any bathroom, than any person he’s ever looked at—any person he’s ever touched. That it’s consuming Ryan like a second soul.  
   
But he doesn’t, because Shane is just as liable to freak out about that than Ryan being a perpetually shallow idiot who makes out with people in bars. Shane takes a drink of something from the mini bar. Ryan’s still spinning from the champagne. It’s distant, but it’s there, and he’s so wound up he isn’t sure if it won’t just push him over the edge and have him vomiting on Shane to top off this awkward as hell night.  
   
But it wasn’t awkward. The dance wasn’t. The dance was good. In ways, the dance felt bigger than if Shane had grabbed him and kissed him… but, in ways, it isn’t. It’s still the distant, half-measure that Ryan doesn’t know how to handle. And now there’s the whole issue of Ryan shaving, and he’s terrified to bring it up because if he does it on himself it means something’s changed. He doesn’t want anything to have changed. And he also doesn’t want to rip his face off. But if he lets Shane do it—god, it will be worse than last time. Better, worse. Shane knew something was up last night. This time, if Shane puts his hands on Ryan’s throat like last time—in all these hollows Ryan’s never thought about. The ones that he hasn’t stopped thinking about since. Not really.  
   
Shane’s _now what_ startles him back into reality.  
   
Ryan’s eyes are too big, he thinks. Certainly manic. He laughs because it’s such an odd question, and Shane looks mildly disappointed at himself for asking it. And then, he hates himself because he says, “I still need to shave.”  
  
~  
  
“Oh, I thought you were going for that whole lumbersexual thing,” Shane teases, knocking the drink back faster than he probably should. “I cleaned the razor, so...”

He looks up at him to see what he wants, to see if he can read whatever’s in Ryan’s eyes in this dim light. They should have brought some of the candles up. That would have been smart, instead of just using the battery in the flashlight up.  
  
~  
  
Ryan tries to laugh at the joke. It seems like a normal thing to do, but it doesn't work. That seems like Shane's hinting for him to do it himself. Ryan doesn't want to make this weird. He isn't an infant. But he doesn't move as fast as he should. He takes a tentative step towards the bathroom.

"Right, well." He glances around like he doesn't know where the bathroom is. "I guess I can try not to kill myself this time." He grabs the flashlight and pulls open the bathroom door. This shouldn't bother him.

But it does.  
  
~  
  
Shane goes to sit on the chair now that Ryan’s heading towards the bathroom. He immediately feels like an asshole, but it’s not that that bothers him so much as the fact that he’s doing this, testing Ryan, and Ryan’s going to end up cutting himself or feeling like he’s done something wrong and that wasn’t what he’d wanted.

He tells himself he doesn’t know what he wanted, but he does. He wanted Ryan to ask. 

“Wait,” Shane says, a tangle of legs as he uncrosses them, standing up again. “Let’s minimize the bloodshed.”

He takes his glass and nods towards the bathroom. It’s not exactly an offer of help, because Ryan never wants help. Never wants to need it. But it’s there, and Shane’s trying not to think of the consequences. He’s trying not to think that he’s wanted an excuse to do this again since that first time.

And he’s scared. Scared it’s going to be less, or more. Scared of all the things he’s been allowed to do since that first time and what that will result in, now. He doesn’t want to wreck this, but he can’t leave it alone.  
  
~  
   
He’s halfway into the bathroom once Shane says wait. A pang of guilt runs through him when Shane says it, like he fucked something up. Again. Maybe he should’ve been honest about what he wanted, but he doesn’t know how it’s at all okay to ask for help shaving. It’s humiliating. And, even after the bear trap incident, Ryan still feels like Shane tries to do more than he should for Ryan. He doesn’t want Shane thinking he needs this. Even if he does. Those are the kind of needs that Ryan doesn’t talk about, doesn’t acknowledge.  
   
But he hesitated long enough that Shane saw through it, and now he’s trying to be nice. He shouldn’t have to do that. He should just be able to live his life without worrying about Ryan and shaving. Ryan shouldn’t even be worrying about shaving. He should’ve practiced with this damn razor—or sorted it out, or something.  
   
He walks into the bathroom and grabs the razor by the handle. He sets the flashlight beside it, and the glow casts too many shadows off his frame in the mirror. Shane’s skin sits pale and gentle in the dark, though, when Ryan looks at him. Then Ryan’s staring down at the blade. Thinking about the way it felt last time.  
   
“I shouldn’t need your help with this,” Ryan says. “I do.” It’s so hard to get off his tongue. To admit it. But they’re both standing in the bathroom so it’s not like it isn’t true. “But I shouldn’t.” He licks at his bottom lips. It’s chapped and crisp under his tongue. He catches his own eyes in the mirror, and it’s all this swirling uncertainty and failure. And he gets why Shane doesn’t like mirrors.  
   
He thumbs the blade of the knife, almost too hard. Almost hard enough to break the skin. And he remembers Shane biting him. Shane accusing him, saying he wanted to hurt. He still does, maybe—on some far off level. But he doesn’t want this to be about that. He doesn’t want Shane to be about that, and suddenly he’s frozen in this before moment. Trying to figure out a way to end this without destroying everything.  
  
~  
  
“You’re okay,” he says, again. “I’ve got steady hands,” he says it, but he doesn’t. They were shaking a moment ago, but they’re steady now. They have to be.

He narrows his eyes on Ryan and the way he’s handling the razor, reaches out and gently takes it from him, biting back the ‘be careful,’ that’s souring on his tongue.

He looks at him a moment, how small he is. “Sit on the counter maybe,” he says, setting his glass down on the counter, moving the light, giving Ryan time to do whatever he needs to do with his face. 

They’ll be almost the same height then, he thinks, like that.  
  
~  
  
Shane doesn't have steady hands. Ryan would know. But Shane's giving him an out and he needs to take it. So he swallows the disagreement on his tongue. 

He doesn't resist when Shane takes the razor. It's a relief to have it out of his hands. It feels heavy and hot in his palm. But he's stalling. Intentionally slow. As he wets his face. He guesses Shane can just used soap. Fuck if he isn't terrified. Then Shane tells him to sit on the counter and his brain completely craps out.

He looks at it. "On the counter?" It makes more sense than the floor, but if he gets up there, it means he's committing to this. To letting Shane do this. Whatever. Shane already has the damn razor.

Ryan gets some kind of lather on his face with the soap and hops onto the counter, facing Shane in this skittish, uneasy way. "We should've checked for a gift shop. Maybe they had disposable ones." But he's glad they didn't. Kinda. "Oh well, I guess."

His heartbeat is so overwhelming he's not sure he isn't going to pass out. This can't be okay. This pounding in his skull, his whole skeleton. He looks at Shane. He doesn't have to look up to find his eyes. It's strange.  
  
~  
  
Shane’s movement hitches a little when he turns back and finds Ryan right at eye level. He’s tried to balance the light so it’s on his face but doesn’t blind him, and he’s sort of succeeded. 

Shane sort of faces off with him with the razor held in one hand, and Ryan looks like this little mistrustful creature and he forces himself to laugh as he says. “Don’t look at me like I’m about to eat you for dinner.”

He’s doing this because he has to lighten this energy. His whole body feels like he’s been running hard: shaking, chest tight, wild heart. 

He swallows. “Here,” he says, just getting to it, stepping close. He’s careful not to touch his legs — it’s second nature, where one has been broken for so long. Shane’s own injury just makes him more aware of Ryan’s.  
  
He touches his shoulder with his left hand, where it meets his neck, trying to find the right angle for the blade in his right. His stomach does this weird flip like he’s just stepped out of an actual fucking plane and not just closer to Ryan but he gets this vivid flash of what it had been like, the first time. It’s that rush, halfway between anticipation — this desperate want, and terror.  
  
~  
   
Ryan’s trying to talk himself into not being freaked out about this. Into not thinking too hard about this and how he’s going to feel and everything else he’s thinking about, but he stopped being able to understand the manic screech in his head as soon as he sat on the counter and Shane looked back at him. It’s shaving—it’s not… a fucking blow job. This doesn’t have to be a thing. He could just sit here, and let Shane do this, without making it weird.  
   
But Shane puts a hand on his shoulder and Ryan is reacting. His skin whispers with it—this all-over touch that eddies through him like honey. It pulls all the energy to the center of him so he’s still, too still, and it freaks him out. He drums his fingers over the countertop to give them something to do. To try and keep movement in his body—to try and ground himself in a reality that isn’t just Shane. But Shane’s right in front of him.  
   
He half-smiles because Shane is clearly picking up on his weirdness. Ryan’s trying to look at Shane casually, without all this shit that’s roiling in him, but it’s… not working. “I wasn’t looking at you like that… why do you think I’m looking at you like that? Are you thinking about _doing_ that?”  
  
Shane smiles, but drops Ryan’s eyes. “Yeah, I was thinking about eating you. All this talk of zombies has me looking at people and thinking ‘You know, I bet that’s—’ ” he makes a vague _I don’t know_ gesture with the blade “ _Yum_.” He steps closer more to one side of Ryan’s legs than anything, and catches hold of his jaw gently, then a little tighter, to keep him still. There’s still a cut on the bridge of his nose — he really banged it — and Shane squints at it for a moment in the low light before he says “All right, stay still.” He gives him a second, then touches the blade to Ryan’s cheek, dragging it down to the edge of his jaw.  
  
He wonders if Ryan thinks about hurt like this. He said he didn’t want Shane to do it, and Shane doesn’t want to, but they’re on such an edge here, a precipice. Shane tries to be as gentle as he can, as steady.  
  
~  
   
This was a mistake. This was potentially the biggest mistakes Ryan’s ever made. Shane gets a hold of his jaw, and Ryan was so busy anticipating it, the touching, that he doesn’t hear anything Shane says before it. It’s probably supposed to be a joke, from Shane’s tone, but he can’t make out the words. Shane holds his jaw for too long before he does anything with the razor. Well, too long for Ryan. It’s probably a normal amount of time for Shane—for normal people. But Shane’s got this grip on Ryan that bleeds into him and tightens around every bone in his body.  
   
He tries to remember to move his fingers. To make his body move, so he doesn’t go completely under this. So he doesn’t start the cycle of thoughts that stops being his and starts being Shane’s. He breathes this ruptured breath as the razor finally slides over his cheek. It’s this far-off bite of blade. It’s shaving. The same thing he did all the time before this, before Shane. He never even thought about the blades or the way silver could split the skin with a shiver. But now it’s all he can think about, about how, in a lot of ways, Shane’s touch feels more lethal than the razor itself.  
   
He’s closed his eyes. He doesn’t know when, but he did, and his eyelids flutter now. As he fights to keep himself in his body, or fights to keep his body with _him_. Shane’s hands are steady, at least now they are. But Ryan is as far from it as he’s ever been.  
  
~  
  
It’s like being sucked into a vortex, a whirlpool and Shane feels it happening as soon as Ryan closes his eyes, but he doesn’t stop it. He doesn’t want to. Fuck, he’s— he told himself he’d _stop_. He also told himself, not fifteen minutes ago, to kiss him, and didn't. Couldn't.

Shane’s breath rises in him unsteadily, and he takes his time looking at him before he places the blade against his skin again. He lets his fingers slip down so he can find Ryan’s pulse at the soft place beneath his jaw and maybe it’s the scotch or the strength of this wild, alien thing that is _intense_ feeling in him that makes him say, barely a whisper, “Are you breathing now?”

 _...forget how to breathe when you..._  
  
~  
   
Ryan isn’t breathing. Not any way that isn’t this tugging, consuming yank at the center of him. If he breathes, it’s worse. It’s bringing his skin closer to fracturing to reveal whatever is humming beneath him. Whatever Shane’s fingers call to like a fucking siren’s song. This thing that he didn’t know was in him, would never have known, maybe, if he hadn’t met Shane. Hadn’t touched Shane.  
   
And then Shane dips his hand to Ryan’s throat, and asks if Ryan’s breathing. Like he’s hearing the thoughts racing through Ryan’s head like a separate pulse. Jesus Christ, Shane knows what he’s doing. Shane is pushing this. Pulling at that thing in Ryan like he wants to expose it. And fuck if Ryan doesn’t want to. Even as every rational thought in his body begs him not to—he wants to. The person that he is with Shane. This other side of him that’s been locked a thousand feet below his surface all his life.  
   
He has to fight to get his eyes to open as he finds Shane, gaze tattered at the edges. The flutter of his eyelashes never quite stopping. He somehow meets Shane’s eyes, voice flickering like shadows beneath a flame as he answers, “Do you want me to be?”  
  
~  
  
Shane’s lips part in surprise, and his eyes are all uncertain for a moment, but then he’s searching, Ryan’s eyes, and thinks he sees all the places he’s coming undone and Shane wishes Ryan had taken whatever Shane wanted him to take back there in that bed in the apartment above the barber shop because he felt like he could give it over, then.

“I don’t know,” Shane says, honestly, but a second later, he shifts, and steps in front of him.

He touches the outside of Ryan’s knee, first one, than the other, blade held in one hand, and then he slides his palm up over his thigh, and his pupils are blown wide and dark as he catches the inside of Ryan’s other knee with the hand holding the razor and pushes, edging his legs apart so he can step between them. He braces the razor hand against the counter but the other doesn’t leave the outside of Ryan’s thigh.

Ryan’s pushed back far enough on the counter that the front of Shane’s thighs touch the edge of it rather than him, but fabric drags between them, where Shane’s legs brush Ryan’s. “If you aren’t, does that mean this means something to you?”  
  
~  
   
_Wow_.  
   
He almost says it aloud. He would if he could find any air. A gasp and a laugh tangle in his throat. Neither make their way out. They’re both consumed by this thick, simmering need. It slides from his tongue into his chest and spreads, spreads until it paralyzes him. Shane has moved him. He’s touched Ryan’s knees and pushed them apart. And everywhere he touches shudders into this bigger, pounding ache that’s spun itself in the center of him.  
   
Ryan presses back onto one of his hands. He rocks back, but doesn’t pull away. He watches Shane with wide, impossible eyes. It’s impossible to tell the black from the brown in Shane’s eyes. They’re sharp and dark, like some ancient, impossible mirror that exposes lies like blood under a blacklight. Ryan’s breath comes too heavy, clatters through his chest, across his lips.  
   
His hands clench hard against the marble counter. Waiting and lost, staring into Shane’s eyes, along the strident curve of his jawline, and the way breath crashes out of him. Wild. And even at this distance, Ryan can taste the scotch. The champagne a distant memory. The counter holds Shane’s front back, but his thighs sigh and slip against Ryan’s.  
   
The question is what pulls him back. Does Shane really need to ask this? How is it not obvious—unless he’s worried about what Ryan said before, about the bathrooms. It brings him back into his own head, so he narrows his eyes. He pushes himself forward further, but doesn’t look away from Shane’s eyes. His hand brushes Shane’s on the counter.  
   
“Obviously.” He almost growls it. Like Shane’s forgotten his name.  
  
~  
  
Shane's fingers tense as Ryan's touch them, because he's too aware of the blade. He swallows, his mouth very dry as he thinks about kissing him now, hard, hungrily, but the taste of it it would be all mixed with the acrid taste of that faint film of soap, barely visible in the low light, and he only wants to taste Ryan, and he can tell himself all the lies he wants, but he's knows it's because he's too much of a coward to do it.

And yet—

And yet Shane's body hitches forward like there's something magnetic to Ryan and God, there is, and he spreads his fingers high up over Ryan's thigh and squeezes slightly, just barely stopping himself from dragging him forward, against him. He can't kiss him, but his mouth finds Ryan's ear where he whispers, "You're fucking killing me," and it comes out almost on a laugh if it wasn't so low and tense. He pretends the way his lungs shake as they work to catch his breath is laughter too. 

Shane thinks Ryan is scared of him, in some way, and he doesn't know what to do with that. Ryan scares him, too. He feels like Ryan’s uncovered every piece of Shane’s existence, all the places he doesn’t want anyone to see. He doesn’t know how to turn him away. He doesn’t understand how his own thoughts can conflict so violently inside him.  
  
~  
   
He sees it so clearly. Shane kissing him. Him kissing Shane. Shane pulls him forward, and it’s this rush of friction and fire. A gasp half-drags out of his mouth. But, Shane balks. And Ryan can’t blame him, because he doesn’t exactly go for it. He doesn’t know how to go for it, or if it would even be a good time to go for it. Or if he should ever go for it. Shane is this puzzle of a person, especially when it comes to feelings. Especially when it comes to Ryan’s. He stops and starts like a car running on fumes. Ryan just wants to know, for sure, if this is what Shane wants. Because if it is, Ryan will give it to him. Ryan will give him anything.  
   
Shane’s whisper shimmers over Ryan’s skin. It’s not quite a laugh, but it’s not quite anything else either. Ryan knows the feeling. Of using laughs, and of those words. The words he’s thought a hundred times before now. Shane is killing him. Has already killed him and remade him into something else, something completely different. Better, maybe.  
   
He brings one of his hands to clutch the top of Shane’s arm, holding him so he can’t pull back too fast. He turns his head so the soap and his skin brush along Shane’s jaw. His lips might too, but it’s this ghost of touch. “You have no idea.”  
   
He releases Shane’s arm, but his fingers trail down and pressing through the fabric of Shane’s sweater and into the skin beneath it. Letting go just before he touches his wrist.  
  
~  
  
Shane drops the razor onto the counter with a soft clatter, gets his hands around Ryan’s hips and just holds on. He’s shaking with the effort it takes to not pull him closer. He can smell soap and Ryan’s skin and it’s just so much. 

He bites his lip and draws back slowly, doesn’t meet his eyes. “You’re still waiting for me,” he says, and it’s not a question. He looks up, slowly uncurls his fingers from Ryan’s hips, forcing himself to draw back and it’s agonizing and slow. It feels like detaching a thousand little spines, like picking burrs from Ryan’s clothes — no matter how much he pulls back, there are still pieces of him left behind.  
  
~  
   
Ryan doesn’t answer. Shane doesn’t need him to, because he is. He has been for what feels like his entire life. Like even before he knew Shane he was waiting on him, waiting on him to show up, to be there, and now to want this. To really want it in a way that doesn’t terrify him, that doesn’t make him hesitate hard enough to stop.  
   
Shane pulls back, but he leaves marks on Ryan’s legs. Brands that simmer well after Shane’s stopped touching him. It’s like this every time Shane does touch him. He leaves something behind, something that sticks and seeps into Ryan. Changes him.  
   
He smiles, as much as it kills him. As much as Shane could know Ryan’s waiting for him and pull away. As much as it’s a no, or a not now. It hurts like fucking hell, but he smiles anyway because it’s Shane and Shane doesn’t need the pressure. He doesn’t deserve it.  
   
“I’m not sure shaving is supposed to take this long. You sure about those steady hands?”  
  
~  
  
He laughs, and it’s pretty broken because it’s not funny, it sucks, and it’s worse now because it’s like he’s just laying out his shortcomings for Ryan to see. He might as well say _look at all the ways I’m going to hurt you_.

He holds up his hands in front of him and they’re shaking. “No, you’re right.” He reaches up and wipes at some of the soap that’s gotten into his own cheek, eyes averted.

 _Is it just me?_ He wonders. Is he the only one holding back while Ryan’s just giving himself over because he... he doesn’t know. “I’m trying—” Shane says, then cuts himself off. 

_Never hard enough._ “I don’t want... to be some guy in a bathroom, for you,” he says, then kind of looks around, at where they are, and breathes a laugh. “But I think this might be the best I can do, Ry.” Because if he lets go as much as he wants to... that’ll be the end of it. Of having Ryan with him. 

Because he’s pretty fucked up, actually. He can live with it until it involves Ryan.  
  
Ryan said he wasn’t going anywhere, but lots of people break lots of promises all the time. They have before. That’s how it goes.  
  
~  
   
Ryan half-flinches. Because _the best I can do_ sounds final. He doesn’t want to take it that way, but it crashes into his brain that way. Like it’s Shane saying, aloud, that he can’t do this. He can’t like Ryan like Ryan wants him to. And he shouldn’t have to. He doesn’t have to. Ryan shakes his head and casts his eyes at his own knees. He doesn’t know how to look at Shane right now. Doesn’t know how to be as okay as he needs to be.  
   
“Dude, it’s… don’t. It’s fine. You don’t have to be anything.” He looses a breath and it’s a little too heavy, too much. Then he looks at Shane and pulls his mouth back to a smile. “I mean you don’t have to be anything except a faster barber—is that what it’s called when you help someone shave? I think it is. Whatever, c’mon, christ, this counter sucks. My butt is fucking numb.”  
  
~  
  
“Sorry,” he breathes, makes it a laugh when it’s not. He’s never tried so hard to seem fine before. He rinses the blade and reaches for Ryan again, but Jesus Christ, how does he do this now? 

He’s gentle as he reaches out to touch him again, holding him steady so he can finish this, so they can pretend that there’s nothing in particular between them again, or whatever it is they’ve been doing.

He doesn’t meet Ryan’s eyes as he braces his fingers against Ryan’s neck and jaw to keep him steady as he gets back to it. He can feel his pulse, and Shane swallows. 

How did this whole thing start? Did he start it? He can’t even remember now. And he’s getting way too lost in his thoughts now. He’s barely here because he can’t be. He can’t be here, doing this, with Ryan telling him everything he always thought he wanted to hear, because now he knows, it’s not enough. It won’t ever be enough for Ryan, and Shane knows it. 

And Ryan didn’t say he was anything more than one of those guys anyway. So. There’s that, too.  
  
~  
   
“Don’t be sorry.”  
   
Ryan tries not to think about it. He tries to pretend this isn’t still killing him, Shane touching him like this. Because it can’t kill him if he’s already dead. And Shane saying he can’t do this—it’s a knife across his throat. He wills his body to get there, to get over this. To understand the he’s not allowed to feel this. It doesn’t understand. It can’t fathom not reacting to Shane. Ryan can’t fathom it either. Maybe he’s just going to exist in this perpetual hell of wanting. He’s been here before. Wanting someone like plants want sunlight. But it’s never felt quite so insurmountable.  
   
Maybe it’s just because his mother isn’t here to help him. Maybe it’s because Shane is the only one that is here. But it feels bigger than that, like Shane extended this extra piece of Ryan, this piece that made him bright and vibrant and more alive, and then told him he couldn’t have it. Told him it wasn’t sustainable. Maybe it isn’t, but Ryan would gladly burn out like a supernova if it meant he could have another second of it.  
   
He can’t ask that from Shane, though. After everything Shane has said, all the stories about his parents and people never thinking he was enough. About wanting to live in a tree house and never have to deal with expectations again. Ryan can’t ask him for this. So he grips the counter hard and tries so hard not to fall apart under Shane’s touch.  
  
~  
  
He actually manages fairly quickly. He does his best not to touch Ryan’s mouth where he doesn’t need to, but one or twice his hand brushes Ryan’s lips and it sends sharp static up and down his spine, like shocks.

He clenches his jaw and tries to ignore it. 

Ryan’s gone quiet but tension radiates off him and Shane knows somehow that this is his fault, but he doesn’t know why. He thought they were on the same page with the wanting but now he’s not sure that they are. He doesn’t know if Ryan says it’s okay for him to not be enough because he means it or because he’s nice. Because it’s a nice way of saying ‘ _Don’t, Shane_.’

But that contrasts so hard with everything Shane’s seen from Ryan, too. The way he seems like he wants him, seems like he wants _this_. But maybe it’s just the experience — the whole Other Men exploration that pitches Ryan over the edge when Shane barely touches him. When Ryan puts his mouth on Shane skin and tells him things about Shane’s awkward, ridiculous bone structure that make him feel sort of beautiful...

He’s thinking about that moment, that warm pulse of Ryan’s breath against the blood rushing beneath Shane’s skin when he does something wrong, and the blade slips, and the blood in his thoughts becomes very real and very red as it slides down over Ryan’s jaw and over his throat in one thin, dark rivulet.

Shane gasps “Shit,” as everything in him pulls taut.  
  
~  
  
Ryan is wishing this would end and wishing it would never end. He wants, hopes Shane will do something so Ryan can believe this isn't over. That Shane hasn't completely closed the door on it, but he doesn't. 

He doesn't. He just works in this soft, delicate way. Just like he did every morning back at the cabin, this routine that flows through him like a river current. It's beautiful. God, Ryan wishes it wasn't. The quiet, jutted way his knuckles grip the razor. The gentle part of his mouth as his eyes follow his intent.

It's almost enough to distract from the times Shane touches his mouth. It takes every ounce of him to stay still. Stay quiet. But he does. He does because he's looking at Shane, seeing him in all these colors that aren't here. That shouldn't be in this world anymore. But with Shane, they are.

He jumps at the cut. It nicks into his skin and bites. Ryan winces. It doesn't hurt much. The shock is what startled him to move, and then there's warm, sticking blood running down his jaw.

It's frazzled him, so he tries to recover. "Ow. That's definitely coming out of your tip."  
  
~  
  
His eyes are fixed on the blood. The blade’s down on the counter and his fingers are pressed against the cut almost before Ryan stops talking. 

If zombies come rattling at the door because of the blood, if there’s a lot of them, they’re pretty much fucking trapped. He lets go and wipes at the trail of blood, smearing it over his throat.

“Damn it,” he says, with more intensity, perhaps, than the situation calls for. There’s red coating his fingers and his heart’s fluttering in his chest. He’s got his fingers pressed to the cut again, but his eyes are on the red on his neck.  
  
~  
  
Shane's reacting way too much to this cut. Ryan brings a hand up to grab it but hovers because Shane's in the way. He looks so intense. All jagged edges and shadows. The very opposite of the person Ryan had watched work the razor. A crack splinters through him because this is hurting. He doesn't understand and he's so tired of being wrong.

Who is the boy who yelled into a dark ballroom?

Who is the man that pushed open his legs and whispered into his skin?

Who is the guy that played basketball breathlessly and brilliantly?

Who is this? The same person who breaks car windows and bites necks?

All Shane. All pieces of a whole. And all glittering just out of reach because Ryan can't climb over the broken glass to get there. He can't find out how to get through it.

"Shane," he says, pauses, "it's fine."  
  
~  
  
It seems like a lot of blood, and Shane pulls away to rinse his fingers, then wipe them, cold and dripping over the red stain on Ryan’s olive skin.

He meets his eyes for a second, shakes his head a fraction because he’s pissed and scared and frustrated and he doesn’t know what to _do_ with all this so he braces his fingers against Ryan’s throat, water dripping down, and ducks his head to run his tongue, purposefully over the cut itself, tasting copper and salt and beneath that, the undertone of soap he’s scraped away and it shivers through him as this forbidden thing, but he doesn’t care.

Is it to stop the bleeding or something else? Maybe it’s just taking this hidden, living part of Ryan inside himself, hot, and taboo, somehow, but still beautiful to Shane. 

But he’s done it. He’s hurt him, and he didn’t mean to, and he can’t shake this tension.  
  
~

Ryan goes stiller than stone. His eyes widen at this warm, slick lash across his jaw. His breath peppers out of him. Like inhaling after a punch to the gut. He's tense. Coiled like a spring lock ready to snap. It draws every thread in him to a strain and opens all these things back up inside him. This reaction. It's almost instinct in Shane. Seems to be. He's almost feral.

He won't talk to Ryan, but he'll... No, stop. He's freaking out. It's not his fault. Ryan close his eyes and clears his throat but it's hoarse and skeletal. Half-gasp. Half-grunt. 

"Jesus."  
  
~  
  
Shane exhales against him, warm and damp against his skin. He pulls back as more blood wells up there. He does what he should have fucking done in the first place, which is to grab a bunch of toilet paper from the roll and press it to all that red.

“That was stupid,” he says, meaning his carelessness. His voice is hoarse, somehow. He drags his tongue over the roof of his mouth, and something’s pulsing inside him that makes him feel lightheaded. 

All this want, but... 

He can’t meet Ryan’s eyes.  
  
~  
  
"It's fine." This time it's too fast, not clipped but brief. This one thing he keeps saying, getting less and less true every time it falls from his lips. Shane's breath lingers after he pulls away, where's Ryan skin has unfurled into goosebumps along his neck.

Shane isn't looking at him. Maybe because it was instinctual and it's not anything to him. There's a flicker of it, of want in the set of his shoulders but Ryan doesn't think it's for him.

He can't breathe. He can't breathe because he wants Shane so bad, wants to taste him, drag his fingernails down the crooked line of his spine, and Shane won't... Can't...

"You finished?" His voice tapers near a crack or a quiver. Shane isn't finished, can't be. Not if he just cut Ryan.  
  
~  
  
“Yeah,” Shane says, breathless and quick, even though he’s not.

Still, it’s mostly done. Mostly. There’s places he hasn’t cleaned up, but he supposed it doesn’t really matter. He tosses the bloodied tissue into the toilet and flushes it, then looks back, biting his lip.

He picks up the blade but it’s bloodless. Too sharp. Like a lie.  
  
~  
  
It's worse because Shane's clearly lying. He gets down and rinses his face once. The spots Shane's left are too minor to bother with.

"Thanks." He smiles at Shane and walks back into the bedroom area. He can't do this. He can't be okay. He's going to break another mirror. Cause another fight.

"I'm gonna try to sleep, alright?" He drove today. That feels like another life. He kicks his shoes off and pulls the comforter blanket back.

"Are you tired? I know you slept some in the car..."

This is awkward. His brain is begging him to fix it but he's scared he'll make it worse. He can't stop feeling Shane's tongue.

~  
  
Shane just stands there in the bathroom for too long, still, lost looking. When Ryan speaks he looks out at him, but it’s too dark to make him out very clearly. 

“I’m— yeah, I guess. Sure, I’ll— two seconds… Get some sleep.”

He doesn’t even know what he’s saying. He turns on the water again and rinses the blade, dries it and folds it up. He doesn’t even want to look at it. 

How is he supposed to go out there, get into that bed with Ryan like everything’s okay. He doesn’t even know where this monumental fuckup started, but he’s desperately hoping it’s going to blow over.

He picks up the glass and knocks back the rest of the scotch and immediately regrets it. It burns down his throat, erases the taste of Ryan’s blood completely.  
  
~  
  
Ryan squeezes his sheets over the fabric. It’s silky but embroidered with these thick threads—floral, maybe. He’s barely looking at it. He can’t focus on anything except Shane. His screaming silhouette amidst a flurry of noiseless shadows. Ryan’s hands are shaking. It’s ridiculous. It is crazy that he can’t get past this. How much he could potentially want this. The world is falling apart, has already falling apart—every day could be the last day he’s alive. And all he can think about his Shane’s tongue and the way his thighs brush against Ryan’s.

Ryan slides off his sweater. The comforter’s thick. It ought to be enough. The hotel is a little cold, since there’s the balcony door with the wind beating against it on the other side of the sitting area, but… he’s tired of his stupid sweater. Air hits his arms like a spray of cool water. It’s still not enough to stop the way his body grinds and clenches around itself.

Shane might just stay in the bathroom. He’s tense and weird, and Ryan may have made him feel worse with the reaction to the tongue thing. But to be fair to Ryan, it was a weird thing to do right after he said he couldn’t be more. Because Ryan can’t just be physical with Shane. Shane will be enough if they’re just… friends, together, like this. But if they’re physical, Ryan will want more and more and more. He always does, and with Shane… it would never stop. It would open up and swallow him whole.

He almost says take your time, but he doesn’t want Shane to think he’s telling him he doesn’t want to be near him. That would be a fucking lie. He still wants Shane here, in the bed, or… he wants Shane to want to be in the bed. To try to. Whether Ryan can handle it or not is another story, but Ryan doubts he can handle Shane choosing to stay away from him, either.  
  
~  
  
It’s like he’s caged, trapped. Shane doesn’t know how to leave the bathroom but there’s only so long a grown man can stand in one, with a flashlight and an empty glass of scotch and a wildfire heartbeat, before it becomes too much.  
  
It’s Ryan’s empty smiles and the silence that gets to him the most. Ryan who’s blinding like sunshine, who’s consistently noise and energy, and now it’s just this strange distant tension and quiet in the shadows of the other room and Shane doesn’t know what to do. He waits for Ryan to get into the bed before he flicks the flashlight off, plunging himself into darkness for a moment, until his eyes adjust.  
  
He goes out, and it’s brighter in the main part of the room. He puts the glass back where he found it, moving slow and cautious. He wishes Ryan would fall asleep before he has to crawl into that bed too, but of course he won’t. And it’s not like Shane can just grab his phone and pretend he gives a shit about what’s on Twitter or something in order to pass the time because the internet doesn’t even fucking exist anymore. Or maybe it does, for someone, somewhere. Anyway, his phone’s dead.  
  
Finn’s isn’t.  
  
Shane genuinely considers this for a moment, and then strongly decides against it. That’s definitely the last thing he needs right now. He’d feel like a creep just sitting in the chair and detangling the rope in the dark, so he does the only thing left to do — the thing he really wants but doesn’t want at the same time — he goes over to the bed, to the other side and undresses only as much as Ryan has, taking off his boots and dropping his sweater onto the floor.  
  
He’s cold. He was already kind of cold, but it feels like something significant when he pulls off his sweater, anyway, a gesture of vulnerability maybe — a signal: _I’m staying._ The sheets are cool, but there’s warmth coming from Ryan that Shane thinks he can almost feel. He curls up on his side, facing him, making himself small because he’s too goddamn tired to pretend not to care. He _does_ care. He wants the grating, empty, all-too-familiar feeling of physical hunger in his gut to go away. He wants to have had the presence of mind to take another drink of something, anything, just to put him out, before he got into bed, but it’s too late now. He wants to turn off the sound, because the noise of the wind against the window grates on his nerves. He wants Ryan to say something to him, anything. He wants to reach out and touch him. He wants to press his face into Ryan’s neck and inhale and and and…  
  
What he does though — all he does — is draw his arms close to his own chest, grazing against the soft, worn material of his own shirt so that he doesn’t reach out to do the same to Ryan’s. He curls one hand in the front of it, like he’s desperately searching for anchor, but it’s pretty useless. There’s nothing for him to hold onto, and he feels even more insubstantial than usual.  
  
He tries to think of something, anything to say, but nothing comes. It’s just one word, sitting in the hollowness of his own throat as minutes wind into what feels like hours. Shane tries to calculate this endless moment into some semblance of time against the faint ticking of his watch because he can’t see enough to read the pale face of it, but it doesn’t work.  
  
Why isn’t it easy? So much glib bullshit just pours out of him all day long, all his life, and he can’t form those two syllables that make every godawful thing around him make sense.  
  
_Ryan_  
  
~

Ryan’s facing the beige wall with this flourishing striped print. It’s the worst thing he’s ever seen. He wants to punch through it. Jesus, he should stop thinking about punching. That’s not helping this tempest that’s swirling through his chest, battering his heart against his ribs, drawing slashes and bruises all through it. Shane slides into the bed a bit later. Ryan squeezes his eyes shut. For a long time, he doesn’t move. He just stays where he is. Back to Shane.

Eventually, he rolls so he’s closer to Shane, not turned towards him but not necessarily away. The ceiling is as bad as the wall, but at least there’s no stupid pattern. He glances at Shane. He’s drawn himself into this tiny, fragile ball. Ryan wants to untangle him from it. Ryan wants to touch him so much it kills him. But he doesn’t.

Shane’s not asleep yet. Ryan can tell. It hasn’t been long enough, even for Shane. The stillness is too much for him, as much as he knows Shane may not answer, that Shane may make it worse. He needs to open his mouth and fill the space. To try and make Shane less… small, to push some of this restless, angry energy out of his chest in words. “Nebraska has no business with a hotel this fancy. It can’t have a population over sixteen, and that was before the apocalypse.”  

~  
  
The second Ryan speaks, Shane’s so aware of him. He doesn’t open his eyes, doesn’t smile, even though he kind of wants to, somewhere beneath all this.  
  
“Maybe that’s why there’s no one here,” he says, his fingers unclenching against his shirt. He feels like he has to grind rusted gears his mind to get them to starting turning. “Even zombies want nothing to do with it. The apocalypse just gave everyone an excuse to leave."  
  
   
~  
   
Ryan’s laugh has too much breath around it. He stares at the ceiling instead of at Shane, because Shane hasn’t opened his eyes. Ryan isn’t sure if he wants him to or not, but he can’t look at him. He wishes he could reach for him and understand this. He wants to ask a question that he might already have the answer to, in this wild hope that he misunderstood—that he understands it wrong. He’s desperate for it. For Shane to say something else. But he doesn’t. He never does.  
   
“Great way to pitch the apocalypse. Don’t like change? Don’t worry. All your friends are dead so there’s nothing for you to cling to anymore.”  
  
~  
  
Shane does open his eyes then, fixed on Ryan. He swallows as the silence after that statement rings on a little too long. The wind whines its way into cracks and crevices outside and Shane hates it, vaguely, in the back of his mind.  
  
“You’re not,” Shane says, and it’s not enough, but his throat’s like a fucking desert. He feels like he’s being suffocated by his own inability to do anything right. “Dead.”  
  
The word twists in a sick, unnatural way through his gut, spreading sharply outwards. Dead used to only have one meaning.  
  
~  
   
Ryan tilts his head so he can look at Shane. It’s an odd way to respond. But, then, when does Shane ever respond in normal ways? Ryan could probably count the times on one hand. His eyebrows furrow and he scrunches his nose. “Well, yeah, not me specifically. It was a slogan. I’m trying to market the apocalypse. I don’t have a lot to work with.”  
   
Maybe it’s Shane’s way of telling Ryan he wants to be his friend. Like extending some kind of olive branch after the weirdness in the bathroom. If it is, Ryan doesn’t want that right now. He does—he wants to be Shane’s friend, of course he does. Shane is a good friend—a good person. Ryan wants him in his life in whatever capacity he can have him. But being his friend feels more like a consolation prize than anything else right now. Someday, it probably won’t. But right now—he doesn’t want to think about the power of fucking friendship.  
  
~  
  
He meets his eyes, trying to read him, but Ryan’s pulling back somewhere, somehow drawing away almost like he’s protecting himself, and that tugs at Shane in a way that says _You did this, you idiot. Now fix it._  
  
“Don’t market the apocalypse to me,” he says, “I’m already, I’ve— I’ve bought it. It’s…” His eyes are flickering over Ryan’s face and there’s no bridge, no connect at all when he finishes the sentence with “C’mere…”  
  
~  
  
Ryan isn't sure if he should. But Shane's so soft with it, pushing all the syllables together like powdered snow. He laughs. He does it a lot, with Shane, probably nerves. Or maybe that's just what happens when you have the biggest crush in the world on someone.  
  
Ha, it's weird. Thinking of it as a crush. Less like a knife and more like a rubber mallet. He scoots closer, but his body is already trying to burst with this gnashing, rending feeling inside him. He has no idea how to stay away from Shane. He has no chance.  
  
So he tries to make it less than it is.  
  
“Bossy _and_ needy.”  
  
~  
  
“Are you still talking?” he asks, but his voice is too soft to be anything but teasing. He slides his hand out across the mattress until he touches Ryan, and then he moves close too, until the space between them is almost nothing. Almost. His knee knocks Ryan’s as he uncurls himself.

He doesn’t know where to put his hands to make it okay. To make it casual enough. Everything about Ryan, anywhere he could touch seems charged. He exhales shakily, gets his fingers in Ryan’s shirt just above his hip and tugs, but not towards him. Just a gentle pull, vaguely obnoxious.  
  
~  
   
Ryan’s face has just straightened itself out after Shane’s comment about friendship, and now he screws it up again. He’s trying so hard not to focus on Shane’s hands. They catch in the fabric of his shirt. Their skin isn’t touching. It shouldn’t matter. It shouldn’t feel like enough to throw Ryan back into the fucking briar patch. But it is.  
   
Still, he keeps his face skeptical and amused. Because Shane is, well, cute. It’s cute that he’s tugging on Ryan like a grade-schooler. Potentially trying to make up for whatever he’s not sure he did. Ryan can’t be mad. He can’t even begin to pull away, no matter how much it might ruin him. No matter how much it has ruined him, is ruining him… will ruin him. All at once. None of it makes a difference. Because Shane’s fucking adorable and he has literally no idea. But jesus, Ryan would give anything for the privilege of kissing him like he wants to. The privilege of kissing him _at all_. Of having all of this and not just pieces of it.  
   
“You’re the most ridiculous person I’ve ever met…” His eyes stay on Shane, as soft as his voice. “Congratulations.”  
  
~  
  
One quick breath of a laugh and then he says, “Hey, I’m just trying to keep up with _you_ , buddy.”

He fights not to roll into that warmth, into Ryan’s chest. He wants to touch the cut on his jaw, he wants to do so much more than that, but he’s trying to hold himself back, let Ryan take the lead for once.

There’s a disconnect between the way Ryan looks at him — it makes Shane’s breath come up short, makes him long for something he didn’t even know existed, something he’s half-afraid he’s only imagined into existence anyway — and the way he tells him to stop. And Shane doesn’t know why.

“Why can’t I sleep without you anymore?”  
  
~  
   
Jesus.  
   
This is more than he expected. Like expecting a car and getting a 747 airplane. His eyes widen. He doesn’t exactly want them to. It’s not the coolest response to something like this, but here’s Shane doing nothing Ryan expects him to do and everything he doesn’t. Ryan even opens his mouth to respond, to say something, but nothing comes out. They’re close now. Close, and Shane’s wanting something that Ryan doesn’t know how to give. Because he doesn’t know where they are. From moment to moment, they are in different worlds.  
   
From each other and from where they were in the last one. Shane processes things differently, strangely, and he can only give in spurts. Talks himself out of things, maybe, when they go too far and he thinks about them. But shouldn’t he be thinking about them? Goddamn it, Ryan doesn’t know. He doesn’t know anything.  
   
Except that he has no idea how to answer this question. A joke bounces at the edge of his tongue, but he knows Shane will hate it. Shane takes these vulnerable moments, and he doesn’t like when Ryan dismisses them. Even though Shane seems perfectly capable of dismissing a thousand unmade touches all the time. But why?  
   
Shane ought to know why. It’s not a secret to Ryan why he needs Shane near him, beyond the safety, beyond the companionship—it’s this war drum in his chest. This ache. He doesn’t get how Shane can get so many things that he doesn’t—that he misses, and then miss all the simplest things.  
   
But it’s a big deal, what Shane says. He can’t sleep without Ryan. How can that not mean _something_? No matter what bullshit Shane said in the bathroom. This can’t be misunderstood, can it? Ryan doesn’t know. He’s pretty capable of misunderstanding absolutely everything when it comes to Shane.  
   
“It doesn’t matter.” Ryan takes a breath. “Because I can’t sleep without you either.”  
  
~  
  
He’s watching him for anything, anything he can parse from Ryan’s silences which seems like it should be impossible and, maybe, it is, but he’s got to try because he can’t make himself ask the right questions.  
  
Because the answers might be…  
  
Shane is used to logic, and how it’s unfair and how things are sometimes just shitty or bad or difficult. But when it comes to this, he can’t play by those rules anymore, and it’s like his mind short circuits. And then he acts like an idiot.  
  
And then Ryan tells him he can’t sleep without him, either, and Shane wonders if those words are code for something else — an indirect translation — and he really… he doesn’t know, but he nods and breathes, “Okay. Good.”  
  
And suddenly his desperate want to touch has nothing to do with Ryan’s mouth or Ryan’s impossible black eyes or the way his pulse feels under Shane’s fingers — it’s something else, something that’s been there all along, but quieter. It’s his heartbeat he wants to feel — steady and persistent. It’s Ryan’s hand in his the way it had been in that ballroom. That feels like forever ago, now. Like a scene in a movie, or something he dreamt.  
  
“Yeah, okay,” he says, like he’s just made some agreement with himself, and he presses his fingers against Ryan’s waist, instead of tugging at his shirt like a kid, and pulls himself closer. Shane’s been curled up, not even properly on the pillow so when he straightens himself out a little, pulls himself a little higher on the mattress, his nose brushes Ryan’s in this impossibly close second before he tries to fix it, in these weird, aborted little gestures. He tenses as his lungs forget how to work, then lets go of Ryan’s waist to touch his shoulder, the back of his head, before he pulls him against his own chest, resting his chin on top of Ryan’s head in this kind of desperate finality. _Please stay._  
  
~  
   
Content and confusion marry and settle into his chest. Shane’s touches are softer, now, like they were back in the ballroom. There’s a moment where they’re nose to nose, literally touching, and it’s so close and so far from a kiss. Until Shane pulls him down by the shoulders to stop it. It would be funny if Ryan wasn’t so disoriented. He’s surprised his head isn’t actually spinning. It would probably be, if Shane didn’t have a hand on the back of his neck. If Shane hadn’t pulled Ryan’s head to his chest in this tender, gentle thing that almost makes Ryan not care that he doesn’t know what this is. That he’s still a thousand years from figuring it out and the fucking world is on fire. That’s what Shane’s hands do. And, he doesn’t even think Shane means it this time—he did, with the razor, but Shane’s not trying for anything here. Not anything intense.  
   
He’s just trying. Trying for Ryan. Whether he wants Ryan the way Ryan wants him or not. He tries so hard for him. Shane was probably like this for a lot of people. It seems like he was. Over-extending and pushing himself to do more, be more, for the people he cared about. Kind of like Ryan, but… lesser, quieter with it. Because, whereas Ryan always figured he was too much. Shane thinks he’s never enough. But Ryan doesn’t want to be like everyone. It’s selfish, and absurd, because all those people are gone now. Gone or suffering. And they don’t have Shane anymore, which feels like a worse wound than a zombie bite. For all his confusing bullshit and untethered limbs.  
   
Ryan leans into him. He wants to fall asleep like this and wake up with a mind that isn’t racing, isn’t chasing him through the corridor of his brain with a fucking axe. He closes his eyes, but his heartbeat has caught this kind of pitter-patter panic. It’s bounding, not because Shane’s too intense this time, but because… everything else is. Shane’s the only thing keeping it from bursting.  
   
He dips his head so his forehead presses harder into Shane. His hands curl in front of him to hold the front of Shane’s shirt. He doesn’t want to wrap his arms around him. Because he needs this moment to just collect himself and pull into even the galaxy of sleep. Where it even exists as a far-off hope. But he does hold onto Shane, hard enough that it pulls them closer together, maybe, if that’s possible.  
   
_You always zig when I think you’re gonna zag…_  
   
He doesn’t say it aloud. Because words, movement, are going to drag sleep further from him. And he needs it. God, he wants it so bad. He shouldn’t be that tired. Shane made him sleep last night—he’s got more sleep than he usually has. But his brain is short-circuiting. Everything is too loud and too bright. Like the resolution on this fucking apocalypse is turned up too high.  
   
Shane is the only thing that’s quiet. And Ryan tries so hard to wrap himself in that.  
  
~  
  
Calmness comes to him in pieces, and he lets go of tension almost joint by joint. It takes a long time, because he almost can’t believe they’re somehow… okay again. He’s trying to get this tally of fuck-ups so he can compare it to all the other people he’s known like this, but the truth is, he’s never known anyone like this. Or anything. It’s so much. He’s heard certain words from other people that were supposed to mean the world and more, but they didn’t.  
  
But Ryan can say _I can’t sleep without you either_ and it’s everything Shane’s ever needed to hear.  
  
He doesn’t fall asleep for a long time. There’s something dark and threatening on the edge of his mind like a storm coming, and he’s standing in the middle of a field.  
  
For now, he’s content to lie down in it, let the thing pass over him, or maybe change direction. It’s easy when Ryan’s close to him like this. He knows it won’t be easy tomorrow. It’s never easy when they stop touching because then he’s got all this doubt…  
  
His hands are the last thing to go gentle, to relax. He’s in and out of thought so deep he can barely differentiate it from sleep, so when sleep does come, it’s almost seamless. His fingers hang loosely over the top of Ryan’s spine like he trusts him to stay there. Like he doesn’t _have_ to hold on.  
  
~  
   
Ryan lies there for a long time. A couple times, he nearly falls asleep. Shane doesn’t fall asleep immediately either, but he relaxes. The way people relax when it’s obvious they’re going to fall asleep. The kind that always bothered Ryan at sleepovers when he was a kid and his friends were fading faster than he was (which they always did.) But it doesn’t bother him as much with Shane. It just bothers Ryan that he _can’t_ sleep—and Shane sleeping makes that more blatant.  
   
This is so intimate. Like Shane never told him that he couldn’t do this, or whatever it was he said, at this point, Ryan’s repeated it back so many times that it’s circled around in his head and eaten itself. But now Shane’s holding him, maybe content, and saying he can’t sleep without Ryan. A guy who lived on his own for months during this bullshit can’t sleep without Ryan. It certainly doesn’t sound like _I can’t do this_. Ryan has done the strictly physical thing before and, at no point did he think _wow I’m never going to be able to sleep again without this dude’s hand on my dick._  
   
It makes no sense. Ryan tries an impossibly long time to understand it, to sort it in his head, to sort Shane. But it’s like a mess of silly putty. Every time he nearly gets it flat, gets it under control, some part of it snaps and breaks, and it curls and comes apart again. Insomnia doesn’t exactly make things clearer either. The further he gets into the night, from sleeping normal hours, the worse it gets. The night reaches into his thoughts and steals the color, so he only exists in this awful, black place instead of the real world, where hope is as scarce as it ought to be in the apocalypse.  
   
Because why should it matter if Shane wants this or not? Everyone’s dead anyway. There’s no one to talk to about this. Why does he even _want_ this thing with Shane? Why is this what’s consuming him when he killed his own parents and his little brother is _dead_? It ignites the unkindled rage in his chest. At himself. For somehow being the one left, out of all his friends, all his family—it’s him. Not his mom, who had an answer for everything—who probably could’ve talked sense into zombies if they’d given her time. If Ryan hadn’t… Not Jake, who took everything in stride. Even the loss of his parents, of his whole world. No. Not them. _Ryan_ is left. The person who deserves this the least. The person who has fumbled his way through every facet of his fucking life—the grown man who relied on his mother so much she used her dying breath to tell him to _shut the fuck up._  
   
Which is probably why he’s sitting here languishing over this guy, who wants nothing more than to _survive_. And now Ryan’s pushed all these expectations on him, all these things that Shane’s spent his life trying to get away from. God, he’s just tearing at himself now. He should stop. He should stop before the heat in his chest, behind his eyes, turns into something worse. Something tangible.  
   
He just needs to get up. To calm himself down. He’s pretty sure he’s shaking now, and even Shane’s not enough to stop the hurricane in his heart anymore. The blanket presses heavier every second, like layers and layers of stones that will eventually crush him. Ryan’s a little awkward twisting away from Shane, but he’s asleep so his grip’s gone slack. Ryan ducks out of Shane’s fingers on his spine and slides back, keeping Shane’s arm upright for as long as he can. Eventually, he wraps a hand around Shane’s wrist and lies it in the pool of warmth Ryan’s left behind. Shane stirs slightly, but doesn’t wake up. Ryan hopes he doesn’t. It’s been a couple hours, maybe more. And Shane needs sleep—they both do, but Shane is capable of it.  
   
Christ, Shane looks soft, asleep. Ryan’s watched him before, but it steals his breath this time. Shane is so tall, so much in that one area, but everything else about him is quiet, shimmering at the edges like he’s not quite solid. Not quite enough to impose himself fully upon anyone. Ryan looks away because if he doesn’t, then he’s going to lie back down, and if he lies back down—he’s going to combust. And kill them both.  
   
He climbs gently off the bed, minimizing the movement across the mattress. It’s a pretty solid mattress, so it stays relatively still. He gets off the bed and glances at the door. He could just… go for a walk, but there’s the chance of zombies that way, and he doesn’t want Shane to wake up and have no idea where he is or how to find him. Besides, open air sounds better anyway.  
   
He grabs his sweater since he’s not sure how long he’ll be out there. He might have a full-on break down. He feels one clawing up his spine. So he takes it just in case and unlatches the sliding door, opens it, and steps out. The air is immediately cooler, and the wind from before hasn’t let up much. It picks at pieces of his skin, opens them up. It fills his lungs differently from the hotel room, but maybe not better. Because in the silence, out here, he just kinda… misses Shane. It pisses him off all over again.  
   
The balcony isn’t much. It’s got a little round table and two chairs. He ignores them both and leans over the iron railing. It bites through the sleeves of his shirt and hits icy along his arms. He’s seven stories off the ground, and nothing’s moving. The world looks as dead as it always does. They’re on the backside of the hotel, so he’s not looking at the road. There’s a deserted, dried up pool and a few overturned lounge chairs. Just this haunted, vacant space. It could be a movie set. The whole world could be, though. He stares straight down at the rotted grass, and there’s this fleeting thought— _you could jump_. It jars him. He doesn’t know why he has it. He wants to live, at his core, he does. But there’s all this guilt, about what he’s doing to Shane, how unfair he’s being, at the fact that he’s alive while he let his whole family turn to monsters, killed his parents.  
   
But Ryan doesn’t want to jump. And even if he did, Shane said he couldn’t sleep without him. He’s not going to abandon him to this bullshit if Shane needs him. _And he does_ , some quieter part of Ryan insists, _he said he did._  
   
Ryan drops his head into his folded arms over the railing and tries to breathe. The pressure of sleeping is gone, for now, because he’s up and moving. But it’s not like he doesn’t still need it. It’s not like he doesn’t have to drive tomorrow to some unknown, unspoken destination. He glances back inside, at the bag with Jake’s radio—he would have to leave the room to use it again. And that thing is so obscenely loud Shane might hear it the next state over. He hasn’t used it much, partially because he’s scared of finding nothing—partially because Shane seemed to _despise_ it. But that feels so unfair to Jake. Just like everything else was.  
   
He grits his teeth. A scream builds in his throat but it doesn’t come. Tears build behind his eyes but they don’t fall. He just stays there, still, on the edge of something awful.  
  
~  
  
He’s cold again. Shane’s fingers close over the fitted sheet before he reaches out for Ryan because he’s lost him somehow. But he isn’t there. Disoriented, Shane opens his eyes and for a few seconds, he doesn’t know where he is. The wallpaper is unfamiliar, he doesn’t know this room. He’s dragged himself too suddenly from sleep and he sits up to orient himself. Ryan’s not there. He’s not anywhere in the room that Shane can see.  
  
He’s trying to put together something logical, but things are hitting his eyes funny — there’s too many reflective surfaces in here. His glass of scotch, the bottle of champagne, the window, the mirror over the couch. The bathroom door is wide open, and it’s pitch black in there, ominous, vacuous. Somehow he knows Ryan’s not in there. The flashlight is still sitting beside the glass.  
  
“Ryan?” His voice sounds strange, too soft maybe — or it falls flat in the silence that deadens the space around him. There’s no one else in the room, he knows it somehow, and his heart’s beating much too fast for the level of awake his mind’s struggling to achieve. He shoves the comforter down and swings his legs out of the bed. Standing makes the floor pitch a little, and he kind of has to reign in all of his limbs, catching the edge of the night stand as he moves towards the bathroom anyway.  
  
He has a really horrible thought. The razor he left in there, the darkness, the certainty he has that there’s no one in that room, or at least… no one alive. Jesus, Shane’s not even fucking breathing. He catches the doorframe, eyes wide at the darkness like he can see through it with force, but it still takes them too long to adjust. Ryan’s not there. The razor is where he left it. It only helps a little.  
  
_Calm down_ , Shane thinks. He doesn’t really listen, but he steps back out into the main room and forces himself to be still. Okay. Okay.  
  
He goes back and Ryan’s bag is still there. His sweater’s gone, but his bag is there and— Shane makes one quick step towards the door and then pivots. The balcony.  
  
He can’t see all of it from inside, and it’s all dark out there anyway. Without his sweater, without shoes, Shane closes the distance to the balcony door and slides it open and the noise is strange and too immediate — too close somehow, as it rolls aside — that it alters his panic, throws him back into solid, reliable reality. Because there’s Ryan.  
  
And Shane didn’t realize that his heart was in his throat until this moment, standing there on the threshold, panting slightly. He can’t even… he makes some noises that might be words, or the beginnings of words and then he says, very soft but somehow almost accusing, “What’re you _doing_?” He reaches up with slightly shaking fingers and rakes his hair back from his forehead, eyes strangely dark, clinging to dregs of panic as it recedes. He feels like he’s dreaming, like the world is going to jump cut and Ryan will be on the edge of the balcony, and then be gone.

~  
   
Ryan jumps hard, stumbles and nearly trips over one of the chairs on the balcony. He didn’t even hear the door open he was so wrapped up in his thoughts, howling through him as cutting and whipping as the wind. So panic crashes into him first when the voice, soft as it is, finds him over the weather. He grabs onto the rail to get upright. Shane looks like he’s scoured the entirety of the hotel looking for Ryan.  
   
“Shit, Shane!”  
   
He takes a breath. He can’t really be pissed off when he’s the one that snuck out of the room in the middle of the night without telling him. “Sorry…” He drops his eyes and cast them over the pool’s concrete. “I couldn’t sleep.” His voice is hoarse, maybe from everything that’s been scratching at his throat. Everything he’s trying to hold back.  
   
“I didn’t mean to—sorry if I freaked you out, I just… I was trying to deal with…” He worries his lip with his teeth. “Stuff.”  
  
~  
  
He’s so present and real and vulnerable somehow, that Shane doesn’t know how to handle it. He steps out and then second guesses himself, in case Ryan wants to be alone. 

“Stuff, huh?” He asks, trying to wipe the fear out of his voice, off of his face. He comes close enough to fold his arms on the balcony ledge and look over the side at the pool below. _What kind of stuff?_ he wonders, but he thinks he probably already knows.  
  
~  
   
Shane lets it go easier than Ryan thought he would. There’s nothing really to be mad about. Ryan’s allowed to leave a room Shane’s sleeping in, but he would’ve been freaked out. If the situation were reversed. He wouldn’t blame Shane for holding onto anger, if he ever had any, a little longer than this. He comes onto the balcony, which… is something else. Shane keeps sliding himself into Ryan’s space. It’s completely against how Ryan sees him, what Ryan expects him to do. Shane likes being around him—god, why is everything so complicated?  
   
Either way, Ryan’s glad. He’s had enough alone time. And, as stupid as it is, he doesn’t want to go back in and try to sleep yet. It opens all these shadowed doors. He leans back into the balcony rail, next to Shane, but the pool looks less distorted now. More deserted than dead. “Yeah, for one, how stupid it is to have insomnia during the zombie apocalypse when I am _constantly_ tired.”  
  
~  
  
Shane kind of grimaces because he knows that’s not it. Obviously. He’s not looking at him, but he shuffles himself closer under the unbelievable pretense of reaching up to rub his eyes, drag his hand over his face. “I think having insomnia during the zombie apocalypse is fair.”  
  
There’s all these thoughts fluttering around in his head that feel like they matter, but don’t really and he tamps them down. “Could’a gone swimming,” he says absently, then lapses into silence because maybe that’s what Ryan needs. Or maybe that will make him talk. Either way, it’s a strategy. He’s got Ryan in his peripheral, keeps him there, but his eyes are on the ground below. Nothing moves.  
  
~  
   
Ryan laughs. “Right, swimming. In the dead of winter. Sounds like a blast.” The world is so still—so completely still. He almost wishes something would move, but doesn’t, because that would mean a zombie. Definitely not something to hope for.  
   
A lot of words bubble on his tongue, some of them meaningful, some of them not. He sighs, because they were going to come out. There’s too much of them not to, and the ones that do are, “I feel like I’m the worst person to still be here. During this. All these badass people I knew before, even Jake, all of them would’ve been better at this. I miss them—obviously. I would’ve taken their place so fast because I love them, honestly, but also because maybe they could make this better in some tangible way. At least survive better. I feel like I’m only still alive because of you and some really morbid luck.”  
   
He rubs at his eyes again. He doesn’t actually know if he’s making sense, but talking helps sometimes. And silence hasn’t. “But maybe it’s easier to just… _not_ be here anymore, anyway.” It’s the worst kind of thought, but it’s the only one that brings any sort of peace with it. A reprieve from the guilt.  
  
~  
  
“No, nope,” Shane says, “Don’t— stop talking like that.” He looks at him, brow furrowed. “Don’t even fucking _think_ that, Ryan.” Now that he’s looked at him, he can’t look away, and he feels like something taken his insides and shaken them. It’s a horrible, unsteady sinking feeling, and he’s never been good at talking people down from ledges like this one.  
  
“You’re _not_ the worst person to still be here, wh— that doesn’t even make sense."  
  
~  
   
Ryan laughs, again, and it’s not even forced. “Sorry, I’m not… it’s not like I’m thinking about killing myself or anything. That would just be insulting to the fact that they’re _not_ here anymore. If it’s me, then I’m at least gonna try not to screw it up.” He doesn’t look at Shane, even though he feels Shane looking at him. Looking hard. Looking for something he might already think is there. But maybe Ryan needs to be looking at him, and finding out where all these missing pieces go.  
   
He doesn’t. Not yet. “It just feels like a sick joke that it is me. You’re like Man Vs. Wild over there with your bandanas and your pipes. I essentially lived at Disneyland. It’s just…” He doesn’t know why he’s even saying this. There’s nothing anyone can do about it. “This is the kind of bullshit when you can’t sleep at four a.m. or whatever time it fucking is.” He cuts his eyes to Shane, and a crescendo simmers in just out of reach. “Speaking of, don’t feel like you have to—stay up with me or whatever. At least then one of us would be well-rested.”  
  
~  
  
Shane makes a couple vague protests, because he’s really not. He’s not Man Vs. Wild, he’s just accumulated all this stupid shit throughout his life that ended up being useful, somehow. It’s cobbled together. He just does things until he doesn’t have to think about how it’s done anymore. It wasn’t _easy_ , none of it was. Except maybe the being alone part but he thinks, now, that maybe he wasn’t actually so good at that as he thought.  
  
“Didn’t you hear what I said earlier?” he asks, looking away as soon as the last word’s out of his mouth. “Unless you want me to go.”  
  
~  
   
If his mother were alive, and heard this exchange, she would lambast the hell out of Ryan for liking someone as _indirect_ and _difficult_ as this tall, white boy is. And Ryan would have no idea how to explain it. Then again, someone in Shane’s life would likely question any decision of his to come near Ryan with his over-emotional bullshit. So it works out.  
   
“I never want you to go.”  It’s more sincere than what he’d been about to say, which felt like something snarky about Shane choosing to ignore everything he said before that. But, in the end, there isn’t much Shane can say. Ryan looks away again. Because Shane is telling him he needs him, and Ryan has to find a way to understand that.  To make it fit with the way Shane backs away from Ryan like he’s been burned.  
   
“And, for the record, you’ll never be just a guy in a bathroom for me. No matter what you do.”  
  
~  
  
Shane scrapes his palm over the edge of the rail he’s leaning against because he needs to grab ahold of _something_. He ends up just gripping it because it’s a lot, it means a lot that Ryan never wants him to go because Shane knows that feeling, too, and he kind of feels like he’s never been able to connect with anyone on such a strange, nuanced emotion. Getting mutually angry with Finn at their parents, finding out you had something hilariously in common with an acquaintance… it’s so different from whatever this is.  
  
He thinks of just saying ‘okay,’ like he always does. It starts in his chest, blocky and awkward, but somehow the fear he’d felt when Ryan wasn’t there and the relief when he found him again, and all these things Ryan’s saying now, horrible and wonderful respectively — and frightening, too, like a film over all of it...  
  
“I don’t think—” he begins, because he doesn’t see all this death the way Ryan does. Ryan thinks he should have stopped it from happening, which is ridiculous, but Shane isn’t going to drop that cold logic on him right now. Later, maybe... Because they all got bit. They all got bit and Ryan didn’t, and that means something, even if Ryan could never see it that way.  
  
Shane shakes his head a little and exhales before he reaches out and closes his fist in the fabric beneath the hood of Ryan’s sweater. He just holds it like that for a second, but it feels stupid and small, and so he steps forward and circles that arm high up on Ryan’s chest, almost around the base of his throat and steps behind him, folding his long body over Ryans. He keeps his eyes on the pool and on all the things below, soft-edged through myopia and darkness. “I’m sorry,” he says instead, about all of it. That it happened to Ryan, to him, to anyone, but mostly to Ryan. And he is, There’s more important things to say, anyway, but it’s so hard to get the words out. They’re hot and painful, like when something scalds his throat and sits in his chest like a molten weight.  
  
“Maybe I needed it to be you."  
  
~  
   
Ryan wraps his hand around the railing because this is a lot to take in. Shane’s arm looped over his shoulder, and then Shane behind him. It’s enough, like it was when Shane pulled Ryan to him in the bed tonight. It quiets some of Ryan’s panicked thoughts. The way they swish and swirl around him, though. Hung on the last thing Shane said. That Shane needed it to be Ryan. It’s absurd. If anyone needed anyone, it was definitely Ryan needing Shane.  
   
It’s impossible to get his head around it. And it’s another one of these pieces that Ryan can’t quite figure out where to fit in Shane. This thing that says he and Shane are closer to on the same page about this, about each other, than Ryan feels like they are sometimes. He leans back into Shane, grabs his hand, and squeezes. He isn’t sure how the best relationship he’s ever been in isn’t even officially a relationship and may never be. But that’s the thought he has sitting here, staring at this apocalyptic hellscape.  
   
“Then I’m glad it was.”  
  
~  
  
He tucks his head down so that when he sighs, it’s against his skin. “Better not be lying,” he murmurs into Ryan’s neck.  
  
He half wants to pull away, but Ryan’s holding onto him, onto his hand, so maybe he doesn’t want Shane to. Shane fights to soften his edges and just stay like this, shoulders braced against the wind. “It’s cold out here,” he adds, definitely sulking a little.  
  
~  
   
It is cold, but Shane whispers into his neck and it’s the hottest he’s ever been. It’s funny that _Shane’s_ complaining before he is. Then again, Shane hasn’t had the foresight Ryan has to put on a sweater. Still, Ryan’s been out here a little while longer than he has. So he’s taking it as a victory. Or it’s just kinda sad to think he’s getting used to this shitty weather. He misses LA. He misses warmth.  
   
He raises his head and turns, keeping a loose grip on Shane’s hand as he turns to face him. Not really ever moving away, so it’s not the smoothest motion. But Ryan doesn’t care. Even when he’s still got Shane’s hand and he’s close enough to kiss him, pressed into his chest.  
   
“Let’s go in. Seven stories up at your height—you’re basically taller than Everest. You probably already have hypothermia.”  
  
~  
  
“No,” Shane says, in this voice that’s every inch someone’s little brother. Once. “I’m a mountain man, remember?”  
  
He’s looking down at Ryan with the softest eyes. The fear’s gone, the panic, the disorientation, the darkness that fills them, sometimes — other times — when he meets Ryan’s gaze. But he wants to kiss him, still. He thinks about it. Of course he fucking does. He thinks he’s been thinking about it since Ryan appeared at his cabin door, months ago.  
  
Winter feels endless. He wonders, vaguely, if they’ve missed Christmas.  
  
“C’mon,” he says, but can’t quite bring himself to step back.  
  
~  
   
Shane’s looking at Ryan like… there’s this gentleness to it, like Ryan could wreck everything, could screw every single thing up, and Shane wouldn’t care. And it’s nice, because Ryan feels like he has, in a lot of ways. And Shane, looking at him like this, almost makes it okay. Shane makes this world okay. Makes Ryan okay in a way he’s never been.  
   
And god, they are close. Shane hasn’t stepped back, and Ryan’s locked on Shane’s face, his eyes, his mouth, with this bright-eyed gaze. It’s this counter to Shane’s—or it feels like it. All hyper-real energy and frenzy. He wants Shane so much, but he still, even now, doesn’t know what that means. Whether Shane wants him or if Shane’s just doing what he needs to do. Maybe he’s closer now, though. He’s taken a step towards getting it, because he doesn’t feel as awful as he did after shaving.  
   
They’ve been like this too long. Ryan could kiss him. They’re on a balcony. In a weird, non-apocalypse way, it might be a good moment. Romantic. But Shane might not even want that. Shane might not know what he wants and Ryan so doesn’t want to push him. He fists the front of Shane’s shirt and pulls him down as he pushes up onto his toes to say against Shane’s ear:  
   
“Do you want to go in or not?”  
  
~  
  
Shane shivers, closes his fingers in the fabric at the small of Ryan’s back and hold him close for a second.He forgets he’s cold, lets out this soft sound that’s embarrassing enough that he has to turn it into words. “N— yes, inside.” Breath shakes out of him. “Fuck, you—” he laughs softly, tugging back. “You’re gonna—”  
  
~  
   
Shane says yes, and still hasn’t moved. He’s flustered, and it’s cute. That, and Ryan’s high on the fact that he’s caused it. He smiles this smile that tilts his whole countenance, squints a little. He’s still got one hand on Shane’s hand and the other in his sweater. He lets his sweater go, but keeps the grip on his hand as he finally steps away. He hates it, but it might be okay this time. Especially because he keeps his hand on Shane’s and tugs him toward the door.  
   
“You’re so cold you can’t even make sentences. Let’s go.”  
   
Because Shane did say yes.  
  
~  
  
Shane lets Ryan take his hand, and he doesn’t quite take Ryan’s back. He trails him in, though, and they close the balcony door and get back into the bed because it’s the only truly warm place, but they don’t really sleep.  
  
Shane’s slid one arm beneath Ryan’s shoulders, but Shane’s not facing him. He gazes up at the ceiling like he can see stars up there or something. They talk on and off about little things, simple things, things that used to be. Every once in a while, his fingers skim over Ryan’s arm.  
  
He thinks maybe he sleeps. Eventually. He doesn’t always hear what Ryan’s saying. It fades in and out a little, even as he tries to hang onto his words. Ryan’s talking about the finer points of basketball sneakers or something, and he feels like he just blinks, but suddenly he’s opening his eyes to watery light, and Ryan’s quiet beside him, breathing deep and even. By his watch, it’s a little after six in the morning, and Shane’s just thinking he’s content to stay there and let him sleep when there’s a sudden flurry of noise outside.  
  
Shane’s heard that sound before, but he can’t place it, in reality. Of course he can’t. It’s machine gun fire, seven stories below, somewhere out on the street. Ryan jolts against him, and Shane’s already sitting up.  
  
There’s a panicked couple of minutes where they decide what the fuck they’re going to do. Shane wants to get the hell out of the hotel before whoever’s down there finds _them_ or destroys the car or something.  
  
Shane’s blood’s pounding through him almost violently when they make the break from the hotel lobby to the car out front. This is where real life differs from an action film. It takes too long to unlock the doors. Shane’s fucking shaking, so that’s ridiculous. He knows the sound came from the back of the hotel, near where the pool is, but neither of them got close enough to the windows to look out and see what was going on. Shane doesn’t know if gunfire means zombies or not — where did they come from if he and Ryan hadn’t seen any? The thought of them being out there all along, just… silent or hiding, is a terrifying one. The idea that the people down there were shooting at something that wasn’t zombies is equally as bad.  
  
“I put my seatbelt on,” Shane says, once they’ve driven far enough that they know they’re not being followed. He says it because it was absurd.  “It was completely instinctual like ‘ _whoops_ ’— need my seatbelt!” He does this exaggerated seatbelt-bucking motion, trying to make Ryan laugh, trying to make light of this. They drive until there’s pretty much nothing or no one around, living or dead, thanks to Nebraska being a fucking ghost-state. Especially now. Everything is a ghost town now, though. It’s a fucking creepy thought.  
  
They stop around mid morning to piss, to eat something, to get some fucking air. TJ’s car’s practically a matchbox, but Shane knows he shouldn’t be complaining. His legs hurt, but it’s just muscular, and the injured one isn’t actually doing too bad. The rest has helped — all this driving. He figured that if they’d kept walking like the were he might be a lot more fucked. He doesn’t know how Ryan did it, with his leg broken, all that time. They covered half of Illinois. He never complained, not once. Shane isn’t fucking about to. He’d changed the bandages after he showered in the hotel, and there’s places he thinks will scar. All the cuts have closed up, but the skin’s healing wrong at the inner back part of his calf, and there’s these long, pale scratches where the trap dragged against his skin.  
  
They’re leaning against TJ’s car with food laid out on the hood. Shane tries to ignore the fact that if he has to eat one more saltine he’s probably going to _lose his mind_ and keeps his eyes on their surroundings instead, but more often than he should, he finds himself looking at Ryan. He looks tired. They finish the food, drink some of the water which they’d re-filled at the hotel before all the panic.  
  
Ryan straightens up when they’re done eating as Shane balls up the crackers’ plastic wrapper like he’s going to fucking throw it away or something — like it will matter — and he says “I can drive. I’ll drive,” and holds out his hand for the keys before Ryan can argue.  
  
It’s been a long time since he’s driven. He digs his glasses case out of the very bottom of his bag and puts his glasses on before he folds himself into the driver’s seat and adjusts things until he can fit, until he can actually use the mirrors, and he only tells Ryan to shut up twice, so all in all, he’s not doing too bad. And once they’re back on the freeway, it’s easy. It’s mindless, a little, especially with no other cars to watch for.  
  
He doesn’t know where they are, and Ryan’s useless with the map, but the signs are mostly clear. “I know we’re supposed to be going east, I thought we were! _Man Vs. Wild_ ,” he grouses the first time they get turned around. “I can’t even tell which way is fucking north, Ryan.”  
  
They bicker a bit over the map, and Shane pretends he’s not enjoying himself. They find north or, more accurately, they find a sign that tells them they’re still going east, and things get quiet again. Shane gets a little lost in his own head.  
  
His driving is vastly different from Ryan’s careful driver-school-handbook driving. Maybe Shane starts out with both hands on the wheel (a little white-knuckled if he’s being honest, and also, TJ’s alignment sucks), but after a while he falls into the groove of it, eventually kind of dangles, one handed, off of the top of the wheel because his arms are just way too fucking long. Fuck ten and two. Ten and two is stupid. Except it’s not, because Shane likes the way Ryan looks when he drives. He likes the seriousness, the concentration in his face.  
  
He’s actually kind of surprised that Ryan hasn’t used his opportunity to shit on Shane’s poor steering wheel etiquette and he glances over at him, some stupid smart-ass remark halfway off his tongue.  
  
Ryan’s leaning against the window, fast asleep. The winter sunlight hits part of his face, softens the edges of his hair that still so, so black even hit full on by the light. His lips are slightly parted. He looks adorable, and something in Shane’s stomach flutters up into his chest and he thinks his heart actually skips. Ryan’s such a control freak, he’s _said_ as much, and here he is sleeping, now, while Shane drives.  
  
Shane stares a moment too long though because the car’s drifting vaguely over the dividing line (and towards the fucking median) and he looks back in time to swear and correct. Somehow he does it easy enough that Ryan doesn’t even twitch. He softly curses his way through a minor heart attack and when he can breathe again, he glances back — for an appropriate amount of time this time.  
  
God he looks… there’s a rush of something warm and safe like… like maybe this is normal and they’re going to just… show up in Colorado or something and there will be normal things. Electricity. Hot water. Frasier. People who don’t carry machine guns. Maybe the zombie apocalypse hasn’t happened in Colorado.  
  
But probably not. So what? They just keep going? To California, and then what? If they keep going west, eventually all this land’s going to run out. He doesn’t know what happens then.  
  
He tries not to think about it. He tries to imprint this moment in his mind so he can have it forever; this image of Ryan in the passenger seat next to him, asleep, trusting. He looks really young, soft. He looks beautiful, but then Shane always thinks he looks beautiful and something shivers slow and sort of wonderful all the way through his spine to settle warmly in the place where his ribs meet.  
  
In this moment, that feeling is safe. He lets himself have it, doesn’t look into it too deeply, just for a moment.  
  
~  
   
Ryan doesn’t understand why everyone uses guns _so much_. He’d be uncomfortable with them, even if he had a lot of bullets. That’s probably dumb. A gun with ammo is probably a great thing to have during the zombie apocalypse. But the sound of them is not something Ryan’s used to. He keeps hearing it in his head as they drive away from the hotel. He misses it already. That place was comfortable, but it didn’t really make sense that no one else would be near it—or maybe it did, they were in freaking Nebraska. The only reprieve from it is Shane being an absolute idiot. Ryan knows he’s just trying to entertain him, but because Ryan is apparently a six year old child—it works. But at least he has the common sense to be appreciative. Most six-year-olds don’t.  
   
He’s surprised when they pull over and Shane offers to drive. He’s fucking _exhausted_. He slept some, probably not more than a couple hours, but it was not near enough for this shit. Still, he doesn’t love the idea of someone else driving. Plus—Shane’s got all these limbs. Ryan can’t imagine driving is _fun_ for him. But Shane pushes so Ryan relents. He’s driven what—weeks?—without Shane pushing to drive. So he gives him this one.  
   
But he resolves not to sleep. Other people driving makes him nervous, even when there aren’t cars on the road. He doesn’t know where Shane will end up if he sleeps. It could be in a ditch, and besides, Ryan doesn’t like driving with no one awake—not in this shit—so it’s possible Shane won’t either. So he’s not going to sleep. Even if it makes sense to. He absolutely will not let himself do it.  
   
But they’re driving and it’s quiet. Shane isn’t saying much. Ryan doesn’t have much left to talk about. He rambled for so long last night, and he talked some on the way—even though Shane was dozing in and out. He presses his head against the window to focus on the scenery that paints blurred colors in his vision as they go. There’s not much to see. Nebraska is pretty damn flat, but it’s golden. Sometimes he sees the world in grays now, with all the icy rain and broken buildings. But, out here, it’s just all these golden hills. They’re dead—the plants are dead, like everything else, but unlike everything else—they’ll come _back_. He watches it, repeating over and over to himself that he shouldn’t sleep. That he can’t sleep, and that he shouldn’t.  
   
That’s probably why he does.  
   
He knows he has, for what feels like it might be a long time. A couple hours. He blinks out of it. Half-starts, but it’s a sluggish start. The road’s still moving in front of them, so Shane hasn’t driven the car into a ditch. Ryan rubs his eyes.  
   
The silence is weird, and his voice is hoarse. “Jesus, how long did I sleep? I can drive now, if you want—how’s your leg?” Shane looks like he’s paying less attention than he should be—he’s lazily holding the wheel, but Ryan bites his tongue because they’ve gotten this far without any catastrophe.  He glances at the radio and thinks briefly about turning it on. But Shane hasn’t.  
  
~  
  
Shane glances at the car clock but it’s definitely wrong. “It’s fine,” he says, meaning his leg. He reaches up with his free hand and adjusts his glasses by the arm. “I… think we’re like only an hour or two outside Colorado.” He’s been doing the math for that in his head and its been keeping him occupied.  
  
“How’re you feeling now?” Shane asks, “You’ve been drooling on yourself over there.” It’s a lie, but he wants to see if Ryan will get embarrassed.  
  
~  
   
“ _What_?” Ryan jumps in his seat like Shane’s word electrocuted him. His hand snaps to his mouth to wipe it, or punch himself in the face—either way. Did Shane just sit there and let him drool? That’s… the worst. Not that he could really do much and keep driving. There’s nothing there and Ryan doesn’t see anything on his sweater or anywhere else. He glares back to Shane.  
   
“Fuck you!”  
   
He no longer gives a shit if Shane wants silence or not. He leans forward and clicks on the radio. The first couple of stations are static. He’s not really sure what he was expecting, but this is absolutely not superior to silence. Eventually, shockingly, one station has a song playing. Ryan doesn’t recognize it, but he brightens at the lack of static and sits back.  
  
~  
  
Shane is laughing, delighted with himself, delighted with Ryan’s reaction. It’s a little cruel, maybe, but it was worth it. He’s even still sort of chuckling as Ryan flips through radio stations because it’s _hilarious_. And adorable, but mostly it’s hilarious.  
  
When the station works, Shane’s initial reaction is complete shock. His eyes go wide behind his glasses, and he glances between the road and the radio and Ryan. “Hey— Holy shit!” He doesn’t know what exactly to feel. The radio’s playing something. That means there’s electricity somewhere, that someone had to actually have put the music _on_. That someone’s operating some kind of station from _somewhere_. Right? Maybe Colorado is zombie-free after all. He doesn’t place the song right away.  
  
And then he does.  
  
_Another mother’s breaking_  
_Heart is taking over_  
_When the violence causes silence_  
_We must be mistaken_  
  
And then the chorus kicks in and it’s jarring, somehow. It’s also, on some plane, deeply funny, he thinks. He knows there’s a morbid joke in there, but his only reaction is to go “Ugh, no,” and reach for the dial to shut it off, change the station, anything. Anything else.  
  
~  
  
Ryan starts when the lyrics of the song finally settle into him. He does know this song. Jesus, he’s heard it before. And, why would anyone be playing this right now? He’s barely sat back when he springs forward again to turn it off. To switch. The static would be preferable to this.  
  
But as he reaches, Shane’s reached too, and their hands collide with one another. Ryan’s moving fast, because he hadn’t quite shaken the momentum from sitting back, so it’s kind of a crash.  
  
“Shit, sorry, I was…”  
  
It shouldn’t bother him. Their hands running into each other like this. He dragged Shane back into the hotel room by his hand last night. And yet this has his whole body going into overdrive.  
  
~  
  
He doesn’t even get a chance to turn the music off. Ryan’s hand against his surprises him even more because he’s not really looking. The car actually sways a little as he looks back down.  
  
He laughs a little through his words, glancing nervously between Ryan and the road. “Don’t, why are you apologizing?” but something feels altered. He’s so aware of each place Ryan has touched, but it’s gone now, mostly and…  
  
_Why not?_ He wonders. Because it means something to do that? To hold hands with someone? That wasn’t even what they were doing, or _trying_ to do, but he’s back to last night and how Ryan taking Shane’s hand had felt like the safest thing, the easiest thing, amidst all the other possibilities.  
  
And now it’s frightening again, because there aren’t other possibilities now. It’s just this moment and this _stupid_ song. What the hell, The _Cranberries_? Shane thinks. Couldn’t they have played something else? Like literally anything else…? It’s the _apocalypse_ for—  
  
It’s the apocalypse and Shane won’t take Ryan’s hand, ‘cause he’s scared of something he doesn’t want to think about. They literally could die any day and Shane’s been shying away from…  
  
His breath kind of sticks in his throat. He feels like Ryan’s drawn away like ten minutes ago. _It’s too late now_ , he tells himself, but he fights it down, that logical voice which is also (coincidentally, surely) the voice that protects him from every frightening thing.  
  
Shane glances at Ryan again and then reaches out to find his hand. He misjudges and his fingers slide down over the soft, warm underside of his wrist and that _does_ something to his stomach. He slips his fingers beneath the sleeve of his sweater, over his forearm, and then back. It’s a pretty quick movement, even though he’s still hung up on the inside of Ryan’s wrist and how thin the skin felt there, how soft and…  
  
His fingers slide over Ryan’s palm and he pulls him marginally closer so he can get his forearm hooked over Ryan’s, slides his fingers through his. Mentally, he’s searching for a joke, but it’s not coming. This is so… much more intimate, somehow, than other things they’ve done. This is— saying something. Admitting something. He’s not sure what, but he holds on anyway as fear rises in him like the tide. He’ll drown here, maybe, but he doesn’t want to let go.  
  
~  
   
Ryan stares. He’d written the moment off as an awkward thing, and then it just was… and no one said anything. Except Shane telling him not to apologize. And it was okay. Maybe not great, but fine, and then Shane’s hand is on him. Ryan truly has no idea what Shane’s doing. Just that the roughness of his fingers brush the delicate skin beneath Ryan’s wrist and it trills up his arm and down again. He thinks about asking Shane _why_ , but nothing comes out of his mouth. He just sits there staring, and then Shane pulls at him and gets their hands entwined.  
   
_Oh shit._  
   
He didn’t expect this. Hell, Shane didn’t even properly hold his hand last night when Ryan was fucking around and sleep-deprived. And this, with the sun still streaming through the car windows, is so much more than that. This is a big fucking deal. Shane’s fingers pressed between Ryan’s. Ryan has this weird thought that he’s imagined it. He’s still half-asleep and touching Shane’s hand with the radio and this is a fucking dream sequence.  
   
But no matter how many times he blinks, Shane still has a grip on his hand. And this isn’t huddling together for warmth, this isn’t—accidentally getting each other off in a bathroom. This is… both less than and so much more than that. Shane is trying to tell him something—something he can’t say properly because he doesn’t trust himself to.  
   
Ryan’s eyes soften as he watches their hands for too long and finally, finally, squeezes back. Because no one’s hand has ever felt quite so normal between his fingers. No one has ever fit there so well before. It rushes through him like dust set alight. He can’t bring his mouth to open, to say anything, so he just sits there—cutting his eyes to Shane every now and then. This song is still on the radio, but suddenly it’s not the worst thing in the world anymore.  
   
Nothing is.  
   
Ryan’s laugh is quiet, almost too soft to be one, but he smiles somewhere between shy and smug as he glances out the window.  
  
~  
  
Shane thinks that Ryan can possibly feel how fast his pulse is going, because Shane can feel it in the urgent beat between his fingers, but slowly it starts to fade, and Ryan’s fingers stay closed around his and things settle a little. The song ends and another one comes on, a completely different time period, a different feel. Shane’s kind of relieved it’s not some Twilight Zone bullshit where _Zombies_ just plays over and over through the stereo.  
  
Shane knows the next time the music breaks that someone’s going to speak. That there’s a real life person out there, somewhere, because there’s this inhale and pause and his fingers close tighter in Ryan’s, almost too tight, and then this soft voice crackles a little through the speakers. “If there’s anybody alive out there…” Static. Shane catches a couple of fragmented words and then the static clears a little. “It’s um… December 24th. Christmas Eve. Not that it matters. I can’t tell you the time anymore because we lost power briefly, so all the clocks are flashing 12. Anyway. Maybe avoid the stores this year... Yeah.” Music filters through again. Shane’s holding tight to Ryan’s hand, still. “How far can radio signals travel?” he asks.  
  
~  
   
Ryan’s more shocked by the voice than he should be. It makes sense that something would come after the music. A person has to be playing it, but he nearly jumps out of the car window when he hears somebody. They can’t be bad. They’re doing a damn radio show. And they sound hilarious. And it’s Christmas Eve. Wow.  
   
He stares at the radio before he eventually looks up to answer Shane’s question. “I’m not… I have no idea. It’s usually like over a couple cities, at least. But who knows the signal strength they’ve got? It can’t be great…” He really has no idea. “Should we—are we gonna try to look for them?”


	14. Part 14

Part 14

“Should we—are we gonna try to look for them?”  
  
~  
  
Shane’s already started to shake his head, but there’s this hope in Ryan’s voice, this unbreakable assuredness that other humans are so good and so halfway through saying no, Shane bites his lip and glances over. “I… I mean, maybe. I guess.”  
  
He’s nervous though, and he slows the car down. “I guess we could just drive until the signal gets clearer.” _If_ it gets clearer. “See where we end up. You can’t be reckless though,” he adds.  
  
~  
  
Ryan rolls his eyes. “I'm never reckless.” But he hopes it won't be an option. These people are good. He heard them. They seem good. He needs to see someone good. Preferably without a gun. To know it's not just him and Shane now.  
  
“It won't matter. They sound nice enough. And hey, it's Christmas Eve. That's good to know.”  
  
~  
  
“Yeah,” he says, not sure exactly how he feels about that. He glances over again, still hyper-aware of Ryan’s fingers laced through his, of the warmth of his skin. Shane’s fingers feel cold in comparison. “What do you Californian weirdos even do for Christmas time? Do you barbecue Christmas dinner or something? Just throw the whole turkey on there, stand around in your— your shorts and your flip flops?”  
  
They pass the border into Colorado. Shane watches the sign flash past. He’s all tension again, because he doesn’t know if this is a good idea, but then… how bad could someone playing music into the void be? Maybe no one’s listening. It seems lonely…  
  
~  
  
Shane’s tension is more obvious with their hands linked. Ryan wishes there was something he could do to steal it from him, but there isn’t. So he just holds on a little harder. His hands are cold. Shane is from Illinois. He should be the warmer of the two of them, and yet he always seems colder. Probably because he has literally no insulation.   
  
He laughs, or scoffs, something mixed between the two of them. “We celebrate Christmas like everyone else does. Except it isn’t that cold. Generally not short-weather, though. At least not for us. Just because you apparently celebrated Christmas in an igloo and got dinner through ice fishing doesn’t mean that’s the only way to do it.”   
  
He wishes he hadn’t said it, because he’s thinking of Christmas at his house. His mom insisting he and Jake help decorate the tree. Jake finding discreet corners to stand in to Instagram the entire thing. Jesus, he misses them.   
  
The sign for Colorado barely registers with him. He hopes these radio people will make this better, not worse.  
  
~  
  
Shane’s thinking about Christmas, too, so now they’ve both gone quiet. The mug he bought for Finn is still somewhere in his bag. Fireplaces, warm blankets, movies. And he’s thinking about how neither he or Finn ever brought anyone home like you were supposed to.  
  
There’s something in the distance. An eighteen wheeler, across more than half of the highway. It doesn’t look like there’s anyone inside. Shane has to edge over onto the shoulder to get around it, and there’s graffiti on the back — a message for people going the way they came from.

FOR BEHOLD THE LORD WILL COME IN FIRE TO RENDER HIS ANGER WITH FURY AND HIS REBUKE WITH FLAMES OF FIRE.

“Jesus,” Shane whispers, almost to himself. He shakes it off in fragments and he’s talking to Ryan again like maybe he can distract him from the apocalypse, from everything that Christmas won’t be, tomorrow, but he ends up talking about it anyway, before he can really catch himself — “I never… never brought anyone home for Christmas. Did you?” Because he wants to know things. He wants to put together all the pieces of Ryan. Collect them all — all the pieces of his past, of what makes him who he is.  
  
~  
   
Ryan flinches at the words on the truck. It’s not like he hasn’t seen this kind of thing before, but it jars him. He’s trying to be hopeful, half caught in Christmases gone by—and then there’s this horrifying graffiti screaming at him.  
   
At least it’s not dead bodies. He doesn’t see them much anymore, not like he did at first—at first, they were everywhere. And then they just kind of stopped. He wants to believe it means less people are dying. But he think it just means no one is staying dead anymore.  
   
Shane’s voice pulls him out of the thoughts. Talking about Christmas again. There’s this shot like a firework through his mind—different from the rest, where he’s glad that Shane didn’t bring anyone else home. Even the girl he split the rent with. Not that he’ll ever bring Ryan home for it, so it’s not necessarily a competition he can win. But still.  
   
“Yeah, a couple girlfriends. I had two pretty long relationships so we always did the Christmas and Thanksgiving thing. Family stuff was a big deal to me, I guess.” He glances at Shane and tries to imagine what his family was probably like at Christmas. There were definitely fireplaces. They probably roasted fucking s’mores. His whole family probably would’ve thought Ryan was an inept city brat. Still, he wants it more than anything. This impossible faux-memory. Just like he wants to imagine Shane in the middle of his, and his mother conspiring to corner Shane and talk to him, about Ryan, about anything.  
   
“Did all your family live in Illinois?”  
  
~  
  
“Mostly,” Shane says. “I’ve actually… like I’ve been around the country before, but I’ve never actually _left_ Illinois, until now.”  
  
He’s toying vaguely with Ryan’s fingers because he needs something to do with his hands. He unwinds himself a little so he can press his palm flat to Ryan’s.  
  
“Do you think you’d ever… like would you _ever_ have brought a guy home?” Shane asks, “Could you have, do you think?” Because his parents, they didn’t care, but he wonders if Ryan’s parents would have. How much they would care. Ryan tries so hard to live up to everyone’s expectations of him, and he wonders if this whole thing felt impossible to him, felt like it had to be locked away, always. Shane’s drawing his fingers loosely over Ryan’s, sliding from his palm to the tip of his index, dragging his fingertips over each of his finger joints, does it again with his middle finger. It’s sort of mindless, calming. He likes Ryan’s hands, but he’s never specifically noticed them until now.  
  
~  
   
Ryan’s watching Shane play with his hands. He’s making odd gestures, but it’s relaxing. It occurs to him that Shane isn’t driving with both hands on the wheel. In fact he’s very torn between two things—Ryan and the road. But Ryan doesn’t say anything. Because he likes this—Shane messing with his fingers feels good. Apparently so good that he’s willing to die for it.  
   
He’s definitely willing to die if it means not thinking about his parents’ reaction to him bringing home a guy. He shrugs because it’s easier than answering. “I mean, I’d like to think…” _If it was you._ “If the guy was—if I was serious about someone, that I could’ve. I would have to… discuss it with them first. But they’re definitely not the type who would’ve like disowned me or anything. I don’t think.” His parents were hard on him—put a lot of expectations on him—and they wouldn’t have loved this. But they wouldn’t have hated him.  
   
“You’ve been around the country? On what? Like a roadtrip?”  
  
~  
  
“I said ‘around,’” Shane says, “But I mean, like… “New York. Iowa. I went to Nashville, once, for like a music… festival thing. The furthest west I’ve been is probably Oklahoma. So I said around but I mean— basically I mean the Midwest plus a couple more states. We were going to go, actually, me and some friends I had a pod… did you listen to podcasts?” he asks, suddenly. “We did a podcast called Pie After Dark. It was a pretty big deal,” he says in this ridiculous way that means that it definitely wasn’t at all a big deal. “Anyway. Then zombies came. So.”  
  
They reach a fork in the road and Shane slows almost to a stop. The left one goes towards Denver and the right… is a mystery because half the sign’s gone. They need gas soon...  “What do you think, Ryan?” Shane asks, closing his fingers around Ryan’s palm. “You feeling adventurous? Which way do you think our radio tower is?”  
  
~  
   
Shane and his friends seem infinitely more interesting, and infinitely more ridiculous, than Ryan and his. Granted, it’s Shane so he doesn’t know why he’s surprised. “Pie After…” He lets the words drift into the air, because he starts thinking about Shane talking about how he baked pies and how it’s apparently a bigger part of his life than Ryan realized. And it’s hilarious.  
   
But they’re at a crossroads, and the signage to help them is gone. Ryan has no idea what the best way is. “Why are you asking me? If either of us has instincts here, it’s definitely you!” He is not feeling adventurous and doesn’t think he has been since the whole world imploded on itself. But Shane looks like he’s feeling adventurous for whatever reason, and their hands are still linked.  
   
So Ryan says, “I don’t know—not Denver. Go right.”  
  
~  
  
“You got it,” Shane says, and so they do.

It’s beginning to get dark as they reach first suburbs, and then a kind of downtown area. It’s definitely not Denver, and it looks more abandoned, somehow, than the other places did. Again, there are absolutely no people.

Shane had hoped to be somewhere safer but they aren’t when he says, “Okay... we have to find gas.” The meter is dangerously low, and there are a few cars around here that look like they might still have some in their tanks.

He stops the car, shuts it off and the sudden silence is strange. The radio’s been playing something instrumental for a while now, something that barely scratched Shane’s consciousness, but the silence is jarring once it’s gone.

He looks at Ryan, squeezes his hand a little before he lets go because it feels far more intimate now that he’s not distracted by driving. 

They get out, closing the car doors as carefully as they can, and Shane pulls the pipe and a gas container out of the back, loops a length of garden hose over his shoulder.

“Does it feel weird here?” He asks Ryan as they move towards the first car. It’s parked along the street in a no parking zone. “The quiet is wrong.”

He turns to look over his shoulder, boots scraping against the pavement, but there’s nothing. He turns back and goes still as stone.

“Ryan,” he whispers, sharply, because Ryan is a few feet ahead. Because in the shadows of an underground car park, the darkness shifts and moves.

Shane’s heart lurches because Ryan is so much closer to them than he is, and there are so many. It looks like the darkness is unfurling. Something makes a rattling sound.   
  
~  
   
Ryan hates that he understands what Shane means about the quiet being wrong, but he does. They’ve walked for miles before, in silence, and his spine has never crawled like this. Or, well, not when nothing was wrong. Ryan grabbed the hammer and flashlight before he got out—it’s not that dark, but it’s dark enough that if they wander long it will be. They’re supposed to be checking cars for gas, anyway. He clutches the hammer too tight against his palm and misses Shane’s hand.  
  
  
Noises register, faint and distant, so he can’t be sure if he actually heard anything. Some of them are Shane shuffling, or Ryan’s shoes scraping the ground—but others, they feel big, unnatural in this far-off way. That he needs to find the source of.  
   
He clicks the light on and trails it over the pavement, catching jagged slashes of car tires, staying low enough to avoid the headlights. Shane hisses his name, and Ryan glances back in a quick turn before he follows his gaze. The darkness shifts and moves like the noises—this thing that isn’t quite right, but isn’t quite solid either. The flashlight does hit something solid, though. He doesn’t turn it intentionally, doesn’t mean to flash it. But the sliver of a tattered pant leg is the last thing he sees before he hears the the blood curdling shriek. It tears straight into him.  
   
He regrets the flashlight so much. Fuck, maybe they wouldn’t have been so obvious if he didn’t have it—but, he uses it now. There’s… oh, fuck—“Oh, fuck!”—there are a lot of them. The most he’s seen in one place since he left LA. Since he saw a news broadcast. He cuts the light, shoves it into the pocket of his jacket and spins back towards Shane. The turn throws him—either his leg isn’t completely healed or it isn’t going to stop being a pain in his ass for the rest of his life. He stumbles, long enough to give the things behind him a little ground—but not more than a few seconds.  
   
They could get back in the car, but they won’t get far enough. The meter was empty. They shouldn’t have still been moving when they stopped—and these things would break into that car so fast. God, they’re all making noises now. It’s this loud, discordant cacophony. Ryan grits his teeth. Jesus, there’s so many—there’s too many. It flashes through Ryan like splashes of blood along the inside of his skull. There’s _too many_.  
   
He reaches Shane and shoves him forward. He doesn’t need much—he saw them first so he was half-moving. Not as fast as he ought to be, probably because he was waiting on Ryan, potentially trying to go towards Ryan and therefore the zombies, but moving enough that Ryan doesn’t jar him when he pushes him away from certain death.  
   
Ryan sprints towards the set of buildings lining the street. He half-drags Shane with him, but just like any time they try to help each other run—it’s awful and probably makes everything worse. But he can’t let him be slow right now, and his injury is worse Ryan’s. Fuck, his injury. _Okay, calm down_. They just need a door between them and these things—preferably one that isn’t lined with glass windows. He lets Shane go a few paces before he stops in front of a restaurant door and yanks on the handle, but it doesn’t move.  
   
“Are you fucking serious?” If there is anyone inside, he doesn’t have time to wait on them to answer the door. The couple of seconds he spent trying to open it has granted the first zombie he saw—the one in the jeans, the time to get within lunging distance of Shane. And there’s what looks to him like four hundred of them behind him. Jesus Christ. Fear hollows his head. He has to take a gasp of air to refill it, to refill everything.  
   
Ryan reacts to the zombie because it’s near _Shane_ , and he reacts to it like he can actually take on an entire horde of them. He swings and manages to catch the nearest one in the shoulder.  He tries so hard not to see the silhouettes behind it—not to think about how close they are to dead right now. He stumbles back, ready to swing again, right as Shane says, “Ryan!”  
   
Shane’s standing at the entrance to another door. This one looks like it’s some kind of boutique or clothing store. And the door’s open—Shane’s holding it. Thank fucking God. Or, Ryan is beginning to think that, until he has to shove the zombie that’s trying to latch its jaw onto him back. It’s a jerking, violent motion that disorients him before he starts to Shane. But he does. He gets there, gets inside the store—it’s this small, claustrophobic space. Maybe there’s a back entrance.  
   
He isn’t far from the door, though. There are so many of those things, running—god they are running, and they feel faster than they’ve been before. And now Shane has to get the door closed. Ryan takes a few steps back to help him, when another one of those things growls and he nearly drops everything to cover his ears.  
~  
  
Shane’s boots literally slide along the floor as the zombies start hitting it, and suddenly it’s this massive weight of pushing, rotting bodies and Shane can’t breathe.

He slips, almost loses his grip, but then Ryan is there, and he somehow hauls himself up, shoves his shoulder against the door with everything he has.

Too bad it’s not enough. The door is thrust inward once from the outside — sharply — as the weight of the zombies shifts. It seems like maybe one has fallen and Shane barely registers it before the edge of the door slams into his cheek, the edge of his forehead. His glasses snap. The lens shatters out of the frame and one arm of them literally snaps off and falls to the floor and he’s seeing stars, staggering back, touching his face instinctively because it _hurts_. His glasses clatter to the floor and his fingers come away bloodied. Ryan’s still holding his place against the door, but he’s losing ground. One of them shoulders its way in, colliding with him, shoving him back.  
  
“Fuck!” Shane shouts, sheer panic, and he can’t even go to him or they’re completely completely fucked. He takes Ryan’s place at the door again because he has to. He’s got to keep any more from getting in because that’s it. That will be the end, but he can’t stop looking over his shoulder at Ryan.   
  
~  
   
If he hadn’t been panicking about Shane falling, the zombie may not have gotten in. Probably would not have. But he was—is about halfway through asking Shane if he’s alright—so it does. It pushes Ryan back from the door so he loses his hold. “Fuck!” He tries to reach for the door, but the zombie’s right there. He stumbles. It opens its mouth to let out this spew of saliva and sound. Ryan covers his face and staggers back until he collides with a clothing rack sans any clothes. It’s metal, but it rolls, which throws his balance until so much of his weight hits it, he falls and it falls with him. His back drags along the top bar until his head hits one of the wheels. The hammer bangs in an eruption of sound along the hardwood, and the flashlight clatters and rolls away from him.  
   
“F—” White-hot pain crackles and pops along his back, settling in the middle of his head. Something warm and oozing sticks to the back of his shirt. He actually tries to grab his head, to relieve it, before he realizes this is the apocalypse and legitimately no one has time for that shit. Or, really, he doesn’t realize so much as the zombie bends to take a bite out of him. He kicks it in the jaw, or the throat, somewhere in that region, and is slightly disappointed when its head doesn’t just fall off.  
   
It does stumble so he untangles himself from the clothes rack. Goddammit, Shane’s still stuck holding the door against a legion of deathbringers—and last Ryan saw, he was having a pretty hard time. And that was before he hit his head. But, unlike the zombies he’s fought in the past, which have politely given him a second to get his bearings—this one is a hungry jackass. It crawls at him like a fucking raptor on super speed, noises included. Ryan is half-up when he moves his arm to block it. He does, but the force knocks him into something else—a display table, this time, and the side of his head hits the corner. It’s close enough to his eye to draw stars across his vision and pain, a whole new rush of fucking pain.  
   
And then it draws anger. So much of it his blood claws at his skin from the inside. He snarls and catches the zombie by the head. He twists around it and slams it into the same corner he ran into, only with much more force—once, twice, and then its skull cracks and splits open. It spews more black shit so he jerks his head away and covers himself again. Jesus Christ, that was _violent_. It’s only now that he remembers, notices any details about the person he just killed—a man, probably no older than forty when he turned. He moved too fast for anything else. _You didn’t kill him. He was already dead._  
   
 _But you didn’t have to smash his head open._  
   
It scares Ryan, for just a second, but he doesn’t have time to be scared. Especially of himself. Not when there’s a thousand more zombies to kill. His vision mostly rights itself, but the skin where he hit the corner pulses to the same rhythm his back is. He grabs the hammer and moves back to the door and just prays that he’s not about to have to kill more zombies. More people.  
  
~  
  
There is so much noise behind him, and every single noise crawls beneath his skin like razor blades, like insects. It’s awful, it’s worse than the sounds the zombies make.

“Come on, Ryan!” Shane bites out, and he means _survive_. He means _don’t get bitten_. He’s got the pipe gripped hard in one hand but he can’t pull away from the door long enough to use it with any significant force.

One of them gets a long, scabbed arm inside and grips his shoulder, dragging him closer to the gap in the door, to its open mouth, and Shane can’t twist free and hold the door shut at once.

If he gets bitten, he thinks, he can still keep the others out. He’ll still have time to protect Ryan, so he doesn’t try to twist out of its grasp, just shoves one end of the pipe into its mouth and _pushes_ , and turns his face away from those teeth.  
  
~  
   
There’s no zombie inside, but there is a zombie arm inside. And it definitely has a hand on Shane. Who is foolishly making no effort to stop this from happening. “Shane!”  
   
He’s got the pipe shoved into the mouth of the zombie holding him so Ryan can’t exactly crane kick the door to get it to shut. Nor can he yank Shane away from the door, or he shouldn’t, because he’s pretty sure they both are going to have to hold it to get it shut and locked. Instead, he swings the hammer in an arc hard enough to snap whatever’s left of the thing’s bones. He hits it again for good measure. It falls away from Shane.  
   
He pulls Shane’s arm and his pipe back, but not away from the door, and slams himself hard enough against the door to hurt. The zombie ought to be dead anyway. There’s more force than there was before. His body shakes under the strain, even with Shane still there. They keep squeezing limbs into the cracks, and Ryan can feel the bones fighting back against him as he tries to push it closed. Another arm gets through and almost grabs him, but the door gives another inch and a sickening crunch jolts through Ryan. The arm falls limp, out of the door frame, just like the other one.  
   
Ryan’s gritting his teeth so hard it’s making his already pounding head hurt worse. If he doesn’t end up a zombie, he’s going to come away with rigor mortis, anyway.  
  
~  
  
Shane’s teeth are gritted so hard he thinks he feels one of them crack, or maybe that’s just another zombie bone breaking. He braces himself as hard as he can and uses his full body to shove once, twice, three times against the door and by some miracle, it closes.   
  
Shane slams the lock into place, gasping. He grabs Ryan by the arm and pulls him away, and oh God, there’s blood. “Shit, did it?” he starts, eyes flickering to Ryan’s, wide and dark with fear.  
  
~  
  
Ryan gasps. It feels like the first time he's breathed since he saw the zombies. But they're outside for now. Shane tugs him away from the door. Amazing how now he has the idea to get away from zombies.

Right, Ryan did cut his back. "No, I..." He gestures vaguely to the overturned clothes rack. "I fell."

Ryan reaches out like he's going to touch the already-purpled side of Shane's face, but he stops short. He bites his teeth together and cringes, glances down at Shane's broken glasses.

"Jesus..." They can't exactly treat it here. "You okay? Anything look more purple?"  
  
~  
  
Shane reaches out to touch Ryan’s temple where it’s bleeding, hissing in sympathy. The door shudders. “Okay... I’m okay. Right, I think let’s _move_.”

He grabs Ryan’s hand, it’s so... he just does it, and pulls him quickly towards the back of the cramped little store. He grabs the flashlight on the way.

“God damn it,” he whispers, because it’s dark, and they’re stumbling over storage, and other random junk to get to a door at the back of the room. It’s locked and the noises in the other room are getting more alarming. “Let’s just break it down,” Shane says, then realizes he has no idea how to do that. He looks at Ryan. “Count of three?” He asks, almost laughing, but his eyes are strange with all this repressed panic.   
  
~  
   
Shane actually wants to break down the door. If it wasn’t for the shrieking outside the other door, Ryan might question him. But they don’t have time. Ryan doesn’t have any magic tricks for getting the door open so maybe breaking it down is the best option. He looks down at their hands. He’s only half aware Shane grabbed his in the chaos, or he was. Now he’s way too aware of it.  
   
Damn it, why is this door locked from the _outside_? What kind of fucking sense does it make? Maybe people were barricaded in here before, or they thought they would be. Which begs the question, why are there never any people around—ever?  
   
“Okay,” he says. “On the count of three, I guess.” Because apparently that’s what they’re doing.  
   
Shane counts down, and they both slam into the door as hard as they can. Ryan tries to stay near the side with the lock because he read once for a horror film that was the best way to break a door down. Fortunately, it doesn’t really matter, because they’ve got enough combined weight so it swings open and away from them.  
   
They do not, however, have enough combined coordination to stay upright so they tumble, pretty comically, into what looks to be a back alley. Ryan lands on his shoulder. It hurts, but thank god it isn’t his back. Because he’s pretty sure he ripped that skin wide open and, well, they do love blood.  
   
Ryan stumbles to his feet and reaches for Shane to help him because even though the noises are quieter now, the zombies are still on the other side of the building and they just made a shit ton of noise. He searches the alley for other doors. There’s a few, but they look boarded up.  
   
“What now? Do we just—find another building until they get tired or decompose?” He’s still whispering as he helps Shane back to his feet, frantically looking for where to go next. He snaps his head towards a noise that’s too close to the opening of the alley. If they get trapped back here—they are fucking dead.  
  
~  
  
Shane half turns towards the sound, not very quickly considering the level of panic he’s feeling. As a kid, as a teenager, his limbs had always left him slow-moving and uncoordinated — like he had to arrange all of this self underwater. It was something he’d fought against for a long time, until he achieved this weird, strange elegance — a little too delicate, definitely self-conscious.  
  
He feels like it’s obvious sometimes, how much concentration he has to put into any significant movements, how carefully he focuses on things like stairs, doorways, god forbid _sports_. He doesn’t know why he does it. Maybe because his height draws attention to him. Because he’s got all this extra superfluous stuff attached to him that he needs to be a person, but that takes up too much of his mind. Because he’s always having to adjust himself to others — hunching his shoulders, figuring out where the hell to put his hands so that he’s not just this mess of leg and arm that never quite fits against someone else.  
  
He’s got his fingers curled in the side of Ryan’s sweater, now and he just pushes him towards the back of the alley. “I dunno, let’s just…” What if there’s zombies behind those doors, too? “Maybe we can climb over the back wall?”  
  
At the mouth of the alley a woman drags bare feet across pavement. She’s looking straight ahead and Shane holds his breath but he knows, somehow, she’s going to see them. And she does. She turns her head slowly, eyes milk-white. “Fuck,” Shane whispers and pulls Ryan a step back, behind him.  
  
The zombie screams and starts her hitching, dragging run towards them. She’s slow, and that’s worse somehow. Shane should have piped her before she made a sound, but he can hear them now, coming closer. He steps back and back, keeping Ryan behind him, but they’re fucked.  
  
There’s another sound and Shane spins. It sounds like the door to the store’s been broken down. They’re going to be surrounded. Shane lets go of Ryan to slam the pipe into the skull of the woman. She topples sideways and he says “Run, run!” and they make a break for the entrance of the alley. They’re almost there, but they’re beat to it by this wall of zombie-sound, a mass of jolting bodies and hungry mouths and reaching arms.  
  
A door opposite to the one they left squeals as it opens. Shane’s got this death grip around the top of Ryan’s arm because he’s terrified, but he spins towards it. There’s someone. Some _one_. He says “In here,” like he’s giving a mediocre museum tour and holds the door open for them. “Hurry.”  
  
It’s like Shane’s brain’s shut off. He just does it, half-dragging Ryan in after him, and the door’s pulled shut. Bodies crash against it. It’s very dark where they are. Shane literally can’t see anything, but he hears something that sounds like a deadbolt slide into place.  
  
“Don’t worry, they can’t get in here,” the voice says. Shane kind of feels like he’s listening to  a computer talk. It’s weird, but not in a bad way. Maybe it’s because he’d prefer to be murdered by this random dude than any one of those fucking things outside.  
  
“Bitten?”  
  
“No,” Shane says, too short, too breathless.  
  
The voice says “Wait,” and Shane hears him move away and Shane’s panting through painfully restricted lungs and for a second, in the dark, he dips his face into Ryan’s hair, but it’s very brief. Then he works on unwinding his death grip from Ryan’s arm as a red light flickers on in the distance, illuminating everything in shadows. The guy beckons to them from a hallway.  
  
~

Everything happens really quickly. Fortunately, the things that are happening aren’t… many zombies. There is one, but Shane gets rid of it—and then there’s this other person. This other person who is helping them do something, and they’re inside this dark, cramped space and Shane’s wrapped around him. And Ryan doesn’t mind. He might actually mind if Shane wasn’t clinging like this, because then it’d mean Ryan would have to. Because his heart’s fucking racing and he just needs both of them to be okay. He needs them to not be in danger, and he keeps thinking of Shane’s glasses broken on the floor of that fucking clothes store and it just… keeps repeating how close they are. How close every day they are to death because of these fucking zombies.

But he needs to focus on where they are. A red light comes on at the end of the hallway. The guy told them to wait, but he’s waving them in now. And he’s awfully fucking confident that the bodies slamming against the door right now aren’t going to break it. Ryan is considerably less confident, so he keeps staring back at it. It looks sturdy, but it’s not barred or anything.

“You coming?” the guy asks since neither Shane nor Ryan has moved to follow his instruction. And, really, it seems like a stupid thing to ignore the person that just saved their lives. But also, this red light is ominous as hell. Literally. This guy could be a murderer. He’s got all the inflection of one. 

Ryan tosses Shane a quick look before he goes first. Shane’s just finally got himself fully removed from Ryan’s person when he does. The guy’s standing in a red-lit restaurant. It’s dead as the rest of the places they’ve been. The tables are this deep kind of wood that probably means it was way overpriced before. Maybe this guy with the emotionless voice is the owner.

Speaking of, he catches Ryan by his upper arm, and Ryan jumps nearly high enough to hit the ceiling. Which isn’t a particularly high ceiling.  Shane makes some kind of sound, but the guy lets go, and there’s this momentary twitch on his mouth—his eyes flicker, but they don’t smile. They don’t really show much of anything, but Ryan knows—somehow—that he was starting to smile.

“Relax. I’m not gonna, like, stab you or something.”

“Sorry. You’re right. Can’t imagine why I’d be jumpy.” But the guy stopped him because there’s a door at the edge of the room, opened.

He starts down the hall without bothering to say anything else. He doesn’t even acknowledge that no, it’s probably not cool to grab strangers by the arm. Ryan is still holding a hammer. He definitely could’ve smashed his face in. In fact, he’s surprised that wasn’t his first response. The stairs lead into another dark hallway, and Ryan’s struck again by the fact that this guy could be a creepy murderer.

But what’s even the point of being a creepy murderer when ninety percent of the population is already dead? Surely you don’t want to waste any interaction you have with not-feral people on stretching your murder muscles. Or maybe you do. Ryan doesn’t actually know much about murderers or how they think.

But there’s light spilling in from the side of the hallway and when they get to the entrance it opens into a bigger, somehow warmer space. The floors and walls are just concrete, but the rest of the space is wooden and lit with chandeliers that looks to be made out of empty wine bottles. There's a bar immediately to Ryan’s right as he walks in—long and varnished in warm brown wood with about six bar stools in the same color. There’s a few tables on the other side of the room, just apart enough from the bar to make a pathway to the back of the room where the bar stops.

There’s more seating back there, two chairs facing a table that might have a checker board on it, and at the very back, a long booth tucked into the wall and adorned with a person. A smallish guy with black hair and an extremely friendly face. One that Ryan thinks for a second he may have imagined.

“Hey! You got to them before they got eaten!” 

“Barely,” the other guy says, still in that weird monotone.

The other guy—he’s Asian, Ryan finally confirms—pulls himself off the booth-couch-thing he was lounging on and grins.  “Well, we’re glad you’re not dead!” He sounds like he means it. Ryan almost smiles. “I’m Steven, and my pale, expressionless friend here is Andrew. He does actually have emotions.”

The other guy—Andrew, apparently—shrugs and gives Steven an expression that Ryan might be able to decipher if he knew the guy better. “I do,” is what he says in response. Then he looks back to Shane and Ryan. “Who are you two? And why did you get out of your car?”

~  
  
“We ran out of gas,” Shane says, and then, to Ryan, “Fuck, the— I left the hose and everything.” He doesn’t even remember what he did with it, must have dropped it when they ran.

There’s all these eyes on him, and he shifts a shoulder beneath it, like something’s pulling on him wrong. “Anyway. Shane. Thanks for not letting us turn into supper,” he says, like it doesn’t actually bother him. Funny, he might be convincing if he didn’t still sound breathless.

“You’re very tall,” the guy, Steven says.

“Yeah,” Shane agrees. What else is he supposed to say? These people seem... well, sort of normal. Or at least not awful. There's no guns anywhere, so that’s a plus. Shane’s very aware, suddenly that he and Ryan are standing here looking half-feral and covered in blood and these guys look. Good. Put together. Now he knows how Ryan felt when he showed up at Shane’s cabin.  
  
~  
   
Ryan glances over to Shane. Because, damn, he’s right—they left everything in the car. Their bags, with the food and water and… fuck, the _gun_. He doesn’t say that aloud because it seems like a bad idea, and if Shane hasn’t already realized it—it’ll just upset him. “Oh, shit. Maybe they’ll leave it alone if it’s just… I mean zombies don’t need anything in there. It’ll probably still be there in the morning.”  
   
“Do you guys wanna sit or something?” Andrew furrows his eyebrow. It’s the most his face has moved since he found them. He’s kind of leaning so he’s looking at Ryan’s back. “Is that blood on your sweater? Are you sure you’re not bitten?”  
   
“No, I’m not—why does everyone always think I’m bitten?” He tugs at his sweater to keep it from sticking to the split skin on his back. It stings before it comes away. He didn’t figure he’d bled enough that there’d it’d be visible through the shirt _and_ sweater, but maybe half of what Andrew’s seeing is sweat. Or blood. Honestly, who gives a fuck? He isn’t _bitten_.  
   
“Because you look like shit, dude,” Steven says. So Shane’s tall and Ryan looks like shit. Great. Then Steven glances at Shane again. “You both do. Do you want something to eat or drink or something? We have a stash—we’ve even got some first aid for your faces.” If nothing else, props to these guys for being more trusting with respect to the bite than TJ. Then again, this time Shane hasn’t actually tried to take a bite out of Ryan’s neck in the past twenty-four hours.  
   
Andrew looks between the two of them like he can’t imagine why they aren’t already in a chair. But they aren’t. Neither of them is moving towards one. Ryan probably should, but it feels like they’re invading—like he did when he first showed up at Shane’s cabin. This isn’t his space.  
   
“Please sit down. You’re making me very uncomfortable.” Andrew gestures towards all the chairs behind them. “Do you guys want a drink-drink? You look like you need that more than water right now.” He glances at Ryan as he walks around the back of the bar. He brushes Steven with his arm as he passes. Steven turns his head, but Andrew looks at Ryan. “Do you have a name too or should we just call you both Shane?”  
   
“Because that’s confusing,” Steven says.  
   
“No,” Ryan answers. “My name’s Ryan. And water’s good with me.” For now at least. He doesn’t know if he can turn down alcohol all night. Especially after the buzz he got last night. He looks at Shane one last time before he sits in one of the table’s chairs, because he’s not about to blatantly refuse to do something Andrew said made him _uncomfortable_.  
  
~  
  
Shane follows Ryan down because there doesn’t seem to be anything else to do, but he’s staring at him, eyes intent, because what blood? He’s not about to turn him around, or pull his sweater off to check. But he hadn’t noticed. He’d only noticed the blood on his temple.

He’s looking at Ryan so intently like he’s going to be able to check his rate of blood loss by his eyes that he doesn’t even notice the way Andrew keeps looking at Ryan.

“I’ll take a drink-drink,” he says. He’s way too on edge to sit down but he doesn’t want them to think he’s nuts so he bounces his leg. “What’ve you got?”

“Pretty much everything,” Steven says. “No mixers through.”

“Unless you like your mix to be all alcohol,” says Andrew. He holds up a bottle of bourbon.

Shane waves a vague hand at it. “Great.”

Steven says something about first aid and bandages and disappears.  
  
~  
   
How is Shane wanting a drink right now? Ryan is perpetually dehydrated. He’s probably dying or something. Shane’s peering at him, almost like he’s mad but not quite. He returns the look for a normal amount of time before he drops his chin into his hands. It’s amazing they keep ending these days not dead.  
   
Andrew starts pouring the drink Shane asked for—bourbon now that Ryan’s paying attention. They have a whole rack of bottles lining the wall behind the bar. Jesus, how do they have all this? Did they just get lucky or have they been gathering this stuff? It’s a bar, so possibly the former.  
   
Steven comes back with a little first aid box and sets it on the table between Shane and Ryan. “There you go. It should be fully stocked. It’s got antiseptic, bandaids, all that stuff. You can use it however you want.” He steps away from it, like he doesn’t know how to end that particular exchange.  
   
Andrew saves him by bringing the bourbon and the water and setting them on either side of the table. Ryan is almost regretting not asking for alcohol, but he got drunker than Shane did last night. Surely his body will thank him for this. He takes a drink of the alcohol. “Thanks.”  
   
There’s this awkward silence where Steven and Andrew don’t know what to do because they’ve run out of helpful things to do. Ryan watches the first aid kid like it’ll spring to life and heal him through sheer force of will. He pushes it towards Shane, because his face is all kinds of discolored. There’s a cut in the center of it—and it might be slightly swollen.  
   
“Fix your face.” He tells Shane, before he looks at the other two. “Do you guys have a wet rag? Or ice or something?”  
   
“Yeah,” Steven says, back to being the helpful one as he disappears again. Andrew watches him go. Ryan wonders if they actually have running water or if he’s going to use a bottle to wet it. Hell, maybe they _do_ have ice. But Ryan sincerely doubts it. Andrew brought him a bottle of water, so that doesn’t bode well.  
   
Andrew breaks the next awkward silence in Steven’s absence. “So, where’d you two come from?”

~  
  
Shane looks at Ryan again, wondering how much he wants to disclose, how much they _should_. But they really don’t seem like bad people, and Shane used to be more trusting, once upon a time.

“Uh, the Midwest,” Shane says. It’s too vague. “Illinois.”

“Wow,” Andrew says and Shane has no idea what emotion he’s actually conveying. He takes a drink, eyes flickering to Ryan again. He has the sudden terrible thought that Ryan will want to stay here with these people. That he’ll fit right in somehow. That maybe he won’t want to leave. 

Shane doesn’t know why it scares him so much. He opens the first aid kit but doesn’t touch anything.

What if Shane’s ready to leave and Ryan doesn’t want to come with him?  
  
“What about you?” Andrew asks Ryan. He’s watching him like he’s trying to see any white filtering into his dark eyes or something. He’s very intense.  
  
~  
   
“LA,” Ryan answers immediately. “But I… I went to Illinois, and then… came back.” Andrew blinks at this. Probably because it doesn’t make much sense. Ryan has completely back tracked. He’s done a fucking circle.  
   
Andrew doesn’t seem to know what to do with this information. He just stares thoughtfully at the table for a while, before he says, “You’ve been busy.” He doesn’t ask why. And Ryan’s glad, because he doesn’t want to have to explain that his brother died and it upended everything and now he’s subliminally trying to get Shane to go to Disneyland with him. Mostly because Shane doesn’t know that.  
   
“Yeah…”   
   
Steven brings the rag out and seems to be unsure who needs it. Ryan’s face also has a bruise on it. Steven decides to give it to Shane, and even if  it was exactly what Ryan was asking him to do—he bristles.  
   
“Did you forget how to first-aid?” Ryan asks Shane since he’s just staring at the contents like he, too, thinks he can will them into action through an imagined musical number like the plates in _Beauty and the Beast._  
  
~  
  
“I think I have,” Shane says. “I can’t see what I’m doing.” He presses the rag to the cut anyway and closes one eye against it briefly because it stings. He takes another drink. 

He’s trying not to think that it must sound to Andrew like Ryan came to Illinois for him. Even though that’s definitely _not_ what happened.

“You should take care of your back,” Andrew says to Ryan. “Before it gets infected.”  
  
~  
   
Ryan’s about to offer to help Shane, which is going to be wildly awkward with two other people in here staring at them. But he doesn’t think it’s appropriate to ask them to leave their own… place, or whatever. Then Andrew asks about his back.  
   
He really doesn’t want to treat his back in front of a room full of people, because that is going to be clumsy as fuck. He could ask Shane for help, but that would be too dependent—as if Shane having to shave for him isn’t already. Still, that is just another reason to preserve some semblance of independence.  
   
Ryan hasn’t done much because he’s stuck between approximately twelve different actions, so Andrew asks: “Do you need help?”  
  
~  
  
Shane pulls the cloth away from his face and it’s pretty gross, all half-dried blood. It hurts. 

“I’ve got it,” he says, a little too firmly. It rattles him a little. “Okay?” He asks Ryan, looking over at him. 

Andrew shoots Steven a look and their eyes meet for a quick second before Steven breathes a very soft laugh. There’s almost no trace of it left in his voice when he says “There’s a bathroom down the hall.”  
  
~  
   
Okay, so it’s good that Shane said something because Ryan had no idea how to tell Andrew no. Because if he didn’t want to be dependent on Shane—he definitely doesn’t want to be dependent on this random stranger. He nods at Shane when he asks, belatedly, if Ryan’s okay with him helping. But he shouldn’t have to ask. He probably doesn’t. He probably asks because he feels weird for being semi-weird about it.  
   
Ryan closes the first aid kit and stands up. “Okay, cool…” He smiles at Shane like he’s encouraging him. He always seems to shrivel when there’s more people around—even if Ryan’s working with limited evidence. He starts towards the hall but stops. “Oh, and… thank you guys for… saving our asses and letting us—” He gestures around. They definitely didn’t have to do this.  
   
“It’s cool,” Steven says. “We don’t get a ton of visitors, and Andrew’s secretly into pissing zombies off.” That seems like a terrible thing to be into, and Andrew tosses Steven a look that says it’s blatantly untrue.  
  
~  
  
Shane gets to his feet, swaying slightly because he’s freaked out and starving and he drank too fast. He’s tired.   
  
He can see the blood on Ryan’s sweater now and, Christ, he’s so bone tired of this life.  
  
But he follows Ryan down the hall and when they find the bathroom, Shane tries the light and, lo and behold, it works. He closes them both in and turns back to Ryan, leaning back against the door. He wants to hug him and he doesn’t know why. Maybe because they almost fucking died, maybe because he’s feeling deeply uncertain.  
  
“You okay?” He asks him, and they’re alone but the tone of his voice is only for Ryan anyway. Shane doesn’t feel like _he_ is. He feels really fucking overwhelmed, too tense. He feels like he can’t take in much more stimuli. Christ…   
  
~  
  
"Yeah," Ryan answers automatically but he doesn't know. His body has gone into the state where it can't stop vibrating. When he stops moving, stops figuring out Steven and Andrew, there's an exhaustion he thinks could kill him.

But for now, he's still moving. He takes the rag out of Shane's hand and reapplies it gingerly to his face, folding it so the blood faces away from him. Shane isn't okay. He doesn't seem okay.

"Are _you_?" He's using the rag as an excuse to touch him but he gets a hand on Shane's bicep anyway. He holds him like he needs to support him, even though he isn't—he’s just looking up into his face and trying to find a way to fix this.

Maybe it's the gun. Or the people. Or the near-death or... There are certainly a lot of things.  
  
~  
  
“I’m... tired,” Shane says as lightly as he can. “Our stuff’s still in the car.”

He lets Ryan touch him for a moment, lets him deal with the cut, and closes his eyes. Somehow his hand finds Ryan’s hip and he holds on very lightly. It takes him a second to focus when he opens them again. “Let me see your back.”  
  
~  
  
Ryan is hesitant. He doesn't actually pull away until he bandages the cut on Shane's face. And he's slow about it. He uses antiseptic because they have it. But he's careful because Shane seems like he might fall over. Shane's grabbed onto his hip, softly, and Ryan tries very hard to remind himself Shane is hurt. Also so is he. It's not the time for weird lust shit.

Eventually, he pulls the rag away but doesn't move to obey Shane. He doesn't even let go of his arm. "Hold on, maybe we should put some of this on your leg while we have it?" He shakes the small bottle of antiseptic. "It's not totally healed."  
  
~  
  
Shane gets this little flicker of fear that maybe Ryan did get bitten. He takes this short soft breath. No. He’d know.

Still, he shakes his head and says “Back first. Come on, I’ll help you.” He moves his hand, gets the fingers of both hands beneath the hem of Ryan’s sweater, and gently pulls.  
  
~  
  
"Whatever."Ryan huffs, but considering Shane is halfway to taking his shirt off, he relents. He helps Shane raise his shirt and sweater. It's this thick mass of clothes. He feels like he's suffocating for a second before just gets both over his head so his whole torso is exposed. It's easier that way.

The cut is shallow, but ugly. It's a line of broken skin where the corner dragged almost perfectly along his spine. It's left more broken skin over the top than something sharper would have, and faint purple coloring lines the outside—hard to see over the dried blood staining the edges.  
  
~  
  
Shane turns him so he can see, and sighs a shivery sound, but it’s mostly relief. It’s not bites, not even fingernails. He’s safe. He reaches for the antiseptic, faces Ryan to the mirror, and holds Ryan’s shoulder because it’s going to hurt. “What do you think about those guys, huh?” He asks, half to distract him as he starts cleaning the cut. “Pretty good place...”  
  
~  
  
Ryan grits his teeth but manages not to whimper. He does hiss softly before he lets out another shaky breath.

"They seem nice. I mean, they saved us." He grabs onto the sink to keep his physical focus away from his back. "What about you? You're the lone wolf right? Not gonna die from over exposure, are you?"  
  
~  
  
He thinks about making some joke but then... what if Ryan does want to stay? What if he’s just following Shane around because he feels like he owes him somehow or... what if it’s better, safer for him to stay here? Shane doesn’t want to dissuade him. Right?

“No. It’s fine. I just have to remember what manners are.”

He’s trying to be as careful as he can but he can see it hurts, Ryan’s tense beneath his hands. He slides a thumb over his shoulder in a soothing motion. “Jesus, how did you manage this?”  
  
~  
   
Ryan does his best to be still. He’s been walking on a broken leg. This really shouldn’t be that big of a deal, but it’s the stinging that kills him. He’s also… almost disappointed that Shane seems willing to go back out there and talk to these guys. He shouldn’t be—he should want Shane to feel comfortable here. Anywhere, really. But some part of him wants to be special.  
   
“Like you ever knew what manners were…” He stares at the mirror, absently fingering the bruise forming along his right eye. It’s less vicious than Shane’s, but Steven was right—Ryan does look like shit. Somehow worse than Shane, despite the lesser injury.  
   
“And I told you, I fell, onto a clothes rack. It tried to impale me.”  
  
~  
  
“Well, you fall spectacularly well,” Shane says, “It’s almost a perfect straight line.” He finds something to bandage it up with, being as careful as he can, and then he turns Ryan around by the shoulders and just looks down at him for a moment. He feels tense or quivery or something in the middle and he looks so tired, so beaten down and Shane thinks that it would be so much better if Ryan could stay here with these apparently nice, kind, easy-to-talk to people — these people that look almost normal, almost like average functioning humans in the face of the end of the fucking world.  
  
 _Sorry_ , he thinks, because he doesn’t know what they’re doing. He doesn’t know where they’re going or what they’re going to find at the end of it, and Ryan’s just been with him, this whole time. He’s never asked questions, he’s never questioned Shane’s decisions, and Shane really has no fucking clue what he’s doing. Maybe he’s just making Ryan’s life miserable. Harder than it has to be. Maybe they should have…  
  
He doesn’t know. He sighs, heavily, whispers, “Jesus,” and cups Ryan’s face in both his hands, tilting it up to the light a little bit so he can see that cut. “Do your brains feel scrambled?” he asks. “Your pupils are the same size, so I guess that’s good."  
  
~  
  
"Thanks. I have a lot of practice.

"Ryan really shouldn't let Shane keep spinning him like this. He should insist on spinning himself because first, Shane's going to make him dizzy, and second, he is an adult. But he doesn't stop him. He just goes with it. Because it's Shane.

And yeah, Ryan's brain is scrambled because Shane's cupping his face a breath from a kiss.

"If my brain is scrambled, yours is mush." He touches Shane's cheek gingerly where he put the bandage. He smiles because Shane seems like he needs it. "Sorry about your glasses." He says it quietly, like the glasses are Finn all over again.

"We should still treat your leg."  
  
~  
  
“Is it weird to be an adult and still play doctor?” Shane asks. “I think you have a doctor kink, Ryan.” He lets his hands fall, but they skim down over Ryan’s neck, over his collarbones, hitching lightly, before he drops them to his sides.  
  
He thinks it’s probably fine, but whatever. Whatever Ryan wants, especially today. Because Shane should have paid more attention to gas and the light fading and their surroundings and…  
  
He sits down on the edge of the bathtub and rolls his jeans up, undoes the bandage he’d tied there the night before at the hotel.  
  
~  
   
Shane runs his hands over Ryan’s neck and he ripples like disturbed water. He keeps himself still, non-reactive, because Shane’s saying the word kink and Ryan needs to stay focused. Shane’s hands fall to his collarbone, his sides. Ryan doesn’t breathe for too long.  
   
When he wriggles back into his own body, he rolls his eyes. “Yeah, because wanting to take the one chance to get to make sure you don’t go into septic shock is me having a _doctor_ kink. That trap almost took your leg off.”  
   
He huffs like he’s annoyed, but mostly it’s an excuse to shake himself out. He kneels to get a better angle on Shane’s leg. Annoying that Shane doesn’t see the value in this, when he was the one who insisted on coming back to the bathroom to help Ryan with his back. Ryan uses the antiseptic liberally, but he applies it to the cloth first. The cloth is starting to lack clean spots, but it’s all he’s got. There aren’t any towels in here.  
   
The cut bubbles, a lot, which proves that Ryan was right and there was absolutely value in doing this. But he should probably not still be stinging about the doctor kink comment. Maybe he’s just embarrassed about Shane commenting on any kinks at all—especially while he’s touching Ryan like that. He re-bandages it with fresh ones and winces. They’re using a lot of Steven and Andrew’s shit, but they seem together enough not to need it. Sorta like TJ. He rolls Shane’s pant leg back down and the backs of his fingers skim the sides of his calf.  
   
Why are he and Shane the only two without proper first aid and yet always the ones in need of it. He sighs and stands up, eyes on Shane with an expectant exasperation. His leg twinges, probably because he’s tired. “Okay, now you can thank me when your leg stays attached.”  
  
~  
  
He flinches when Ryan’s fingers brush his calf, but it has nothing to do with the vague sting and bite of the injury. “That’s… I’ll just detach the other one and cut it in half and then have two normal sized legs,” he says, looking up at him.  
  
“Okay… let’s go back out and… socialize. Hope they haven’t roofied our drinks.”  
  
~  
   
Ryan’s face twists into something resembling concern, but he doesn’t say anything—mostly because it’s Shane and he shouldn’t be surprised anymore. He doesn’t know why anything Shane ever does surprises him. He is one giant walking surprise.  
   
Ryan gets his shirt and sweater back on before they leave the bathroom. When they get back to the bar area, Andrew and Steven are both in the booth—and Andrew’s got his arm around Steven. Jesus, they’re sitting really close. And not looking weirdly unsure about it. Ryan stammers to a stop like he’s interrupted something.  
   
He can’t get anything because Steven says, “Oh, hey—we were starting to think you guys got lost back there.” He looks over both of them. “You feel better?”  
   
Andrew raises his eyebrows. “You look slightly less like death, anyway.”  
   
“Yeah,” Ryan says, and awkwardly sets the first aid kit on the bar. Because where else is he supposed to put it? “Thanks for letting us use that. We may have gone overboard.”  
   
“Don’t worry about it,” Steven says. “We’ve got a few more stashed in the back.”  
   
Jesus Christ, they have a stash of first aid kits. Ryan hopes it’s not obvious how wildly jealous he is of this entire set up, and that no woman with a gun or disembodied gunfire has chased them out of it yet. Maybe he and Shane should just find a place and stay there. Probably a better bet than Disneyland.  
   
These two might even be willing to let them stay here. If they had space. It might not be horrible, but at the same time, Ryan doesn’t want to stay. He doesn’t think so. It’s like there’s something waiting for him back in LA—the same scorched earth he left almost a year ago. And it’s possible he doesn’t want to share room with these two ridiculously attractive guys.  
  
~  
  
Shane doesn’t hitch back. He’s almost not even surprised, but it does something to him, seeing them like that, like it’s easy. No, not even that. Like it’s safe. Like their world isn’t going to fracture because they’ve acknowledged whatever’s between them. Like they’re both human enough to withstand the hard stuff. There’s no rush to detach themselves from one another. In fact, it doesn’t happen at all.  
  
“How long have you been here?” Shane asks, because he can’t imagine it’s been easy setting all this up. “How did you find this place?” He doesn’t sit in the booth, but grabs a chair and kind of pulls it over, finding Ryan in his peripheral just long enough to know exactly where he is.  
  
“Uh, I think we got here a few months ago?” Steven says. “I can’t remember exactly. Adam’s the one that knows what day it is all the time.”  
  
“I’m pretty sure it was May,” Andrew says. “I know it took me at least a month to get here from New York after they bombed it.”  
  
“Yeah,” Steven adds. “And it was after they quarantined, thank God.”  
  
~  
   
Ryan thinks _Adam?_ Then, _New York?_ Then, _quarantined?_  
   
 He’s pretty sure the first guy’s name was Andrew. Not Adam. He looks between them like he can verify it. He doesn’t sit down, even though Shane is more willing this time—mostly because he’s still chasing around questions in his head.  
   
He finally lands on, “Who’s Adam?”  
   
“Oh…” Steven says, like he’s surprised not everyone immediately knows who Adam is. “He’s our half-invisible and perpetual third wheel. He operates the radio tower. You guys were in a car right? You might’ve heard him.”  
   
Ryan’s eyes widen. That makes sense. Of course the radio was coming from these people—or well, a third one of these people that he has yet to meet. He looks around like Adam is hiding behind one of the tables. He isn’t.  
   
“He’s in the radio tower,” Answer answers his unspoken question. “It’s a block up the street. He likes it there.”  
   
Steven and Andrew are still sitting so close, and Steven called Adam a third wheel—which probably means… that Andrew and Steven are adult humans who can deal with whatever relationship weirdness is between them and just… enjoy it. Ryan looks at Shane for a beat. Then away like he’s embarrassed. But no one heard his thoughts so he doesn’t know why.  
   
Ryan can’t imagine having a place like this and regularly venturing out to go man a radio that approximately no one is probably going to hear most of the time. Adam may potentially be weirder than Shane.  
   
“Quarantine?” Ryan asks when the exhaustion from trying to unravel Adam the Invisible Radio Operator ends in a brick wall. “What do you mean after they quarantined?”  
  
~  
  
“Quarantines are bad news,” Andrew says, tapping a rhythm against Steven’s collarbone for a moment before he leans forward enough to take a drink. “Everyone thought they’d be safe there, but the thing is, zombies have a habit of finding large groups of people.”  
  
Shane knows where this is going. He thinks _stop_ , but doesn’t say it.  
  
The silence drags on, and then Steven, looking less cheerful than he has yet, says “Basically they’re surrounded… once the food and supplies run out, they… there’s no out. There’s way too many zoms for a couple people to pick them off or…”  
  
“They’re gonna be breakfast,” Andrew says, if they try to leave. “Or they’re all going to starve to death in there.”  
  
“We tried radioing for aid. Near the beginning, we reached the military but they said they can’t…”  
  
“It’s bullshit.”  
  
“Jesus… Christ,” Shane says. “So they’re just biding their time?”  
  
“As far as we can tell,” Steven says. “It was the same in Ohio… basically, stay away from Quarantine zones unless you want to starve or get eaten.”  
  
“Or join the ranks of the undead.”  
   
~  
   
This drops something molten into Ryan’s stomach. It lurches, and for this awful moment, he thinks he’s going to throw up. All this time he’s thought there might be people, but he never imagined that… so there’s giant groups of people out there, still alive, and they’re just supposed to stand here and let them _die_?  
   
“Wh—so, there’s nothing anyone can do to _help them_?” It’s more shrilled than he meant for it to be. They’re four people—five if they count Adam—so they can’t do anything. And yet Ryan’s got it in his head that they should, that they need to.  
   
Steven’s brow furrows and Andrew’s gaze goes dark, or soft, one of the two. “There’s nothing anyone can do. You’d need some major air support, and… we haven’t found any jets lying around.”  
   
Ryan doesn’t say anything. He just keeps thinking about these groups of people. These masses of living, breathing people that are just surrounded by zombies. Probably going to die if someone doesn’t help them. And no one will help them.  
   
“I’m surprised you didn’t run into one of the zones in LA,” Steven says. “I guess you got out of there pretty fast.” Ryan doesn’t answer because he can’t find his voice. The world can’t be that fucked. They can’t have an entire zone meant to protect people, lots of them, that are just going to… _die_. But it is. It is that fucked.  
   
Ryan sits down, or really collapses into a chair, because if he keeps standing then he’s going to fall down anyway. Steven winces like he understands the feeling. “It sucks, dude. But, we could still totally make you an alcoholic drink if you want.”  
   
“Or at least drink the water,” Andrew says, and reminds Ryan of the water still sitting in front of him. He wanted it before, but now he thinks if he takes a drink he’s going to throw it up. He’s seconds from doing it, anyway.  
  
~  
  
Shane hates this. He knew it was coming and he hates it anyway and he doesn’t know how to reach out to Ryan, how to get an arm around him like these guys can so he just crosses his legs and leans over his knees, pressing his face into his hand for a second.  
  
“So like, the military’s given up on us, is that what you’re saying?” Shane asks, his voice slightly muffled before he sits up straight again.  
  
“Uh, yeah, we think so,” Steven says, with this expression like _what can you do?_  
  
God, he feels so defeated. It comes crashing in on him in a way it never has before and it’s worse, because he knows it’s a lot worse for Ryan. He’s scrambling for something he can say or do so that he doesn’t just start crying or something ridiculous so he says “I dunno how long you’re down for us to stay, but if we can do anything…”  
  
~  
   
“Stay however long you want!” Steven says. “And all you have to do is talk to me. Andrew and Adam are so collectively boring. You have no idea.” He leans his head on Andrew’s shoulder as if this makes the comment less rude.  
   
Andrew rolls his eyes.  “Yeah, we’ve got plenty of blankets and stuff, so no rush on leaving. You guys look like you need a break.”  
   
Ryan puts his elbows on the table and drops his head into his hands. He takes a long breath. “But the military is still—somewhere? Where’s the military? What are they doing?”  
   
Steven shrugs. Ryan thinks briefly of flinging the table across the room and he doesn’t even know if it’s bolted down. He needs to let it go because it’s clearly not a subject anyone else feels the need to discuss. But what is happening? If there’s a military out there—how can they just give up? Are they just… chilling somewhere? That makes it so much worse.  
   
 _They probably don’t have the supplies…_  
   
“I don’t think anyone really knows what to do,” Andrew puts in gently.  
   
It doesn’t help, but Ryan tries to stop talking about it, anyway. “Do you guys have beds here? Where do sleep?”  
  
~  
  
“We’ve kind of converted parts of this place into rooms. Um. You can sleep anywhere you want, really. It’s safer down here than upstairs, just ‘cause there’s no windows. And no one can see the lights.”  
  
Shane’s fucking overwhelmed with this excessive generosity. It’s people like this that will probably end up saving the world, or at least making it bearable to live in, and Shane knows he’s not one of them.  
  
But Ryan is.  
  
Shane shifts enough to uncross his legs, knock his knee into Ryan’s gently, as if by accident.  
  
“We’re in there,” Steven says, pointing at a darkened hallway off to Shane’s right. Shane thinks he sees a jukebox in the corner. “Adam is too, but there’s more rooms down the hall where the bathroom is. They’re kind of just old storerooms, and laundry. You’ll have to sleep on the floor, though.”  
  
“Yeah, and the laundry room is pretty warm, actually.” Andrew says.   
  
“What do you think, buddy?” Shane asks, eyes back on Ryan. If they sleep down there they’ll have this whole underground bar between them. And warm sounds nice.  
  
~  
  
Ryan is trying to shake off this nightmare clinging to him. Of hundreds of people just... Dying. Surely they could get something together and try to fight their way out.

Ugh, not helping.

He looks at Shane who's asked him something and has to playback the conversation to catch up. Right, sleeping, the question Ryan himself asked.

"Oh, uh, laundry room works for me." He glances to the hallway to give the appearance of not falling apart.  
  
~  
  
Shane’s watching him, very still, very intent, and when Ryan looks away, Shane says, “Okay… then I think we’ll probably—”  
  
Steven catches on right away. He says “Right, sure,” and he’s saying something about fetching blankets as he hops up. Shane stands up and touches Ryan’s shoulder with the backs of his fingers, “C’mon, Ry,” he says. “You want to pick which part of the floor you want?” He tries to make it a joke.  
  
He wants… he doesn’t know. Besides fixing the whole goddamn world for Ryan, he just wants to get him out of there, get him safe (which, Shane realizes, he thinks means with _him_ ) but maybe that’s not what Ryan wants. He hesitates a second and then thinks, no. Ryan looks about three seconds away from falling to pieces. He doesn’t want him to have to do it here.  
  
~  
  
Shane is clearly playing the parental role again. He knows Ryan's upset and he's being gentle to fix it. Ryan hates that he's this easy to read, or that Shane feels the need to make him feel better. It's not Shane's responsibility to help Ryan deal with reality. His whole fucking family is dead, he ought to be used to it.

But being alone, or, well with just Shane is good. He's moped in front of the new people enough. They're going to think Shane's carting around a toddler.

"Yup." Ryan stands at Shane's touch. And then because he doesn't want to just leave Shane unanswered, "I'll pick what part of the floor you can stand on and take the rest."

Andrew shows them to the laundry room, which is small, boring. Are Steven and Andrew just assuming Ryan and Shane are sharing a room? Ryan doesn't know why that's weird. He's doing the same.

Steven shows up with some blankets and pillows and doesn't waste time bidding then goodnight. Andrew does bring Ryan's water, but then they're gone. And it's just Shane and Ryan. And Ryan's determination to show Shane he doesn't have to be coddled.

"Well, this was a pleasant turn of events." He hands Shane a blanket and starts lying another one down. He tries so hard not to think about zombies around a gated community. A sanctuary. Just waiting for it to collapse.  
  
~  
  
“Pleasant, yeah,” Shane echoes, and sets his bed up without much care or consideration. He takes his boots off and sits down on it crosslegged. He doesn’t know what to say. There’s no way he can fix any of this, because nothing he says will take away the fact that it’s happened. That it is happening. So he says the best thing he can think of which is “We can stay here for a while, if you want…” He’s biting his lip, trying not to think of all the stuff still out in the car. It’s stupid, but the thing he wants most isn’t the gun, it’s Finn’s phone. The mug. He doesn’t have anything else.  
  
Ryan has nothing at all.  
  
~  
  
Ryan pulls his own boots off and sits down. Shane's upset now that they're alone. Either from the ordeal today, the dying people in quarantine zones, the stuff in the car, or sheer osmosis from whatever the hell Ryan's putting off.

He doesn't want Shane to be upset too. He pulls a pillow into his lap to toy with and looks at Shane.

"Do you wanna stay here for a while?" It's possible he does. It makes sense that they would. But Ryan almost makes it out like he's needling him.   
  
~  
  
Shane almost smiles at him, but he does it like he’s got him figured out. “At least until I eat something that isn’t saltines for a meal or two. And until I can drink without going lightheaded in the first five seconds.”  
  
He wonders if Ryan will be able to sleep here, since it isn’t technically a bed. If he believed in fate he’d think maybe they were supposed to end up here. A couple of good people, apparently the soft-voiced person with a sick sense of humour running the radio station.  
  
“It’s Christmas tomorrow,” Shane adds. “It’s a— a Christmas miracle.” It’s stupid, but he’s so tired.  
  
~  
  
Ryan's back to thinking about it. How willing Shane is to be here, to be around these two. It makes sense. They're great. But Ryan's spent all this time worrying Shane only tolerates him. Shane's proven he likes Ryan, or seems to, but that's when there's not really good looking, normal, other options in the other room.

Okay, he has to relax. He cannot handle being upset about Shane dropping him and quarantine zones and everything else. He can't.

"Oh, shit, right." The first Christmas without his mom or dad. Or Jake. He definitely thought Jake would still be here. That he'd have something to tether him to what he'd lost. He'd even spent some time imagining how he could make it not suck for him. But Jake's gone. They're all gone.

Shane's not gone. But this thing between them is so scary. So uncertain. That's he's afraid to be grateful, because tomorrow it might be gone.

He smiles, anyway. "I mean it kinda is. We definitely would be dead without it. Oh! Maybe we did die and these are nice ghosts easing us into the idea of being dead."

He's trying so hard to be upbeat because Shane's watching him like he knows. He knows Ryan's incapable of just dealing with this.  
  
~  
  
“Ryan, that’s impossible,” Shane says, soft, teasing, but he’s watching him like he’s waiting for something to happen. “Ghosts aren’t real.”  
  
He wants to reach out to him so badly, but something’s telling him not to. He presses his palm down against the blankets he’s sitting on. There’s so much dirt and blood beneath his fingernails they look black. It’s gross. He wonders if they have hot water here.  
  
“Anyway, if I was a ghost, I’d be a ghost somewhere with food. Like a… Chipotle or something.”  
  
~  
  
Ryan's smile widens and he shakes his head. He's not going to argue about ghosts in a fucking zombie apocalypse. Shane is an idiot and that's fine. He thinks about lying down but doesn't. Because then he has to think about getting eaten by a zombie, which definitely nearly happened today.

"Well, if they're easing you into it... This is like a purgatory and once you get over yourself and accept that ghosts are real and you are one, you can go to Chipotle."

That definitely makes no sense. But he's tired, and his need to stop fighting with himself is almost strong enough to overpower his need to avoid sleep.  
  
~  
  
It’s almost a good smile. Well. All Ryan’s smiles are good, but this one looks a little more genuine.  
  
“Where will you be?” Shane asks, perhaps too soft. He doesn’t look up again. “I can’t just eat Chipotle alone as a ghost, that’s pathetic.”  
  
~  
  
Ryan's face heats. He doesn't look at Shane, keeps toying with the corner of the pillow in his lap. Something about the way Shane said that has him nervous. Like it's this soft reach in the dark. He's obviously just being an idiot, but Ryan bites his lip.

"I dunno. Maybe a movie theater or something. Popcorn and movies forever sounds like a great afterlife."  
  
~  
  
“Oh, damn,” Shane says, and laughs. “That’s so much better than Chipotle. I’m changing my mind.”  
  
He twists around so he can lie back, shoving the pillow under his head. It’s actually not bad, considering it’s a floor. And it is warm here. The floor is warm. He wonders if it’s hot water piping or something, or if they’re near a furnace. There’s a low humming sound coming from somewhere that feels so normal, so safe.  
  
He can’t really believe they’re making jokes about being dead after the ordeal today, but maybe that’s all they can do. He rolls over to face Ryan, reaches out like he might touch him, but just drops his hand on the blankets between them. “I wish we had popcorn instead of crackers. Do you think we’ll get scurvy?"  
  
~  
  
Ryan watches Shane lie down. He stares too long before he finally lies down and faces Shane. "I doubt it." He doesn't know what to do with Shane's aborted reach. He pretends not to see it. Maybe he should reach out. Maybe it would help. But he's lost on what that means. And he's tired of relying on Shane for comfort.

He wrestles the pillow under his head. "Popcorn would be good, though. Maybe they have it in this weird Utopia they've got going." God, did they even eat today? Right, crackers.  
  
~  
  
“Nah, all our teeth are gonna fall out,” Shane says, eyes on him. They’re only lit by the faint glow of the bar — what little light filters all the way down this hallway.  
  
 _Are you okay?_ he wonders, but doesn’t ask it. He still doesn’t touch him. “You gotta try to sleep, Ryan,” he tells him softly.  
  
He hates pressing it on him, but he doesn’t know what else to say. And he is so tired and he doesn’t want to leave Ryan alone in this unfamiliar place, sleepless, sad. “C’mere,” he whispers — barely there, like even he’s not sure about it.  
  
~  
   
Ryan closes his eyes. He tries not to press his teeth together, because he doesn’t need Shane saying he’s got to try to sleep. He knows that. He’s so aware of that. He just needs to let it happen—if he doesn’t let the fear sneak in about zombies creeping around in his peripheral then he’ll just sleep. But when he thinks about sleep, all he can think about are zombies creeping around. And Jake. Jake, Jake, Jake. But Shane doesn’t know that—he doesn’t understand this at all. He can’t.  
   
Shane say come here, and it’s this soft, tiny thing. And Ryan wants to bury himself in it. But he was just having a conversation where he shouldn’t rely on Shane—where Shane shouldn’t feel the need to comfort him with this. Shane said he couldn’t sleep without Ryan, but that doesn’t mean… all this. That doesn’t mean touching, or maybe it does—the problem is Ryan doesn’t know and he just wishes they could be like Steven and Andrew and wrap around each other and smile about it. Like it’s normal. Like it’s so normal.  
   
But it’s never been normal, not for Ryan because he isn’t sure what Shane wants and maybe there’s some part of it that’s still grappling with the guy factor—and not for Shane because Shane is Shane. He comes on and backs off in these impossible to read intervals.  
   
Shane reached for him and stopped. Is he trying to coax himself into helping Ryan? Or is he holding himself back from touching Ryan? Why would he, though?  
  
 _What do you want?_  
  
Ryan thinks it so hard it almost sneaks past his lips, but it doesn’t. He slides closer to Shane because it’s what Ryan wants, and maybe it’s what Shane wants. He buries his head into the pillow he’s dragged with him to avoid facing Shane. He trails a hand down Shane’s arm, half-breathing into his chest, but not quite close enough to touch it.  
   
His voice is hoarser than it should be, too hoarse to be okay. “You don’t have to feel bad about sleeping, you know? I can handle it.” It feels like he means more than lying awake and alone. His eyes catch threads of Shane’s shirt past the swell of the pillow he’s buried his head in. His hands gets all the way to Shane’s wrist and he squeezes, almost too tight.  
   
“I’m fine. It’s enough that you’re here at all.”  
  
~  
  
“I’m not going anywhere,” Shane says. They feel like empty words, since they’re both just so close to death all the time, but God, he _wants_ to… he wants to know they’re true. And maybe even in a normal life you can’t really say that, promise that to anyone. People don’t know what’s going to happen, no matter what kind of world they’re living in.  
  
Ryan had said it to him, too, back when Finn… after. And Shane wants him to know it, too. He doesn’t know if he’s said it, but he’s been thinking it all this time.  
  
He lets Ryan hold tight to his wrist, but shifts closer until they’re closer. Until their legs are touching in these careful, too-thin places. “I know you can handle it,” he adds after a moment. “I know. But…” he doesn’t know how to end that sentence. It was so clear in his thoughts as he said the words, but fear or sleep slides softly in and he falters and cuts himself off, untwists his wrist from Ryan’s fingers and gets his arm around him, slides his hand beneath his shirt, feels the scrape of dried blood on fabric against his knuckles, and unfurls his fingers against the warm, soft, uninjured skin, near his waist. “It’s okay if you don’t want to for a while,” he finally breathes into his hair. “I’ll be here.”  
  
~  
  
  
It takes Ryan back to what Shane said the night they met. You can have a minute. Shane was wrong. Ryan didn't deserve a minute, shouldn't take one. A minute could've meant more death. A minute cost his little brother's life. But he believed Shane for a second, and he believes him now. That he can stop trying.

Shane's arm slides around him and Ryan tucks his head into Shane, where his shoulder and neck meet. He doesn't let himself break. God, he gets so close, like he did the night at the cabin. To crying for Jake, for the ghosts of people who haven't died yet. To letting all the tremors inside him spread and spread until all the scattered fragments of his soul spill out.

This time, he wraps his arms around Shane's neck, catches his fingers in his hair. He pulls so their bodies touch too much. His breath hits the curve of Shane's neck too sharp and shaky, until eventually, something warm and biting beads along his bottom eyelid. It clings to the corner of his eye and blurs Shane's shadows. Then it trails a watery rivulet across his temple before it hits Shane's collarbone and glitters there.

He closes his eyes and pretends it didn't happen. "Thank you."  
  
~  
  
Shane gets his arms around him, both of them, when Ryan moves close, and he has to find a new place to fit because he doesn’t want to hurt Ryan’s back but, fuck, he holds on.

He doesn’t move once they’re like that, just breathes against him, like the steadiness, the rhythmic rise and fall of his chest will assure Ryan, even though Shane doesn’t feel steady at all. He feels torn apart, from the center of his heart outwards as something slides soft and warm across his collarbone. 

_Thank you_ , Ryan says, to which Shane replies, “You got it,” because he does, he _has_ — he’s got whatever this thing is Shane’s offering, everything he _can_ offer up. Shane isn’t even entirely sure what it is, but he told Ryan to take it, once and he hopes... he hopes Ryan understands.  
  
~  
   
Ryan’s sleep is spotty, but he gets some. He’s in and out more often than usual, in a good way. He keeps starting awake to noises and realizing Shane’s positions changed, or the temperature’s different. So he’s actually getting some sleep. Shane sleeps most of the night. Ryan times his breathing on the beat of Shane’s heart, and it helps. It helps distract him from all this carnage that’s happening behind his eyes. The zombie jaw that keeps opening in front of him and unhinging.  
   
Ryan’s up when he hears what must be Steven and Andrew wandering around. He lies there for a while, doesn’t want to move away from Shane—but they’ll have to get up eventually. And things are always different when it’s light, when people can see… Shane’s different. At least externally.  
   
They wake up, and Steven’s as enthusiastic as the night before. Ryan doesn’t know why he expects their personalities will change dramatically in a day, but that’s apparently what he thought. Steven even manages to yell, “Merry Christmas!” like people aren’t dying in quarantine camps. Ryan thinks about their families then too. They must be gone, or they’d be with them. Everyone’s lost everyone. But people are making it work. Andrew and Steven seems okay—seem like they might not be miserable. They laugh and joke with each other like everything’s okay.  
   
Adam makes a brief appearance later in the morning. He’s as unassuming as his invisible reputation and soft radio voice promised he would be. He doesn’t say anything, just nods at Ryan and Shane like they’ve been here the whole time.  
   
“Are you guys not even listening to the radio?” he asks Andrew and Steven.  
   
They exchange panicked looks. “We were, but… then the guests showed up and we just… we forgot to turn it back on. But look, new friends!” Steven gestures to Ryan and Shane where they’ve taken up the same table from yesterday. It’s like high school where they just assume the first place they sat was going to be their place for as long as they’re here.  
   
Adam shrugs like he’s over it and floats around like a kind of apparition. Shane does a pretty decent job of keeping up conversation. He’s a lot less closed off than he was with TJ. It’s a good thing. It should be, but Ryan’s thinking about what it means. About what Shane must think about Andrew and Steven. And how together they are. God, he probably wishes one of these two showed up at his door that night. Then maybe he’d still have his cabin.  
   
“Well, it’s Christmas during the zombie apocalypse, so the plan tonight is to get absolutely wasted,” Andrew tells them.  
   
Oh, god, getting drunk in front of total strangers while on the verge of a breakdown probably isn’t going to be good. But Ryan isn’t going to turn down alcohol. Maybe it’ll let him forget all this shit for a while—he’s going to have to drink more than he did of the champagne at the hotel though. That did not get the job done.  
   
“You guys should shower. We have hot water here. Adam found the tank and is keeping it operational for us,” Steven says. “Thanks Adam!”  
   
Adam doesn’t indicate that he hears. He’s leaned over the table reading what might be a magazine from 2007. Jennifer Aniston and Angelina Jolie are on the cover so, it can’t be recent. Well, anyone’s on the cover—so it can’t be recent.  
   
They do shower, though, and it’s pretty nice. The water’s lukewarm, but fuck if he’s complaining. He’s gotten to shower twice in the past three days. He’s gone weeks before, and he’s sure he will again. He has to be careful with his back—it stings, even though the water isn’t hot. He doesn’t bother taking it off and redoing it—the bandage handles getting wet decently and he already feels bad about everything else they’ve taken from these two. Shane’s face looks better. It looked better this morning, but it’s even better after he showers. He latches onto it because it’s something be happy about—something that isn’t these overly kind people who are probably reminding Shane of all the reasons Ryan is a waste of human life. Since they didn’t curl into him and cry last night—not that he saw, anyway.  
   
Steven mentions food and comes back with what looks like actual, legitimate food. It’s five bowls of rice mixed with vegetables. It doesn’t smell like there’s much seasoning, but who fucking cares? Not Ryan. Steven gives everybody one before explaining, like he’s ashamed, “They’re just the frozen packs. But it’s something we have in enough bulk that no one’s getting jealous of anyone else.”  
   
“This is… amazing.” Ryan cannot imagine why he thinks this is something to apologize about. “We haven’t eaten anything but crackers and beef jerky in weeks.”  
   
And it tastes like it’s from a five star fucking restaurant. It’s warm and feels like it’s nourishing his body instead of dragging talons over his insides. His standards have probably dropped given the weeks of Vienna sausages, crackers, and protein bars—but whatever works. They finish eating and Andrew goes to make everybody drinks. Ryan just asks for a beer because it’s familiar, or, well, it was. And easier for Andrew.  
   
He’s halfway through a bottle when Steven swivels one of the bar stools around to face him. “So, if you were coming back this way, anyway. Why’d you go to Illinois?” Steven nods at Shane. “Couldn’t he have come your way?”  
   
“What?” Ryan isn’t even close to understand, and it’s not the beer. He’s pretty sure. It would be fucking sad if it was.  
   
Steven leans forward. “You went Illinois because he was there—right?”  
   
Oh, god. It was not the beer. It was definitely not the beer. Jesus. Ryan recoils, more out of shock than anything else. It would look like that. Since what he’s doing makes no sense in any other context.  He stammers on syllables for too long before a “ _no_ ” skitters out of him.  
   
“What?” Andrew’s paying attention now. He’s looking between Shane and Ryan like they’ve changed colors—like there’s something different there. “Then why’d you go to Illinois?”  
   
“No, uh…” Ryan glances at Shane. Embarrassed in spite of himself. It’s not like he did go to Illinois for Shane. But that’s the thing, he would. Now—he would. “Me and my brother were trying to… get away from cities. We didn’t know where we were going… we were just running. I ran into Shane while…” He chews his lip. “He helped me… not die.” It feels hollow, because Shane did a lot more than that. But Ryan doesn’t want to talk about what happened, about why he found Shane. He doesn’t say more. He doesn’t have to.  
   
Jake’s not here.  
   
This settles onto both of them—maybe Adam too, but Ryan’s not sure where he is anymore. “Oh, well… then, where are you going now?” Andrew asks.  
   
Ryan looks at Shane, stutters in the way he moves. “I, uh… I don’t… I don’t know.” He keeps looking at Shane because they don’t know. Or, Shane hasn’t mentioned anywhere, and Ryan hasn’t mentioned Disneyland. So he sure as hell isn’t going to do it now.  
   
~  
  
Shane’s eyes go wide before Ryan gets it, but then it’s out there and Ryan’s saying no, and that’s the truth, but something’s ripped roughly through Shane’s ribs. 

He’d guesses they look like something, sharing a room, his weirdness last night about taking care of Ryan’s injury. And now, Ryan’s eyes keep snagging on his and he doesn’t know what to do with that look.

“We’re just going west until we hit water, I guess. Or find a boat,” Shane says. But he doesn’t know and suddenly he feels guilty, like he’s let Ryan down somehow. “I guess we never decided on anyplace.”

He looks into his glass, scotch, because there was a fucking twelve year old bottle of it, freely offered, and Shane wasn’t about to turn that down.

“What about you?” He asks, “what’s your story?”

“Sparing the tragic details?” Andrew monotones, but for a second something flickers darkly through his eyes which, Shane thinks, are this incredible colour. He watches him for a second. Maybe it’s a little aggressive. They know so much about him and Ryan already, or at least Shane feels like they do. This is like an unfair exchange until he hears more.

“We met after,” Steven says. There were a bunch of zombies and me and Adam saved his ass.”

“I didn’t need my ass saved,” Andrew says. 

“Did,” Adam calls from somewhere in the direction of the hallway. Andrew smiles.

“Did,” Steven adds. “Anyway Adam and me found this place and we adopted Andrew.”  
  
~  
   
Ryan stays quiet about finding the boat. He and Shane haven’t talked about it, but it makes sense. A boat makes sense. Way more sense than anything Ryan’s thought about. He scratches at the wooden table while the conversation goes on. Shane’s asking these people questions, and god damn it, why is this so different from TJ? Why does it bother Ryan?  
   
Oh, wait, he knows.  
   
It’s interesting, both comforting and horrifying, that Andrew and Steven met during all this. They met like Ryan and Shane, and yet they’ve managed to get to these easy, comfortable place. Ryan wants to be there with Shane. He thinks, sometimes, they could be there. If Ryan would bridge the gap. That Shane’s just waiting on him to do it. But, then, sometimes he thinks that would ruin everything. That Shane would panic and just… do what he thought Ryan wanted. And Ryan’s so scared of risking that.  
   
That’s what he’s been terrified of all this time—besides the zombies and death and losing Shane and getting bitten and… well, everything else—he’s been terrified of pushing Shane father than he wants to go. Because it seems like he’s spent his whole life being pushed that way.  
   
He half-smiles at Andrew trying to defend himself, and at the reappearance of Adam to be a jackass about it.  
   
“Well, it looks like you’re managing pretty well.” He glances around the room again, like he’s just seeing it for the first time. He takes a drink because he doesn’t have anything else to say. He’s not usually the quiet one in these situations, but something about tonight has him off. Maybe it’s still what happened yesterday.  
   
“Yeah, it’s alright. We got alcohol at least.” Andrew takes a drink of whatever he’s drinking. Ryan hasn’t paid attention enough to notice what it is. “Have you guys thought about just… staying somewhere? As someone who’s done both, it’s easier.”  
   
Ryan doesn’t say anything. He just shrugs.  
  
~  
  
“Oh, yeah, I dunno,” Shane says. “Our last place, we got uh... besieged, so. We traded shelter and food for our lives.” He smiles about it like it isn’t the worst thing, like he doesn’t miss the cabin and...

He glances at Ryan. Shane knows exactly what he wants to do, but he can’t say it now. Not in front of all these people, not so casually, to Ryan. That he would go with him anywhere.

He hopes it’s enough that he called the cabin theirs. Their place. Maybe that’s why he misses it so much. It was theirs, and no place after that has been.  
  
“Hey, does that jukebox work?” he asks, injecting as much enthusiasm into it as he can.   
  
~  
   
Ryan glances at Shane. He called the cabin theirs. Ryan had definitely not felt like that cabin was theirs, or if he had, then he was confident he was wrong. Or overly optimistic. Ryan did nothing useful around that cabin. He sat on the floor with a broken leg for weeks. Shane found it, maintained it, lived in it for months before Ryan showed up. So it’s surprising—surprising that he calls this thing that he lived in for so long, alone, theirs. Optimism kindles in Ryan’s chest again.  
   
He doesn’t say anything and tries not to think about the way Steven and Andrew are looking at them. They're making judgments. They have been since last night—hell, they assumed Ryan went to Illinois to get Shane—but that’s okay, Ryan’s doing the same. Except, he doubts if they care, or worry, what Ryan thinks of them.  
   
Shane seems to think a lot of them, maybe. He’s sharing a lot. He asks about the jukebox.  
   
“Oh, yeah!” Steven lights up when he glances back at it. “It’s got some pretty dated stuff on there, but it’s fun. I can show you…” He moves like he might get up, watching Shane.  
   
So is Ryan.  
  
~  
  
“Yeah, great,” Shane says, and slides off the bar stool to follow Steven. He didn’t look at Ryan because he’s feeling like he’s just divulged a lot and he’s kind of a coward, if he’s being honest. He grabs his glass before he goes.

Andrew toys with his own glass. “Hey, by the way, Adam brought your bags in last night,” he says to Ryan “Your doors were unlocked. I hope that’s okay.”  
  
~  
   
Ryan tries to pretend he’s fine about Shane leaving, not just leaving but definitely not sparing Ryan a glance. He sighs and glances at Andrew, who’s the only one left over here. It’s jarring, like Ryan forgot he was there for a second. Forgot anyone was here except Shane, and potentially the guy he just walked over to the jukebox with.  
   
“Oh, no, that’s fine.” He blinks. He can’t believe he hasn’t thought about the bags. He can’t believe Shane hasn’t. “That was cool of you, honestly. We should’ve gone.” And really, they should’ve locked the door. He glances back to Shane and Steven at the jukebox, and then tries, genuinely tries, to focus on Andrew.

~  
  
Andrew watches the way that Ryan follows Shane with his eyes and he almost smiles, but his face is serious again when Ryan looks back.

“That’s cool, Adam can navigate the streets pretty well. You guys could probably stay here,” he adds. “I mean, we’ve got a lot of food left. Maybe six months with the five of us. You should mention it to uh, to your friend.”  
  
~  
   
God, these people are nice. But then, if Ryan had that much food saved up—he’d probably invite people to stay too. And some part of him would like this—the part that isn’t too aware of every floated fragment of conversation he catches from Steven and Shane. He’s not looking, but he doesn’t have to. It feels easier between them—even from this distance, Shane feels less guarded than he does with Ryan. Like he isn’t trying.  
   
Ryan tugs the sleeves of his sweater over his hands. “Yeah, I mean… I will.” He seems to like you guys. He can’t bring himself to say that. There’s a bitterness there he doesn’t want Andrew to hear. He gets a glimpse of Shane smiling at Steven in this unguarded, careless way, and something splits straight down his middle.  
   
He needs to talk to Andrew. “Have you guys just stockpiled all the food from places around the city? Did people just… leave stuff here when they left? I guess no one was thinking about it while frantically running for their lives.”  
  
~  
  
“A lot of it was here already but yeah. We think this place was a speakeasy or something. There used to be a piano but we used parts to barricade some of the windows upstairs.” Andrew grimaces a little about the fate of the poor piano. “Adam’s usually the one that scopes places out. And Steven’s like a bloodhound. He just _finds_ food.”

Andrew’s eyes flicker to the other two. Steven’s pushing his bottle into Shane’s hands, laughing as Shane takes a drink and says “I don’t hate it,”

“See I told you!” Steven’s saying. Their fingers brush as Shane hands it back.

 _Poor Ryan_ , Andrew thinks. _He isn’t used to what Steven’s like._  
  
~  
   
Ryan clenches his fingers in his pants. It scrapes against his thigh almost like the fabric isn’t there. He doesn’t look—not really, but he kinda sees it, anyway. Just by nature of the way he’s sitting. The way his peripheral is absolutely honed onto Shane. Way too honed onto him.  
   
“That’s useful in an apocalypse,” he says. “The bloodhound thing.”  
   
But of course Shane likes Steven. He’s got his shit together, for one—no one’s calling Ryan a _bloodhound_. He feels more like a rodent, but significantly less good at surviving on his own. Maybe it’s just easy for Shane with people who don’t… need so much. Maybe this is exactly why Ryan and Shane could never actually be anything more than this tilted stage of a friendship. Shane needs things to be easy. And if there’s one thing Ryan’s learned after three long and inevitably failed relationships—Ryan is not easy. Clingy, needy, sensitive—he’s been called all of that at least once. Most twice.  
   
It’s the opposite of what someone like Shane needs. Someone who’s spent his life trying to live up to expectations. Ryan has too many. He knows he does. As much as he wants to be as easy as Steven is, he can’t be. Somethings holds him back from it. And he hates it—hates that it cleaves straight through his spine and somehow makes all the death quiet for a minute. Under this intense, unfillable want.  
   
Fuck, he doesn’t want to be here. He just wants to leave Shane to hang out with these people who act like normal fucking people so he can have a normal fucking apocalypse and Ryan doesn’t have to see it.  
   
But he’s stuck here, and these people have been nothing but gracious. “So what’s that leave for you to do? Bartending and saving hapless idiots from certain death?”  
  
“Yeah,” Andrew says, “And we have board games. Well, two. Checkers and Monopoly, but no one actually likes Monopoly. And Steven almost never stops talking, so there’s always that.” And then Andrew grins this sly kind of grin as he cuts his eyes briefly to Steven. “We do some other things, sometimes.” He says this like he figures Ryan should know what he means, but truthfully, he isn’t entirely sure, so he’s trying to suss it out. 

~  
  
Shane downs his drink while Steven picks a song on the jukebox, and suddenly the bar is filled with music. It is dated. Mostly 80s, but he noticed some 60s stuff in there, too.  
  
He does like these people. He likes Steven’s childlike innocence. There’s a sweetness to it beneath the bits that grate at Shane, so he can’t actually fault him. He’s got flecks of this weird colour throughout his hair that Shane originally thought were greys, but he realizes now, in the light from the jukebox, that they are almost a pinkish-gold. Hair dye. He wonders what this guy looked like before zombies wreaked havoc and misery over everything.  
  
He can’t hear the familiar tones of Ryan’s voice anymore, over the music and he misses it, he realizes, and he looks over, but he’s talking to Andrew like he doesn’t really care where Shane’s gone off too, so… okay.  
  
If Ryan fits here, if he wants this, then Shane will make himself want it, too. Or at least tolerate it. It’s the least he can do. After all, hadn’t he expected Ryan to forego all human interaction outside of himself?  
  
Other people are dangerous. Shane knows that. Or he did. Because since then there’s been these guys, and TJ, so... now, he’s not so sure. Here is this smiling, soft-eyed guy who’s all about this ridiculous, dynamite jukebox, who is so warm-heated but sort of awkward in the exuberance of his kindness, and it’s so easy for Shane to just smile and say “yeah” or “what?!” and coast under Steven’s easy, friendly chatter because his thoughts are all Ryan.  
  
Ryan would fit in here. Shane knows he would. The mostly one-sided conversation meanders from one topic to another. Steven mentions basketball and Shane hears himself say, “You should talk to Ryan. You should _see_ Ryan play basketball. Yeah, he’s pretty good for a tiny hobbit-sized person” and, later about when Steven laments that Imagine Dragons isn’t in the jukebox, “Ryan listens to them” and Steven tells him they can play it over the radio (‘cause Adam’s got all these records, and Steven will ask him to play it tomorrow when he goes out to broadcast) and Shane wants it so much, for Ryan. He wants that expression he got when he gave Ryan that stupid Lakers hat. He just wants him to be happy. Really happy, for more than a handful of minutes. Christ, he wants it _so much_.   
  
~  
  
Ryan jumps when the music starts. Andrew seems to notice. He might be a bit concerned about Ryan, but he doesn't say anything. Ryan is focusing so much energy on not looking at Shane and Steven. Not thinking about this easy, soft way they talk. That it takes almost too much energy to respond to Andrew.  
  
He's possibly better looking than Steven, Andrew is. He's got this almost debonair thing going. Ryan would like him, probably a lot, if it wasn't in this weird pseudo circumstance where his probably-boyfriend has everything he wants, with Shane and with Andrew. This kind of happiness that isn't dampened by the world. He must have lost people. Have gone through shit. And here he is, not wobbling under it. Andrew isn't either.  
  
And besides right after Finn, neither has Shane. Ryan's the only one breaking down piece by piece. And Shane fucking likes Steven. And it goes taut in Ryan like a wire because some awful part of him wants to wrench them apart.

“Is it much different out there," Andrew asks, "in Z-land? What do you guys do?”  
  
“Uh, kinda? I feel like we fumble around mostly. Shane's really good at survival stuff, honestly. He had this whole cabin set up before I crashed it, and kinda… fucked it up. But he mostly does everything and I just try not to die. He definitely saved my life when we met.”  
  
And he's saved him so many more times since then. With Jake, with the Lakers hat, with his lightless touches, with stupid dancing. God damn it. Ryan can see all these things Shane's done, whether for him or because there's something there, and he’s done so little in return. Some, maybe, but Shane sees and thinks and notices so much. More than Ryan.  
  
And maybe if Ryan did more, he wouldn't feel so helpless watching Shane talk to this other, gorgeous guy, with his perfect smile and kindness and good face. As he leans back on the jukebox and offers Shane this knowing, gentle grin like Shane's told him some secret.  
  
This irrational thought works into Ryan's head. _He's Asian too._ And he grits his teeth, tries to crush it in his palm like a dead leaf. Because it's such a stupid fucking thought. There's a thousand reasons Shane would like Steven.   
  
_But maybe it's the only reason he'd like you._  
  
It's so stupid. So absolutely nonsensical that Shane with his mile deep eyes and orchestrated movement would ever pursue someone for something so stupid.  
  
 _If you can't give yourself credit, give him some._  
  
~  
  
“Yeah.” Andrew says, non really insinuating anything in his intonation. He’s taking that in, the self-deprecating way Ryan says it, and how far away he _clearly_ is. Even while he’s sitting here at this bar, he’s a thousand miles off. There’s this incredible amount of feeling in him — is radiates from Ryan like a heater, and Andrew takes another drink as he watches Ryan’s jaw tighten.  
  
Steven flits back to the bar, replenishing drinks, talking cheerfully to whoever happens to be listening. Shane doesn’t follow. Shane stays over where the jukebox is, apparently intently reading the list of songs and artists. He has to lean over really far to read it like he needs glasses or something. He’s too tall, Andrew thinks. There’s a beat, the briefest of moments, where Steven catches Andrew’s eyes, flicks his gaze to Shane and kind of rolls his own up and dips back slightly in this playful _being bowled over under the intensity_ kind of gesture, mouthing something that Andrew clearly understands, but then the moment is over and Steven’s back with Shane, handing him a drink.  
  
Andrew watches them, watches the way Shane says thank you and then casts these uncertain, dark eyes back in Ryan’s direction, lingering on him too long, but Ryan’s not looking. Damn. Andrew feels like he’s been there.

He casually turns the drink Steven’s filled up for him once, clockwise, on the bar as the next song filters through. It’s _Patio Lanterns_. Ridiculous. Andrew leans his head on one hand, elbow propped up on the bar and says to Ryan, “What’s the deal with you guys, anyway? Are you in a fight right now or something?”  
  
~  
   
Ryan drums his hands on the table. He’s fidgeting. Tugging at pieces of his clothes that don’t need tugged at. He’s pretty sure he’s changed positions with his hands about seven times since he and Andrew started talking. And he is nowhere near engaged with Andrew. And he hates that. He hates not giving people his full attention, but he’s so scattered. He’s torn in a thousand directions—or no, he isn’t. He’s torn in one, unrelenting direction: Shane.  
   
But he’s trying not to look at him. But that’s all he’s doing. Trying not to look. It takes so much of his awareness he’s half-surprised Andrew is still there when he talks again. To ask if Shane and Ryan are in a fight. It makes no sense. The question. None of this makes sense. But then again, it is the apocalypse.  
   
“A fight?” His nose face scrunches into uncertainty. “No, why? What do you mean? Do we seem like we’re in a fight?”  
  
~  
  
Andrew’s face actually breaks into a smile. “You’re avoiding each other. I can practically see the tension,” he says. “If I hooked it into an outlet, I could probably light up the room with it.”  
  
It sounds crazy. That’s fine. There’s this charge to the energy between them, though. He’d noticed it almost as soon as they’d shut the zombies out. The problem is, they don’t know what to do with it, and he wonders if that could be dangerous. Like Harry Potter before he learned to use his powers. He just went around blowing up aunts and messing up zoo environments. Well. Maybe that’s not so bad. It’s a bad analogy. Andrew stops thinking about it.  
  
~  
   
Ryan’s mouth tips. It’s the weirdest thing he’s ever heard. Okay, maybe… there’s tension on Ryan’s end. He has been glancing over there. But he’s pretty sure Shane hopped up and swaggered away without so much as a glance back. And Ryan is doing his fucking best not to begrudge Shane for it.  
   
He flushes, but the bar’s got low light so he doesn’t think it’s a big deal. Or he hopes Andrew doesn’t notice. But he might, since he seems to have noticed everything else. “No, uh, no… it’s… this isn’t… no, there’s no tension. We don’t…” He doesn’t want there to be. “He’s not—we’re not avoiding each other. Shane just does what… he does.” He looks over to Shane because now he has an excuse. He’s still lost in this conversation with Steven, and Steven is so animated, exuding all this warmth, and Ryan hates that he hates him a little.  
  
~  
  
“Does what he does, huh?” Andrew says. He wonders how much he needs to give these idiots a push. They definitely need one, but he’s not sure how hard it should be. He doesn’t want to send Ryan rocketing into space.  
  
He decides to go for it. After all, it’s the apocalypse, and he has the feeling these guys won’t be sticking around here long. He might not get another chance, and chances should be taken. Especially if they’re going to be foolhardy enough to go back out there alone together to drift uncertainly west.  
  
“Maybe he’s trying not to burden you,” Andrew says. “Because it’s pretty clear to us that that guy is like… head over heels in love with you.” He says this in the same dry, even way he’s said everything else. Like it’s a solid, indisputable fact. “Sometimes saying it out loud can make someone feel indebted to you and… he probably doesn’t want that. But.”  
  
He’s just speaking from his own experience, but really, it’s not like there’s an influx of advice-givers now. Time’s short for all of them. It’s probably going to be even shorter for these two half-feral guys, with their pipe and hammer (against _zombies_ , they’re insane), and their beat-up car, but Andrew knows that he or Steven or Adam won’t be able to stop them if they want to go, so they might as well be happy.  
  
~  
  
Ryan nearly falls straight out of the entirely stationary chair like someone pulled it out from under him. What in the world is this guy drinking? They? What—they discussed this? Shane being… fuck, Ryan cannot even think those words.  
  
He laughs once he stabilizes himself because what else can he do? It's absurd. Absurd that that's how they're interpreting Shane. Ryan, sure, but Shane?  
  
“ _What_?! No, that's… no, no, no. That's… why would you… where are you even getting that? No, he's not. That's not what's going on at all. He isn't… no. That's _insane_.” He laughs again. “Why would it be a burden? I'm… no, that's wrong. You're wrong.”  
  
~  
  
Andrew smiles a little. “Okay,” he says, holding up one hand. “I don’t know your situation,” he tells him, and he’s looking at him with his head slightly cocked, almost gentle, because what a mess they’re in. “But when someone tells you something like that, it’s hard to go back to the way things were, I guess.”  
  
He wonders, for a moment, if he should have taken this initiative. If he’s taken something from them, by telling Ryan before Shane could, but then, he supposes, it won’t matter. Ryan probably won’t believe it until Shane says it, and even then...  
  
“He probably hasn’t said anything for the same reasons you haven’t,” Andrew tells him, “Just remember, it’s the end of the world.”  
  
He taps the rim of his glass gently against the lip of Ryan’s bottle, like a cheers Ryan hasn’t participated in and his gaze flickers away momentarily, back to Shane whose eyes are on them both over Steven’s shoulder. He catches Andrew’s gaze, raises his chin a little in acknowledgement, then looks away. There’s something uncertain and tense in the line of his shoulders, something that wasn’t there last night and Andrew wonders what this conversation looks like to him.  
  
~  
  
Ryan smiles and stares at the bottle in front of him. Then downs it. Because fucking hell, man. How is he supposed to respond to this? He catches his forehead in his hands and stays quiet for a while.   
  
It is the end of the world. Andrew's right. But… maybe Ryan feels like he'll keep living. It won't end. And if he loses this far-off hope with Shane it'll take this last thing he's got in him. It's almost normal, standing back from it. But it hurts too much to be. He wants it more than he wants to live sometimes. But he's so sure Shane doesn't, Shane couldn't…  
  
“I just don't… get why you'd even think that.”  
  
~  
  
Does Ryan really not see it? They are more in trouble than Andrew initially thought. All right. “I can give you a list, but the list won’t matter. He protects you,” Andrew says. They’ve only known these guys two days. “It’s the way he says your name.” Andrew presses his fingers against his lips for a moment, then says. “I’ve watched him almost reach out and touch you about one hundred and twenty three times.” The accuracy of the number’s a joke, but the intent behind it is not.  
  
“And he’s _always_ looking at you. He always looks away as soon as you look up. He’s been looking at you all night.” Andrew shrugs. “He reminds me of me, with Steven, back when I thought telling him would only be hurtful. For some reason, people don’t often think I’m a guy with any feelings, either,” Andrew says, some mischief in his eyes.  
  
~  
   
Ryan looks at Shane. Shane’s not looking at him. He’s talking to Steven like he has been for however long Andrew and Ryan have been talking. But Andrew is talking like he’s 100% serious, and he has no reason to make this shit up. He doesn’t seem like the type of person to bullshit someone. And it’s not like Ryan hasn’t seen Shane reach and then stop, but apparently he’s doing it when Ryan’s not aware. Which kind of re-contextualizes it.  
   
His whole body feels hot and uncertain. He’s happy under all this disbelief, sort of like it’s kindled some glow at the center of him. He wants it to be true—god, he does. But it doesn’t change the fact that Andrew is one person and people are wrong about people. And there’s a thousand layers to Shane—Ryan doesn’t want… fuck.  There’s so many things he doesn’t want to get wrong.  
   
Andrew seems different than Shane too. He’s closed off, sure, but not the same far-off, near-alien way that Shane is. If Ryan met Andrew, he’d know immediately how to process him. Shane’s different. He’s taken forever to figure out, so yeah, maybe Andrew had feelings for Steven—maybe he waited to tell him because he was afraid. But…  
   
He cuts his eyes to Shane again. All Ryan knows is that Shane looks a hell of a lot more comfortable with Steven than he usually does with Ryan.  
   
He smiles and shakes his head, never quite looking at Andrew. He just glances up in bits and pieces. Because he doesn’t know how to keep talking now. He doesn’t whether to deny it or end the conversation or, he just doesn’t know. He keeps shaking his head, these tiny motions as he keeps his eyes pinned on the empty bottle, presses his lips together.  
   
“I—do you need another drink? I need another drink.”  
  
~  
  
“Yeah,” Andrew says, catching Ryan’s shoulder as he passes behind him, a kind of bolstering gesture, as he goes to get more drinks.  
  
Adam joins their little group. After a little while, Andrew drifts away, leaving Ryan with his thoughts. The night goes on. Shane’s back to the bar once or twice, always with the shelter, the excuse of another person. He’s not _ignoring_ Ryan. Once he makes some offhand comment as he reaches for the second bottle of scotch — Jesus, he’s had too much to drink. They’re all sharing, except maybe Ryan. Shane quips that he should drink something stronger, since it’s not like he’s got to be the designated driver, but he doesn’t look at him as he laughs the words out. He stumbles back a little into the counter and laughs about it with Adam, and then slips out from behind the bar and away.  
  
It’s… he doesn’t let himself think about why he’s being like this. At first he was drinking to feel normal, to feel less like shit, to not have to think or worry for a couple of hours, but then it turned into all these thoughts about Ryan, and all this heat inside Shane, and Shane knows that now the alcohol has made him too brave and too reckless, and he’s pulled away from Ryan so that he doesn’t do something stupid and irrevocable that ruins everything.  
  
But he misses him.  
  
He’s just there across the room, but God, Shane misses him. He drinks another shot to forget that he does, and that seems to be the thing that clinches it. Or maybe he just needed a reason. He always needs a reason to be with Ryan and he doesn’t know if that’s because he thinks Ryan doesn’t really want him or because Shane thinks he doesn’t deserve Ryan, but he’s too drunk to care.  
  
He looks back at the bar after what might be five minutes or two hours and Ryan’s not there, and Shane gets this _sick_ lurch in his gut because there’s zombies out there and he hasn’t been watching— He finds him though, a second later, tucked into the booth near the edge of the room, but he’s alone. Shane sets his glass down on the nearest surface and goes to him, sliding like tetris pieces jumbling awkwardly into the seat in the booth across from him. “Hey, little guy,” Shane says, and then starts laughing. Jesus Christ he’s so happy to see him. He goes to take another drink but his drink is gone. Where is it?  
  
“I lost my drink,” he tells him, a little mournfully, and then grins, and it’s unguarded and sweet, as he says “Are you playing checkers _by yourself_?”  
  
~  
   
Ryan is not generally like this. He’s usually at the center of these types of things. He’s tried to be a few times, but he’s tired. Still processing yesterday and all the shit that happened. So he’s been a little away from it. Shane hasn’t—Shane has not been away from it. He’s been away from Ryan, but certainly not it. Ryan’s replayed Andrew’s words a thousand times, but Shane is definitely not thinking about him tonight. And it’s… Ryan’s half back to thinking Andrew just doesn’t get it and that it’s impossibly hard to understand why Shane does anything.  
   
But whatever. Shane’s having a good time. He doesn’t have to be in love with Ryan. God, Ryan almost laughs incredulously at himself. It’s a bizarre thing to think. And then it’s got Ryan wondering if he is in love with Shane. And he doesn’t want to wonder that—because he doesn’t have to wonder that. Jesus. So he ruins the night for himself, more or less, he can’t even bring himself to drink much because he feels dehydrated and pissed off and miserable. Drinking would probably help, but he doesn’t do it. Not enough. He’s nursing a bottle most of the night. So slow it never makes a dent past a warm sizzle in his chest.  
   
The laughter starts to grate on him, and he doesn’t want to bring everyone else’s fun down so he wanders off to a corner of the room. Apparently to be sad or think too much or something equally useless. Mostly he just tries to talk himself into being happier. But Shane’s definitively avoiding and/or ignoring him so it’s making it hard. Even with this new information that Andrew thinks Shane’s got a thing for him.  
   
Even if Shane thought he did, or Shane acted like he did—he’s so much happier here, so much more at ease. If he’s in love with Ryan, then he enjoys being miserable apparently. But then he’s drinking, and… man, Ryan just wants to stop thinking about it. But when he stops thinking about it, then he’s thinking about Jake and his mother and quarantine zones.  
   
He should be drinking more. His bottle’s almost empty, but he can’t be bothered to get up and go back to the bar. So instead he plays with the checker board in front of him. It’s something idle to do that keeps his mind from spinning in too many directions. He’s not figuring this out tonight, surrounded by people having significantly more fun than he is. It’s the worst kind of headspace for this shit. He’s focused on getting some kind of perfect pattern of tiles to checkers pieces when Shane sits down. It almost surprises him enough to make him drink. He glances back like he expects Shane to have brought an entourage with him, but he hasn’t. It’s just him.  
   
And, oh boy—he is _drunk_. It’s all _over_ his face. This glazed, wild expression that promises literally anything is about to come out of his mouth. Shane’s got this sweet, unchecked smile that brightens his whole face, make his eyes twinkle and Ryan smiles back. He’s trying not to let this be awkward with the two thousand thoughts in his head right now, but honestly, Shane likely wouldn’t notice if he fucking stood on his hands on top of the checkerboard. Or if he noticed, he wouldn’t be alarmed.  
   
“You probably left your drink at the bar.” He thumbs one of the black checkers and the ridges dig into his skin. “And I’m not playing checkers. I’m playing _with_ checkers. Not the same thing.”  
  
~  
  
“Well what’re you doin’? How— how’re you doing it?” Shane asks, like he’s genuinely interested in how Ryan’s playing _with_ checkers. He folds his arms on the table and somehow folds himself right down so he can rest his chin on them, almost level with the board. Christ, it’s difficult. His legs tangle with Ryan’s beneath the table because he’s just too much person to fit into this one booth seat, especially like this. “Oh are you making them— is it a pattern?” he asks, pointing at the piece to square ratio before looking up. “I get it.”  
  
~  
   
Ryan tucks himself back into the seat a bit. Shane seems to need about eight miles of leg space. Plus, the touch—it’s kicking his mind up well past recommended levels. His chest too. He laughs, and it’s bracingly genuine, because Shane’s drunk. And it’s cute and hilarious and a thousand other things. But it makes him laugh. And it loosens the knot in his chest some. He doesn’t know if Shane had to get drunk to talk to him, or if he just… needed the break. But at least he’s here now.  
   
“Yeah, it’s a pattern.” It’s such an obvious pattern. Just reds on black spaces, blacks on white—but there aren’t enough pieces so he’s trying to organize it into some kind of shape. It’s a complete waste of time. But Shane seems proud of himself so Ryan keeps the smile on his face once he stops laughing. “Great job.”  
   
~  
  
Shane’s face does something in between a smile and something more uncertain, more vulnerable, and he searches Ryan’s eyes for a second before he drops his gaze and pulls himself back up so he’s not fucking up his spine even further. He reaches out and touches the exposed outside of Ryan’s wrist, where his sleeve’s been hiked up too high. “What’s wrong, why are you sitting here by yourself?”  
  
Hadn’t he _wanted_ to be with other people? Does he not like them? Shane was so sure he would.  
  
He asks him this like he hasn’t been avoiding him all night, and some sober part of his brain says _No, Shane, you were waiting for him to come to you. And he didn’t._  
  
And Shane has given in again, like he always does.  
  
~  
   
Ryan closes one eye, like he’s wincing. “I don’t know. Just thinking about stuff.” Wasn’t that what he said on the balcony? Wasn’t it the same reason?  
   
 _You_ , he wants to scream it. _You. I don’t know what to do about you._  
   
He thinks about what Andrew says and tries to see it in Shane’s eyes. Tries to see something there that could inspire the confidence that Andrew had. But it’s so hard to have confidence when he wants this way. It’s so hard to believe something that could change everything in the best way possible—that could make this apocalypse feel okay. How can he be confident? How can he dare want that after everything he’s let happen?  
   
“I’m tired. I guess I’m used to it just being… us. It’s nice.” He looks around like he’s offended the room itself. “Not that this isn’t nice. Andrew and Steven are great, and Adam, but…”  
   
 _I’m scared you only talk to me because I’m the only person around._  
   
He shrugs.  
  
~  
  
Shane’s fingers haven’t left his wrist, and he makes this little aborted movement almost like he’s about to circle his fingers around it, but then he doesn’t. “Yeah,” Shane says, and his voice is strange in its softness, almost hoarse, and he’s looking at Ryan like he can’t look away.  
  
 _Christ_ , he thinks, and stops the thought before it can surface because if it does, then he’ll say it out and loud, and he can’t say it again, like this, touching his wrist instead of across the room. He can’t say it. _Beautiful_.  
  
He’s got butterflies in his stomach and it’s so ridiculous because he’s sitting across a table from Ryan, not sitting at the top of a ride at Disneyland or something, just before it drops. He’s not staring into a zombie’s eyes, too close. He’s never felt anything like this.  
  
Instead he admits something else that still feels big and frightening, but not like the other thing. “Yeah, I miss it. Us. I miss us.” He says it like there’s actually an ‘us’ for them to be. To have been. He laughs a little, embarrassed maybe, and looks away at the others without really seeing them in a big picture. He sees Steven’s fingers curl in the fabric of Andrew’s sweater where his arm is wound around his back. He sees the way Andrew’s body tips as he shifts his weight into him. It feels intimate and Shane drops his eyes to the checkers Ryan’s been playing with and suddenly he feels _awful_ for testing him, for avoiding him, for hoping Ryan would come to _him_.  
  
“I thought this would be good,” Shane says, like he can’t figure out why it's not. “Other people. You like other people. I’m s—... I…” he falters, it’s like his mind is breaking down.  
  
   
~  
   
Ryan’s trying to figure out if he should move his hand. No, he’s trying to figure out what Shane’s hand on his wrist means. He likes how it feels—likes this soft, wisp of touch between them. He wants more. But he likes this. He looks at his wrist like he can freeze it there. Shane says he misses them, us, and yet he’s been avoiding Ryan all night. It makes no sense. That’s the thing—Shane makes so little sense. It’s in there, everything—all of it makes sense somewhere. Sometimes Ryan thinks he can see it.  
   
Not right now.  
   
He looks into Shane’s face and narrows his eyes like he’s thinking. Because he is. Thinking about Shane. The thing that’s driving him insane and keeping him together at the same time. But then Shane’s remorseful, and it’s the opposite of what Ryan wants. It’s why he’s so afraid to take a step. Because everything about him is upsetting to Shane. Shane’s just trying and trying and trying for Ryan, and Ryan can’t understand why. Can’t understand why he rattles Shane like this.  
   
 _He’s in love with you._  
   
No. That doesn’t make sense. It’s not how people act when they… and if this is how Ryan did affect Shane, even if he was in love—he shouldn’t want this. “No, it’s—hey, don’t worry about it.” He nudges at Shane under the table with his foot. And he’s still paralyzed under Shane’s not-at-all hold on his wrist. “This has been good. It’s good. You seem like you’re having a good time. That’s good enough.” His eyes have been on Shane, but he looks away, up at one of the light fixtures. “And I do like other people, but I… I like you.” He laughs because it’s just nerves. It’s all nerves. Fuck. “More, maybe. But it’s not like… this has been good. Don’t feel bad because you’re having a good time. Please.”  
  
~  
  
Shane breathes a soft laugh and taps his fingers in a beat against Ryan’s wrist bone and breathes, “This is so stupid,” and he means more than this conversation.  
  
His eyes are on Ryan’s, searching his face and he thinks about telling him that Steven likes basketball, too, but not the Lakers, he’s forgotten who Steven likes. He thinks about telling him about how Adam’s going to play Imagine Dragons over the radio tomorrow and about how Ryan has just said that Shane having a good time was enough, and Shane doesn’t want it to be like that.  
  
“I want to have a good time with you,” Shane says. The words spill off his tongue heavily, but not overlapping. He’s being very careful not to slur. _I’m sorry_ , he thinks again, because he’s being such an idiot and he’s wasted all this time not with Ryan and now Ryan looks sad and…  
  
“Jesus, Ryan, did you know— sometimes I can’t even look at you because you’ve got this— face,” he tells him. He feels, somewhere, that this isn’t right, but the louder part of him, the one that’s directly related to his blood alcohol level is telling him to fucking go for it. “But it’s not just your face, obviously, even though that’s, that’s—” he’s trying to get this out and he pulls away from Ryan’s wrist to wave his hands around. “You’re like the sun, it hurts my eyes. You’re so _good_. I’m trying to make everything...”  
  
He doesn’t say ‘good’ like morals. He means morals, too, but it’s beyond that. It’s so far beyond that and Shane has no way to describe it but he tries.  
  
“You’re like the… the brightest thing I’ve ever. Uh. Felt.”  
  
That doesn’t make sense. Shane’s certain you can’t feel brightness. But that’s the thing with Ryan. It doesn’t make sense. It doesn’t make sense at all, but Shane feels something, and it’s so. “It’s fucking beautiful, you’re fucking beautiful. I’m trying, I tried… I— I missed you.”  He takes this fragmented breath. “That’s stupid. That’s really stupid, jesus christ, I’m sorry.” He pulls back, all the way into the back of the booth, presses his shoulders against it. It feels like he’s just drunk glacier water, he’s too warm, in the room, but his insides feel hollowed out with fear. “Let’s, let’s let’s…” he doesn’t know what they should do. “Come on. Let’s do something.” He moves to get up, break the moment before he can read Ryan. Before he can see something that will fucking break him.  
  
~  
   
Ryan blinks about four thousand times as it settles in. His brain keeps trying to reboot, like he didn’t just hear this… this, whatever it was from Shane. Shane’s drunk. Even if he’s not slurring terribly, it’s pretty obvious. This doesn’t have to mean anything big. But Ryan’s brain is trying to ram to pieces together like it’s the end of an impossible puzzle he’s trying to solve. Really, it is. Because this is a lot. This is… so much that Ryan doesn’t know how to process the actual words.  
   
At first he’d scrunched his face into a kind of uncertainty—since Shane just said “sometimes I can’t look at you because you’ve got this face.” Which doesn’t necessarily seem complimentary. But now Shane’s finished and he’s pretty sure it was meant as a compliment and he’s not sure what his face is doing. Shane wants to have fun with Ryan. Even though he’s been avoiding him all night. It makes no sense—maybe it doesn’t even make sense to Shane. Maybe it’s impossible for him to have fun with Ryan, but…  
   
Andrew’s words are back in his head and circling, circling, circling, like a storm brewing. And hearing this, after hearing that, it doesn’t seem so far-fetched. Because Shane’s talking about something big—something that he doesn’t know what to do with. And Ryan has enough experience with feelings that he knows how they feel. Hell, he has one right now—and he doesn’t know how to articulate, and if he tried, it might sound just like Shane did just now.  
   
But Shane is drunk. And there are a hundred reasons this might not be what it seems. It’s… Shane has avoided him all night. Where is this fucking coming from? Or is this Shane’s insane way of saying Ryan is too much for him. Except he said he misses him, and called him good, and… it’s like the other night when he said he can’t sleep without Ryan… Ryan’s head feels like lightning strikes. He’d squeeze his eyes shut if he could remember how to move. He doesn’t know how to react to this, how to take this… because Shane isn’t sober.  
   
He reaches out and grabs Shane by the wrist before he can stand. Maybe because if he does more thing, does one more insane thing, Ryan’s going to combust. “Wait, just—it’s not stupid. It’s… it’s…” He’s not drunk. He doesn’t think he’s got it in him to word vomit how Shane makes him feel right now. Not with three other people a few feet away. He lets go. “Wh-what do you wanna do?”  
  
~  
  
Shane goes still when Ryan touches him, half out of the booth, but then settles again, eyes on the table, on the checkers. “Whatever— whatever you want. You want to go somewhere?” Jesus it sounds like too much.   
  
“Ch— th— there’s _checkers_! We could play checkers.” He pokes at the board, but he doesn’t want checkers. He doesn’t think he could even make his brain do checkers right now.  
  
~  
   
Ryan lets out a breath. He’s pretty sure checkers is the last thing this very drunk version of Shane wants. He smiles, even as his insides flip a thousand ways. “Go somewhere?” Ryan is not dignifying the checkers suggestion with an answer. “Like where?” His grin widens. “We’ve got about six rooms to choose from. So the options are limitless.” Surely Shane doesn’t want to leave the entire place. It’s dark outside. Not smart.  
   
“We can go to bed, if you want?” He glances back to the hallway, but then that feels like a lot. For him. For Shane. “Maybe I should get you some water?”  
  
~  
  
Shane can’t really get himself to make words, because Ryan said ‘we can go to bed’ and Shane’s mind launches him headfirst into this hot, breathless moment, _oh fuck_.  
  
He holds Ryan’s eyes, frozen, a little bit deer-in-headlights, but then he figures it out. That that’s not what Ryan meant. Of _course_ it’s not.  
  
“I’m not that drunk,” Shane says, belatedly, which is a lie. He should have water, but now he wants— he just wants Ryan, the smell of his hair, the way his pulse beats in his throat, the warmth of his body against Shane’s — all things Shane knows well enough, now, that he shouldn’t be turning into this half soft-blur image of Ryan’s skin, all of him, and how he would feel—  
  
Shane exhales, “Uh. We could just go somewhere quieter.”  
  
Even that sounds like too much.  
  
~  
   
Ryan’s pretty sure Shane is exactly that drunk. “One sec.” He stands up and goes to grab a water bottle from the stash Adam’s put on the counter for everyone. Because he’s an upstanding fucking citizen. Ryan brings one back to Shane and holds out his hand either to tell him to come on or help him out of the booth—depending entirely on what Shane does. He’s not sure why Shane wants to go someplace quieter, but he’s trying not to think about it. But he wants to go somewhere with Shane. He needs to get away from this so he’s leaning into it. He wants this—whatever it is. Maybe more than he should.  
   
He tilts his head, widens his eyes like he’s been waiting for half an hour. “Okay, let’s go find some place quieter.”  
  
~  
  
Shane reaches out and takes his hand and does struggle a little to get up from the table, but he’s steady enough as he stands, even if he does stand up too close to Ryan. He doesn’t know where to go. This place is just all hallways and doors and half-empty rooms. They really are alone here, the five of them, at the end of the world. At least that’s what it feels like.  
  
He pulls Ryan towards the hallway, towards the room they shared last night. The beds they made up are folded up against the wall because the machines are actually useable and they’ve washed most of their stuff before they started drinking today. The machines are quiet now. Music still filters in from the bar and it’s half-dark in here and Shane steps into the room and realizes he doesn’t really know what to do. They can’t even sit in here, really. Well…  
  
Improvise.  
  
“Feel free to take a seat on a … a dryer,” Shane says, laughing softly. Jesus, his heart is beating so fast. He lets go of Ryan long enough to hop onto one (clumsily) himself. He kicks it accidentally and says “Whoops,” and kind of giggles about it, then he reaches out and catches hold of the sleeve of Ryan’s shirt, near his shoulder. He doesn’t know what to do after that, he just holds on, looking at him. He wants to ask him something, something that will make this a little clearer to Shane, because sometimes he thinks he’s got it and sometimes he really doesn’t. Sometimes, like now, all he can do it let it crash in overtop him.  
  
~  
   
Ryan isn’t sure why they’re in here. Half of him thought they would just lie down, but the beds aren’t really… usable right now. And there’s just the washer and dryer. He laughs at Shane’s joke because it’s literally all they can do. He thinks about sitting on the dryer but Shane grabs him and he steps forward so they’re too close. Or maybe they’re as close as Ryan wants them to be. He’s far, far too sober for this, he thinks. Because it’s his fault, he’s wedged himself between Shane’s knees instead of getting on the dryer like a sane person. But Shane has height on him, so Ryan’s having to look up to even meet his eyes.  
   
“Oh, uh, Andrew said they brought our bags in… earlier.” His eyes flick to Shane’s mouth, then away. His eyes finally find them pressed against the wall. “So that was cool.”  
   
It feels like the most anti-climactic thing he could say.  
  
~  
  
It’s the most anti-climactic thing Ryan could say.   
  
“Yeah, great,” Shane responds, and he’s got this soft, dark look in his eyes, and he changes his mind about this whole thing and slides off of the machine more gracefully than he got onto it, and his whole body slides against Ryan’s, and he’s so much taller than him. Somehow he always forgets how small Ryan is, and so there’s this forward momentum that maybe is an accident as he pushes Ryan back a few steps, catching hold of both his arms through his sweater, and his mouth is on Ryan’s jaw because Ryan keeps smiling at him, and then looking away, and he loves Ryan’s ridiculous too-large mouth, and his hands which are all sharp-knuckles and delicate fingers, but stronger than they look when they hold onto Shane.  
  
His mouth brushes open and damp to Ryan’s ear and Shane exhales once, sharply, fighting the surge of overwhelm as Ryan’s backed into the machines opposite. Shane collides with him, hips, chest. He bites the lobe of Ryan’s ear with sharp teeth.  
  
~  
   
Shane gets down. Almost seems frustrated. Ryan opens his mouth to say he’s sorry when Shane hops down. It pushes Ryan back so Shane has to grab him. Ryan tries to say something else, anything else—maybe still an apology, and then Shane’s mouth hits damp and hot against his jaw. Ryan gasps—it shouldn’t be unexpected. Or maybe it should be. But it is. It takes him by surprise like it always does. His fingers flex and flare before he hooks his arm around Shane’s neck. He digs in. He doesn’t mean to, but Shane’s lips charge this fire inside him. It’s swelling and glowing like a goddamn nuclear reactor.  
   
He clenches his hand so it pulls Shane to him even tighter. He stumbles so he half-arcs against the dryer. It pushes against his spine, but he doesn’t notice. He’s too aware of all the ways Shane’s touching him. Then Shane closes his teeth over Ryan’s ear, and his head snaps back so hard his neck strains. His breath comes in bursts, mixed gasps and near-groans. Things he should not be doing when there are several people outside. There’s still music, but fuck.  
   
He winds his hand in Shane’s hair again. He gets a strong enough grip to keep Shane where he is as Ryan twists his head so his ear slides out of Shane’s mouth and Ryan’s mouth hits hard against Shane’s neck. It’s barely a kiss—mostly just burned breath, but his lips move when he says. “I’m starting to think you have a thing for biting.” It vibrates back into him like it’s reverberated off Shane’s veins. He scrapes his teeth over the soft skin beneath just beneath Shane’s jaw before his lips follow, softer and warmer.  
  
~  
  
Shane’s blood is roaring in his ears. This sometimes happens when he’s drunk, this high-pitched white-noise, but it’s intensified now, so when Ryan speaks it is surprisingly clear and close and goosebumps erupt over his skin and he’s got Ryan’s hips in both his hands and he holds them tight to his own, fingernails dragging at fabric.  
  
He’s breathing in all these abrupt little exhales so that he doesn’t make a sound, and he tips his head back a little for Ryan and says “Only with you—” because it’s like he can never get close enough, like he can never satisfy the ache inside himself. He lets go of one sharp hip and drags his thumb along the edge of Ryan’s jaw, buries his fingers in his hair. Everything spins a little and he presses harder into Ryan like that will steady him.  
  
~  
  
Shane's not steady. He didn't drink any water and it's obvious. He's drunk. Jesus, should Ryan stop this? Shane's got a hand on his jaw and it's like he's opened a solar system inside Ryan. There's planets and stars and madness that Ryan's trying so hard to work his logic around.It's almost impossible to raise his hands, but he does it. He catches Shane's face in either of his hands and looks until their eyes snap onto each other and lock. His voice is hoarse, almost hurting, as he speaks. "Shane, are you okay? You're pretty drunk."  
  
~  
  
Shane’s eyes are very clear for a moment, and he doesn’t fucking understand because Ryan’s… responding. Ryan’s pulled him close and kissed his neck and there’s this charge between them but Shane still doesn’t know if Ryan’s pushing or pulling. “Feel my heartbeat,” he tells him, grabbing up one of his hands and pressing it to his chest. It’s so fast. He holds it there and lets his heart slam against Ryan’s palm. _This is what you do to me._ Shane’s panting a little, he’s holding Ryan’s eyes, and Ryan’s pushing excuses into Shane’s mouth and Shane _doesn’t_ want them. He shakes his head a little.  
  
“Stop,” he whispers, like a plea. He’s got one hand around Ryan’s the other still in his hair and he thinks about kissing him, but he doesn’t want it now. Not when he can barely feel his own fucking face. He can only feel Ryan against him, warm, solid, safe. He wants to be that for him, too.  
  
“Just…” he moves a little closer, until his mouth brushes Ryan’s cheek. He has to release his hand to steady himself against Ryan’s waist, pushing him back into the machine more gently, pressing against him, because fucking Christ, _yes_ he wants this, he’s not just drunk, does Ryan really not know that by now?  
  
~  
   
Shane’s pulse ricochets through him so chaotic and consuming Ryan thinks it might be his own. Screaming loud enough to drown out anything else. But no, it’s a mirror. An almost exact replica of the fevered beat in his own chest. It’s not the heartbeat of someone drunk and untethered. Just like everything else, this heartbeat _means_ something. Ryan’s teetering closer to understanding what it is, but he’s so scared of it. So scared of believing any of the words tiptoeing around the corridors of his skull. As gentle and unheard as children’s past bedtime or as dangerous and unknown as zombies in the shadows.  
   
He’s so afraid it’s going to bite him. Almost as scared as he is when he tries to sleep, as scared as he is of a real zombie. Of what happened to Jake. Then, he doesn’t feel Shane’s heartbeat anymore and it’s just this roaring scream of his own. His teeth come together like he’s gritting them, but he isn’t. Or, he’s not angry. It’s uncertainty grinding pieces of him together.  Crumbling at his bones and smashing them together in ways that don’t make sense. No—ways that _do_ make sense. More sense than the skeleton he’s puppeteered his entire life.  
   
Stop. Shane’s asking him to _stop_. And it’s like he’s in Ryan’s head. It’s like Shane’s formed out of the mist and whispers to give his own fury form. _Just stop._ But he doesn’t know how. He’s trying to hit the brakes, but the wire’s cut—or maybe he’s hitting the accelerator. He’s so upside down he doesn’t fucking know anymore. Shane’s got a hand in his hair and it’s this quiet anchor of a tug. It’s the only thing keeping him from launching straight off this planet and into the icy nightmare of space.  
   
Shane’s breath skitters across his skin like beads small enough to seep into him. Ryan breathes this broken kind of noise, maybe meant to be a word, but it isn’t. Not right now. It’s just Shane’s half-formed sentences now. Shane wants this. Drunk or not, they’re here. And, like Andrew said, _it’s the end of the world_ so if Shane wants it now, then why not just fuck it and worry about the rest later? Even if it’s dangerous—even if it ends horribly… this could be the whole reason it’s never easy with Shane and Ryan. Because Ryan’s too busy plotting out the future—a future Shane might not even want—thinking about if and when he’ll get hurt.  
   
He needs to let it go. At least for tonight, for Shane, because Shane isn’t so drunk he doesn’t know what he’s doing. And fuck, Ryan wants this too. He wants _more_ than this, but he wants this. So…  
   
He slides one hand around to grip the back of Shane’s head and the other over the ridges of his shirt until it snags on the waistband of his pants. He uses both to bring Shane to him—down and, well not quite forward. Not with how close they already are. But there’s this bang of body parts and bones. Ryan’s fingernails drive a little harder into Shane’s hairline as his mouth hits over his ear with a hiss of air.  
   
“Okay.”  
   
He presses his lips over the breath the word left behind, trapping it against Shane’s ear. His tongue follows it, wet and hot and barely touching—but touching, _licking_ , before he drops to tug on Shane’s earlobe with his teeth. He lets go fast, keeps dropping—it’s easy—even with Shane’s neck bent , Ryan’s on his toes to reach high enough. So he kisses his skin slowly, dips along his jaw, then his neck, with these lazy, liquid movements, never bringing his lips fully away from Shane’s skin. He keeps his hold on Shane’s waist, circling around his back, beneath his shirt, so Ryan’s body crashes into his in these slow rhythmic pulses. His mouth stops beneath the hollow of Shane’s throat, just before the pale shot of his skin disappears beneath his sweater and Ryan catches it beneath his teeth and sucks at it _hard_.  
   
And his hands keep sliding along the flushed, warm skin on Shane’s back, and Ryan’s not thinking. He’s done thinking. Just for tonight.  
  
~  
  
Something thrills through him that’s so overpowering that his thoughts just wink out, like stars. One by one, they shut down in flickers and then it’s just Ryan’s body against his, like the tide, and Ryan’s mouth on his neck and Shane’s holding onto him so tightly, Shane’s moving into him, and he tips his head back and grits out this soft, shattered “Oh, _Christ_ ,” as Ryan pulls bruises to the hollow of his throat. _Yes. Leave marks. I’m yours if you want me. I was yours already._  
  
He gets his hands beneath the front of Ryan’s shirt, his sweater, and slides them up over his stomach, grabs hold of him just where his ribs end and there’s something desperate about it. He presses too hard, fingers tense against softness and bone.  
  
There’s a flare of heat and pain and release as Ryan pulls away and Shane’s mouth finds Ryan’s neck. He has to bend his knees a little, pushing him back into the machine, forgetting he’s got a cut down the length of his spine, forgetting zombies and music and the dead people they’ve loved and the very alive people outside, forgetting everything but the two of them as he slides his tongue slow and heavy over Ryan’s hummingbird pulse like he can settle it, but he doesn’t want to.  
  
He doesn’t even really realize he’s rucking Ryan’s shirt up, dragging it up over soft skin, up until Ryan’s arms hook it and Shane pulls back to get it over his head. He drops it, sways a little too much in the moment without him, and then his body crashes into Ryan’s again, fingers dragging over his collarbones and the back of his neck. His hips roll over Ryan’s once in this long, hushed drag of cloth and heat and he gasps against his neck, pushes Ryan back by one shoulder to get his teeth around the delicate jut of Ryan’s collarbone and bite down, gently, even as he lets his teeth scrape.  
  
~  
   
Pain sprays in this delicate hiss across his back as he’s pressed further back into the metal behind him. It doesn’t hurt—not in any significant way, not in a way that doesn’t melt into the ache that’s formed at the center of him. That doesn’t make him want this more. Shane’s hands hold onto him like a lifeline. Like it’s the only thing keeping him alive.  
   
Shane’s tongue slips across his neck, over his pulse, and it feels like its melting a line along his skin. Opening him up so everything around it is too cold. Ryan hisses because it is—it’s too much of everything. He’s still got one set of fingers tangled in Shane’s hair, and they clench, pull. They fall a little, snag on a notch in Shane’s spine before he lets Shane twist his shirt off his body. He reaches, frantically, because Shane’s still off-balance. But then they’re back together and Shane’s all pressed into him. Every edge brilliantly defined against Ryan. Then his teeth hit Ryan’s collarbone, and it’s this seize of every piece of him. This hand around his spine, pushing, demanding this bizarre obedience to Shane. This thing that unravels everything else. He gasps, but it comes out like, “ _Jesus_.”  
   
Which is fair.  
   
He needs Shane to take his shirt off. He needs access to more of him, but he has to coax himself to move. To do something that isn’t orchestrated by Shane’s fucking hands. He catches Shane’s shirt, yanks at it. But Shane’s taller, and Ryan’s body is quaking under this thing Shane wakes up in him so he presses his lips to Shane’s temple instead. He tugs, pushes at the fabric so it bunches around Shane’s chest. “ _Please_ ,” he says like it makes sense.  
  
~  
  
Shane understands somehow. He arches to kiss Ryan’s shoulder while simultaneously reaching back behind his neck to grab hold of the worn-soft cloth there and pull it over his head, separating them for a moment, but then they are skin to skin and Shane’s grasping, half-blind, for anything to hold onto, and he catches hold of the edge of the washing machine and presses one hand to Ryan’s hip and gasps against his mouth, but never touches him.  
  
The moment surges through him too hot, too immediate. It cracks like heat through ice, all the way up his spine and down his thighs, sharply through the centre of him. He catches his breath and catches Ryan’s jaw, keeping his face tipped up to Shane’s so he can meet his eyes in the second that his heart skips.  
  
Shane doesn’t want the warm weakening release to come from half-touches and Ryan’s tongue. Not this time. He wants to find a way inside of him, live in his bones and the pulse that keeps him living. He wants to be held by those liquid dark eyes and the steady but shaking sound of Ryan’s breath and Ryan’s hands and his skin and most of all, he wants to be able to find a way to separate from him, too, without it hurting them both so much.  
  
“Ryan,” Shane says, because he’s onto something perhaps, he’s feeling brave enough, because in this moment he can believe that he is, maybe—…  
  
Shane says his name, and it’s the beginning of something that he hasn’t figured out how to say, and so he just breathes it again, “Ryan,” against his throat.  
  
~  
   
Ryan’s losing himself to whatever is crawling through him. Losing himself to what might be thoughts, half-formed ones scared of things that might happen or might not happen. Shane’s skin brushes against his and it’s all friction and tension. Heat burst to life, and he wonders if he’s ever touched anyone before. He knows he hasn’t—not like this, not with all this needs and want inside him. Everything burns and melts and sizzles—but it’s soft. It’s an impossible contradiction.  
   
Just like Shane.  
   
There’s this moment where their breaths collide—where an inch of movement could become something else. Something more. But Shane’s drunk, and as hard as Ryan is trying not to think—he’s still thinking. He still wants this to be something more than… wild, impossible touching. He can’t pull away, either, because Shane’s got a grip on his jaw. And he’s glad because he needs it—Shane’s subtle instruction. This thing that’s fueling everything in Ryan—that’s eclipsing him.  
   
So he’s just looking at Shane. Staring at him like it’s another fucking world. Like he’s staring through the looking glass of another galaxy—another fucking dimension. A dimension that isn’t war torn and fucked. It’s just Shane—where nothing is what it is, because everything is what it isn’t. Shane with his delicately brilliant hands, and the eyes that say more words than his mouth will ever imagine. And words that mean so much, so many things—that it’s no wonder he doesn’t use them more. Because they fail him, just like everything thing else. It fails him again, and again, and again.  
   
Ryan doesn’t want to. He wants to be more. He wants to be right. Just this once. His lips quiver—his hands shake against Shane’s shoulders as Shane says his name. He wants Shane to kiss him. He wants to be okay on the other side of this. He wants Shane to be _happy_ on the other side of it. Ryan brings his still unsteady hand across Shane’s jaw so it brushes the side of his mouth where it sits too close to Ryan’s throat.  
   
He almost asks what he wants. He almost says a dozen things, but instead he says nothing. Because everything else seems like too much.  
  
~  
  
Shane is kissing Ryan’s neck, and then he lets go of the edge of the washing machine to catch Ryan’s hand, the one on Shane’s face, and he turns his head to press his lips to Ryan’s palm and then meets his eyes, and Ryan’s fingers are against his lips, featherlight, just where they meet his hand and he meets Ryan’s eyes.  
  
Time stops. Shane lets it. He throws away all logic, everything he’s ever known. Nothing matters, and there’s only this and he is so overwhelmed with something that feels just like heartbreak only it doesn’t hurt. It’s… _oh Jesus_ , it’s—  
  
But he’s known for a long time.  
  
He starts to say something and then thinks that maybe he doesn’t have to. Maybe they’re both in this. He lets go of Ryan’s hand and steps close until his whole body brushes Ryan’s, but it’s brief — this there and then gone touch, because Shane’s fingers fall to Ryan’s belt and undo it. He kisses his cheek, soft, lingering as he slides the material through the buckle. He kisses his jaw as he undoes the button of his pants. He runs his tongue over the fragile edge of Ryan’s ear where the cartilage begins and steps closer, kisses his neck, shoulders dipping diagonally to reach. He presses the edge of his wrist against him, fingers on the zipper but not undoing it.  
  
This is a precipice. A ledge.  
  
“Ryan,” he whispers again, because it’s the only thing that he’s got, it’s all he’s holding onto, but he needs make this something for Ryan’s sake, because Shane’s got his silences, but Ryan — he doesn’t want him just treading water.  
  
The words sear his throat, they edge up all splintered and he’s _trying_ , but. What is the right thing to say? So draws back enough to see his face because he’s always been able to find everything in Ryan’s eyes, as long as Ryan’s willing to look at him.  
  
~  
   
Ryan’s caught up in Shane’s lips on his cheek. It’s so feather-soft that he’s lost in it before he realizes what Shane’s doing—what’s he’s started. Then Shane’s at his ear, and Ryan can’t focus. Can’t think about what it means that Shane’s trying to do this. Because his brain isn’t off—he’s trying to turn it off, but it’s not. And this is huge. This is a big deal, if Shane does this. Shane’s wrist presses into him, and this torn grunt tears itself from Ryan’s throat. Jesus—he wants this. He wants Shane. He wants him to keep going.  
   
He’s been trying so hard not to focus on it. The pieces of him aching, begging, unanswered. He’s so used to this up and down. But now Shane’s so close to it—like he’s forcing Ryan to think about it. And god, it doesn’t take much. Because Ryan _is_ thinking about it. He looks down, and it’s just Shane’s hand—there’s no massive, fireworks show, nothing impossible to look at. Nothing like the way it feels. It’s just Shane’s hand at his belt, like a question.  
   
Ryan’s mouth opens. It’s dry. All the fireworks are inside him, crackling up and down his spine, stealing the moisture from everything—stealing the blood from everything except that singular point that Shane’s insisted on acknowledging. Shane can’t be another bathroom guy. He already isn’t—but… he said he couldn’t do this? What if he’s drunk and doing it because… fuck, fuck. And then there’s not even a door. So Ryan can’t figure out why his head keeps circling back to it—keeps wanting it. Needing Shane to keep going.  
   
Shane pulls back to meet his eyes. Maybe he’s looking for something there. Ryan can’t imagine what he’ll find. Something probably, because they feel wide enough for Shane to fall into. He opens his mouth, closes it, opens it again. “Shane,” he finally whimpers enough sound to make a word. But he doesn’t know what it means. He has a feeling Shane doesn’t either.  
   
It’s almost a question. Almost a plea. He wants him to keep going—against every fucking piece of logic in his brain—he does. But he doesn’t know how to say it. He doesn’t even know if he _should_.  
  
~  
  
Shane blinks a few times, his eyes locked on Ryan’s, and then Ryan says his name in this _way_ and he shivers and jolts a little, before he leans down to press his lips to Ryan’s forehead, because he needs him to know that he’s not just some guy in a bathroom, that this isn’t what it means to him, that this isn’t just a quick whatever. He inhales against Ryan’s dark hair, then shifts and kisses his temple. “Let me,” he whispers, like _I want to._  
  
He slides the zipper down and somehow, as drunk as he is, he’s got his hand past all those layers of fabric and over Ryan and there’s so much heat and Shane’s forgotten how breathing works. He just stands there for a moment, pressing against him, feeling the desperate pulse crashing through his own body with every beat of his heart, and somehow it’s the furthest thing from every elevator and bedroom and shared apartment he’s ever known. Shane’s lips brush the edge of Ryan’s cheekbone, just at the corner of his eye, and then he drops to his knees in this controlled motion like they’ve done this, like they’re safe. It’s so fucking much and he can’t do this perfunctorily which is how he so often finds himself doing these things but it’s really—  
  
He doesn’t even know if this is what Ryan meant to happen, but it’s what Shane fucking needs. He needs to be more than a handjob in a bathroom. He needs to be closer than slicking his palm and half-controlled breathlessness until it’s done  
  
He catches his own breath as it bounces off the inside curve of Ryan’s hip, eyes closed, and then his mouth is against the thin, heated skin of Ryan’s lower stomach and then Shane looks up once, eyes dark and definitely overwhelmed but steady. He drops his gaze, drags aside all the unnecessary fabric, takes him into his mouth and Jesus, he is careful, careful, careful, because he doesn’t know where this moment ends, or how, but he so desperately wants to make it okay. He so desperately wants to keep being the good thing in Ryan’s world.  
  
~  
   
Ryan can’t do anything but feel his heart. It’s radiated through his skin—leaked into the room so it's shaking it, altering the colors. Every breath Ryan takes is a heavy—heavy enough that it almost weighs him to the floor. Shane touches his mouth to Ryan’s cheekbone and it’s so _present_ —even over the roar of Shane’s hand as he works out the zipper.  Even over the way the words keep screaming through his head. _Let me_.  
   
It changes the entire context of this. He knew Shane wanted it—of course he did. He’s been the one pushing. He’s the one that’s drunk, but that… it shifts something in Ryan. Makes everything louder and brighter. Ryan thinks he can do this—thinks he can handle it. Not toss it back to something impersonal and wrong. He’s okay.  
   
And then Shane gets on his knees. Ryan can’t even get anything past his lips. Because this is so much—this is too much. He can’t go anywhere. He doesn’t really want to go anywhere. There’s a curiosity blooming in him, feathering out like fingers against his chest. Not enough to calm his pulse, but enough to keep him still—wide-eyed. Shane’s mouth presses just above his waist, and it’s this tight, untouched skin. It floods with touch like a dark room with light. Overwhelming. There’s breath on his hip, his thigh—Ryan presses his back into the washer, and it hurts. It hurts and he needs it too because everything else is overloading him. He’s crashing like a downed fucking powerline.  
   
And then it’s just heat—warm, wet, and everything in Ryan curls around it. His toes, his fingers on the washer—biting into metal suddenly warm with his heat. “F—” Shane is nothing like the bathroom. This one touch, this one… Ryan’s knees buckle. One of his hands grabs wildly at Shane, gets a grip on his hair, but he can’t stay there—he’s too shaky, too scared, so it falls away and finds metal again. It’s like Shane’s thrown a palette of paint against a blank canvas. Like Ryan hasn’t been anything but a blank canvas—and now it’s just… it’s every color. He can fucking taste them.  
   
“G— _fuck_ , Shane.” He doesn’t know what’s coming out of his mouth—only that if he doesn’t open it, doesn’t hiss out some kind of breath, that it’ll kill him. He’s barely keeping upright, holding onto the washer, clenching and begging it not to drop him—no, it’s just Shane that he’s begging.  
  
~  
  
Shane’s holding him with one hand, but the other is pressed over Ryan’s hip, fingers spilling over his stomach, holding him up, feeling his breath in the rise and fall of heated skin, the way his muscles flutter, alive and wild beneath his palm. He’s trying so hard to keep him steady with that touch even though Shane’s whole world is reeling, spinning on its axis. Everything around them is this wild rush of colour and sound, but they are safe here. He keeps reminding himself of that. And on the other side of this noise, this overwhelming reality, there is quiet.  
  
Ryan says his name and Shane slides his thumb over Ryan’s skin, snagging at his hipbone, _shh_ , and thinks of the people outside. There’s this rushing in his ears, and he has no idea how loud they are being outside of it.  
  
There’s something familiar to this. Abstractly. Shane has almost always been the one to offer, Shane has done this before with some people he knew very well and some people he didn’t know at all and he likes the way he can almost disappear, even while he takes another person apart. It’s better, he thinks, to be the person giving, There are no expectations for him then, beyond one. So he doesn’t have to feel something he doesn’t. He doesn’t have anyone’s eyes on him as he tries to work his physical body toward some blueprinted, step by step conclusion. People don’t realize how hard that is, sometimes, with a mind like his — trying to funnel everything in his head down into this one physical sensation. Sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn’t and people don’t understand why _they_ can’t make him. Why do they have to make it so personal?  
  
So he’s disappointing again. He’s disappointed someone else.  
  
Because he doesn’t come apart like he’s supposed to— doesn’t always. Because he’s not a machine. He’s not a series of buttons to press to create the desired outcome and sometimes he can’t even get out of his head enough to feel things outside of a vague registering of touch and warmth. Usually it results in the eventual lackluster but supposedly correct physical response and a hollow ache inside him that doesn’t feel like release at all. The opposite. It’s a tightening and a twisting that grows every time someone throws their hands up and asks him what’s wrong with him.  
  
He wonders if Ryan would understand.  
  
These thoughts come in snapshots. Like someone’s playing a slideshow really fast. Or maybe he’s just drunk.  
  
He wonders if he’s put this off so long because this opens every door for Ryan to reciprocate, for Ryan to see even more of what Shane means when he says he isn’t enough. See how deep this chasm in Shane goes.  
  
So it’s familiar. Abstractly. Only it’s not. It’s also completely new. Ryan feels so much, so much it’s like it seeps into Shane’s skin at every point their bodies are touching and Shane gives a shit about Ryan in a way he hasn’t anyone else, ever. Shane, who has always played his cards close to his chest, has been just laying them all out on the table for Ryan, all the tattered, stained, worn out parts of himself and Ryan keeps taking them in, one by one as Shane lays them out, and every time Ryan looks from these cards, back at Shane, Shane expects him to be disappointed. He expects every card to be the last straw, only it isn’t.  
  
Ryan keeps looking up at him with these bottomless, hopeful, illuminated dark eyes and Shane falls for him more every fucking time.  
  
Ryan untwists things in Shane that have hurt so much, and felt so wrong — that he felt were drawing out everything good in him, twisting around themselves and spoiling it, and spilling it, wringing it out back into him, but bad, poisoned somehow — Ryan untwists them and it’s like all these parts of him he thought weren’t working were actually just fine. It was only these shadows making everything look so dark and Ryan’s just so much fucking light.  
  
This isn’t just… this isn’t another guy-in-a-bathroom scene. This isn’t just for relief, for easing the tension between them. Shane doesn’t know what to make of it, but oh, God, if Ryan will just say his name again, if he will keep saying it like he’s speaking a better, more beautiful ‘Shane’ into existence — a Shane that is good enough for Ryan — if Ryan just keeps looking at him the way he does…  
  
Shane wants to give him everything. He wants to become the person Ryan sees.   
  
So he presses into this, he shakes off all these logical thoughts, these accumulated skewed understandings of himself as best he can (even as they cling to him like cobwebs) because _Ryan_ told him he was enough and he pulls Ryan into him, into his mouth, these rhythmic, rocking, unhurried half-swallows, like he is clean water.  
  
This is Ryan. This salt and feverish heat. Shane misses his fingers in his hair, but Ryan isn’t— he’s holding onto the machine like he doesn’t trust himself to hold onto Shane and maybe Shane’s got to finally just fucking believe him when Ryan tells him he’s enough. He’s been holding him at arms length to keep Ryan looking at him the way he does, but that’s not working. It hasn’t been working. _So okay_ , Shane thinks.  
  
Everything goes quiet. The world stops spinning crazily past him. It’s him and Ryan. They’re together. They’re safe, and Shane’s so, so fucking achingly present.  
  
 _Okay, I’m enough._  
  
~

Ryan’s never done this before. He’s been on the receiving end of so little—in this. It was always so scary, so different, and receiving it always felt bigger. Felt like people would see it, look at him, like he’d have handprints on him and people would know. He didn’t want people to know. And it isn’t often that people in bars turn down the opportunity to receive. At least the ones who approached Ryan didn’t. These were all just desperate people looking for something, anything. Different from him, though. Different because they just wanted physical release.

So Ryan gave it to them. And only one of them seemed interested in reciprocating, seemed of aware of Ryan as a person and not a conduit for sexual stimulation. Ryan had resisted it, a lot, because he wasn’t ready. So it was awkward and uncomfortable and too-dry skin. This is entirely different. Because it’s Shane. There’s this whole spark attached to him, to this, so they feeling rushed over him like waves. It’s overwhelming in a different way, maybe a good way. 

He’s still scared of it. That hasn’t vanished. But it is the end of the world, and he has no reason to deny this anymore. His mother is dead—what she thinks, as much as he wants it, as much as he’d kill to have it back—it’s not a thing anymore. It doesn’t exist. Not in this reality. Not in any way Ryan will ever know in his lifetime. He can’t worry about it. God, he could die any day and this—this is…

This is the hope he’s been waiting for, the light on the other side of this shit. Only it’s not over. There’s no man in a military uniform telling him that everyone’s going to be okay—someone isn’t shaking him awake out of this hell. No, it’s just Shane. Shane giving him a blow job, but still Shane. And this feeling, this crescendo inside him isn’t just starting. It’s been there, growing, like a seed in a dead landscape—ever since Shane opened his door that night.

Ryan doesn’t know what to do. Shane’s clearly done this before—he’s… good seems like an understatement. He’s taking Ryan apart in pieces, rocking his body so he’s swallowing moans like oxygen. Because there are people outside and he would like to not share this with them. But sounds keep slipping past his teeth, his lips, because he can’t keep it inside him. Everything just keeps building. 

This is going to fucking break him—it’s already fucking broken him. And he doesn’t care. He’s been so scared that this means he’s broken—this whole time. But this is what it feels like to break, to come apart at the seams. It has nothing to do with angry families or failed interviews or dirty bathrooms. It’s this. This simultaneous come apart and come back together. And he has no idea why anyone would be afraid of it.

His body seizes under the rush. The slow build, the burst of light and fire. He grabs Shane again because the washing machine is metal and dead. And he wants to touch this bright, vibrant thing doing this to him. So he does. He gets this mean handful of his hair just as his head tips back, teeth still gritted like he can silence this with sheer force of will. He gasps, croaks almost, and feels himself unravel—release.

“Christ… Shane.” His voice is hoarse, still held back by the lock of his jaw. He doesn’t know if he’s begging or thanking or cursing. It’s everything all slammed into one—and it’s exactly how he feels.


	15. Part 15

There have been times where Shane’s done this, and he was so far away that he was surprised by the sudden rush of coming undone, but he’s been so, so aware of Ryan. It’s almost like he knows him already, like this. Almost like Shane was always meant to be here, do this, make him feel this way. It’s achingly familiar, and aside from the impending What Next, he feels like he’s done something good.  
  
God, he hopes he’s done something good.  
  
Ryan’s got this tight, painful fistful of Shane’s hair and it sends a jolt through him that only intensifies as Ryan comes, as Shane tastes and feels what he’s done to him. He takes his time pulling back because that’s just going to throw Ryan back into this cold, hard reality, and Shane remembers that look of ‘oh shit,’ in the bathroom and he doesn’t want it now.  
  
He feels a hell of a lot less drunk as he does draw away, still on his knees, panting a little. He doesn’t once stop touching him. He knows what it’s like to have someone do the thing, stand up, and walk out. It’s only happened once to Shane, but he remembers the way he’d felt after.  
  
Instead, he just tucks his face down against his own shoulder as he shrugs it up, and wipes his mouth against it. Ryan’s fingers are still in his hair and Shane hesitates at the intense intimacy of this moment, then decides fuck it. He reaches up and gently detangles Ryan’s fingers from it and pulls them down against the back of his neck instead, then lets go and carefully gets this steadying hold on both Ryan’s hips.  
  
He presses his mouth, open and breathless, to the skin above Ryan’s hip, tucks his face down against Ryan’s belly, still tight with the aftermath and slightly damp from sweat. Shane closes his eyes, breathes him in — familiar, Ryan.  
  
Jesus Christ, they’ve done this, and Shane’s still got this ache and this growing uncertainty. He squeezes his eyes shut against it, clings to him in a way he doesn’t often let himself. The way he did after Finn, because he’s never found comfort in anything or anyone the way he does with Ryan.  
  
~

Ryan keeps gasping after it’s over. It’s something to do that isn’t thinking about whatever comes after this. It’s something to do besides the frantic realization that maybe he wasn’t doing enough. He was barely touching Shane. Jesus Christ, he doesn’t know the rules of this. He doesn’t know what he’s supposed to do. He knows the basics. He knew what to do when it was his hands on someone’s dick, but not… this. He didn’t know what to do last time either, but then it didn’t matter because they never did much either.

Jesus Christ—he keeps staring at Shane like he’s going to combust. Like he’ll disappear or scream at Ryan or do something worse. The world will finally just politely inform Ryan that he is doing everything wrong. All of it. The entire fucking thing. He can’t catch his breath, so he can’t say anything or do anything. He’s quivering, and he doesn’t know if it’s fear or the aftermath or both.

Shane pulls his hands down, to his neck, and Ryan curls his fingers around it. He doesn’t really mean to—but it seems like an okay thing to do. Except his hands struggle to stay, slick with sweat and shaking. But he makes them anyway. He clutches Shane against him when he leans forward and tries to breathe. It feels like they’re back to this, Shane doing everything—and Ryan just… being here. And he’s angry at himself for not reacting, for not doing more than come apart.

Shane’s holding onto him and Ryan lets him. He doesn’t say anything, not yet, because if he can’t give anything else to Shane he can do this. His hands slide, into Shane’s hair and back down. Holding him in the best way Ryan knows how.

“Shane,” he says it again. Shattered and uncertain. Because he isn’t sure if he’s fucked this up or if this is okay or where to go next.  
  
~  
  
Jesus he sounds uncertain. Shane doesn’t want him to sound like that. He looks up at him— fuck— he’s so beautiful and Shane’s heart is beating out this hard, insistent rhythm and he wishes he were more sober because he’s afraid he’s not going to remember all of this, and he wants to. “Hey,” he responds, belatedly, like a greeting, his voice low, almost whisper soft.

He shifts, his shins rolling painfully against the hard floor, and he’s fixing Ryan’s clothes a little, absently because it feels like the right thing to do. He’s not sure of the right thing to do.

He wants to apologize for being drunk but that feels ridiculously maudlin somehow, and at least he’s sober enough to realize that.

He gets his hands around Ryan’s biceps and thinks about pulling him against his bare chest, but he doesn’t. He’s not even sure Ryan’s going to want to be touched. He’s shaking in Shane’s hold and Shane’s fucking freaking out because what if he messed up somehow?

“You okay?” He manages, still soft, edging on a laugh he’s mostly faking just to soften the question, he tilts his head, trying to get a good look at Ryan’s eyes. “Hm?”  
  
~

Ryan fumbles with his tongue. It trips and stutters in his mouth as he tries to answer. Shane’s not irritated, or even expectant. It ought to put Ryan at ease. It doesn’t. He’s looking down at Shane and it’s unfamiliar and strange because usually Shane is so far above him. He needs to relax. Part of him is relaxed, as relaxed as it gets—but this other piece, this raging heartbeat that beats solely for Shane… it’s anything but calm. It’s racing.

He opens his mouth. He almost thanks him, but that seems so ridiculous. People don’t thank others for shit like this. It’s bizarre—weird, and it probably says something about how bad Ryan is at this that he even thought about it. Shane’s looking at him. His eyes are a little less glazed, but he’s definitely still drunk. Jesus, Ryan hopes he doesn’t regret this. What if he doesn’t even remember it? Unfortunate, because Ryan isn’t sure he’ll ever remember anything else. This buzzing, glowing aftermath—this feeling of being lost in another galaxy, under a sky made up of completely new stars.

Like some impossible cinematography that reveals this whole new light and scene and life around him. That’s what Shane’s always been. That’s what this feeling is. Even as Ryan does everything he can to stay on his feet.

Shane grabs his arms and he’s talking to him. Ryan’s head is buzzing so it takes every bit of his concentration to just listen. Shane’s asking him if he’s okay, which—fuck, of course he’s okay. He’s… he just had his fucking world rocked. How would he not be okay? But when he opens his mouth to say that it’s just another gasp of breath.

He eventually decides he doesn’t like standing. He half falls into Shane, onto his own knees, and then Shane’s above him again and it feels better. Shane gave him a blow job. And he fucking… he’s clearly had experience. Ryan doesn’t know if he should be jealous or terrified or ingratiated. He’s somewhere between all three.

“I’m…” he finally answers, or almost answers. “I’m good, that was…” There isn’t anything to say to even… he’s nowhere close to getting that out.

He’s fallen against Shane’s chest, aware that Shane was watching his eyes and now he can’t. So Ryan pulls back and meets his eyes again. His hands hang, hover, over Shane’s abdomen, his pants. He hasn’t done anything, here, and maybe he should. But if he does—jesus fuck, Shane is going to… be sorely disappointed. Maybe. That’s the thing with this—Ryan is so used to being good at what he does. Or, at least, he doesn’t do it until he is… and this—he doesn’t know if he’d be good at this.

Ryan watches Shane, trying to gauge this—trying to see what he should do. How he can make Shane want him like Ryan wants Shane, how he can do that to Shane—because, if he thought he was fucked before, if he thought he was desperate for him before. He’s so fucked.

Shane said let me, like it was… so natural, so normal, for him to just do it. Like he was desperate to do it, and Ryan gets it. He wants to do this to Shane, but he doesn’t know if he can—he doesn’t want to disappoint Shane. And he’s drunk and… how did Shane approach this with so much confidence, and if Ryan doesn’t have confidence will Shane think he isn’t interested. Because he wants to fucking sob he’s so goddamn _interested_.

So all he says, hand on Shane’s waistband is, “I want you to be…” And he doesn’t finish, or maybe that was it. But it isn’t a question, and it isn’t an offer. Ryan doesn’t know what it is.

~  
  
Suddenly Ryan’s on the floor with him and Shane’s half overwhelmed by all the places they are suddenly touching and Ryan’s eyes when he looks at him. He doesn’t even realize what’s happening, his mind flying through things he should say and things he should do that he’s startled when Ryan touches his waistband, catching his breath as he flinches slightly back.

Suddenly he’s fucking terrified in a whole other way. Because it’s not his ability to be the person that offers that makes people look at him differently it’s when it’s the other way around and he imagines, clearer this time, how Ryan will look if— when— he can’t get Shane off because Shane is too busy trying to make his brain shut the hell up that he—

He grabs for Ryan’s hands, catching them both in his own and stutters out a “No I, I think I’m too, I’m too drunk.”

But there’s this _hot_ fluttering surge of want, and it’s still unfurling through him like smoke, and his breathing’s all uneven. He’s dropped his gaze from Ryan’s because he thinks it might be mostly a lie. He’s scared. He doesn’t want to lose... this. This moment. This moment is good, and he’s just trying to hold onto it.  
  
~

Ryan lets out this breath, like he’s been fucking holding it. He hasn’t. He’s been gasping, but this near-relief surges out of him. Shane is too drunk. And Ryan’s not ready. So he slumps against Shane’s shoulder and wraps his arms around him. This is going to be weird—or it should be, this whole thing of why Shane might not want this from Ryan. It’s going to bother Ryan, later, but for now, he’s so fucking happy he doesn’t get the chance to fuck this up.

The ground is digging into his knees. Everything hurts, but all he can feel is the soft, damp warmth of Shane’s skin. This safe, quiet place where he can just… not panic for a few seconds. Where he can take a fucking second. Shane smells like salt and metal. And it’s the best thing Ryan’s ever pressed himself into. He kisses Shane’s neck—because there’s this need in him, to touch him, to do something. And it isn’t enough, but at the same time, it is.

And because thanks is pointless and nowhere near enough, he whispers against Shane's neck, “You are incredible.”

~  
  
He’s got his eyes closed, inhaling consciously slow and even to keep all this desire down, as Ryan kisses his neck. He’s wound his arms around him, hitching himself closer and doesn’t expect the words when they come because they’re not words he’s ever heard before. 

For one horrible moment he thinks he might actually cry because there’s just so many levels of relief. That they’d crossed this point and made it in one piece. That he doesn’t need to deal with his own messed up self and neither does Ryan... but that is definitely the alcohol and Shane is absolutely not about to go there so he laughs softly and says “I had to best the competition,” and his voice shakes a little. 

He gets his fingers in Ryan’s hair and buries them into that sweat-streaked warmth and those words feel wrong because Ryan just called him _incredible_ and he’s just here spouting bad jokes and— 

“And no, you are. You’re the best person I’ve... I really... you’re fucking. You’re my favorite. Person. I can’t shut up, please make me shut up.”  
  
~

Shane seems okay, more than okay, maybe. He definitely doesn’t seem like a drunk guy who just gave a blow job. Maybe. Okay, Ryan doesn’t have a ton of experience with that but he’s pretty sure this isn’t what they’re usually like. Shane almost feels sober. Even though he just said he was too drunk to get a blowjob—and somehow not drunk enough to give one. It’s weird, but Ryan is too tired to care. 

He’s just glad this didn’t end in complete disaster. And he’s still high on what Shane’s managed to do to him. To his body. To his very fucking soul. So the laugh comes so easy, so fast, at Shane’s joke—or, well, sad attempt at one. It’s easy. It almost feels normal, even if Ryan isn’t sure it should be normal after this. But then Shane’s got his hands in Ryan’s hair and it doesn’t matter. 

And Shane keeps talking. 

Ryan’s eyes go wide. His heart slams straight into his throat, maybe all the way into his brain. Because this is—a lot. This is more than he expected. It feels big. He tries to pedal himself back—to size it, put it into perspective. He almost says shut up—Shane did tell him to—but he can’t. Because… fuck, Shane just called him his favorite person.

Ryan takes a breath that shakes his shoulders, but he doesn’t pull back. “I’m kinda your _only_ person at the moment. And I would be very offended if you already liked Steven better, even if he is hot.” But wasn’t he just thinking that Shane did, that he should? Steven’s been four times for Shane what Ryan has been. So maybe he should let this mean more. Maybe it does.

~  
  
Shane kind of twitches slightly, then laughs, pressing it into Ryan’s shoulder before pulling back with his brow slightly furrowed. There’s this glimmer of uncertainty in his eyes, or curiousity. Either way, it doesn’t seem _bad_ , it just...  
  
“Do you think Steven’s hot?” he asks Ryan as his fingers slide softly down over the softest skin behind Ryan’s ear, palm spilling over his jaw. “Should I be—” his eyebrows arc up as he tips his chin down. “Do I have to go, uh, beat him up? Feed him a knuckle sandwich?” Shane draws his hands away and pounds one incorrectly made fist into the palm of the other hand. If he tried to beat someone up, he’d break his own thumbs.  
  
“I just went down on you and you’re talking about who you think is hot five seconds later?” Shane is holding the grin back hard, but he’s slightly too drunk for it, and it escapes in bits and pieces, in the way he holds himself, not nearly as still as he can when he’s actually serious or hurt or frightened, his eyes are much too soft. Someone who didn’t know him might think he was actually serious, but Ryan’s different. “That’s pretty rude, Ryan.”  
  
He’s all over the place with this bit. He doesn’t care. He thinks they really are okay, maybe, so he’s pushing for it, fighting to keep it that way. His hands fall from his punching position to the sides of Ryan’s thighs and he holds onto him.  
  
~  
   
For a second, Shane seems legitimately serious. Ryan did just bring up another guy and call him hot right after, well, Shane did go down on him, so… Shane would have a right to be a little weirded out. Shane probably doesn’t know it was Ryan’s residual jealousy that caused him to say it. To Shane, it probably just sounds… kinda shitty.  
   
But then Shane’s threatening to attack him and fighting back a smile so Ryan pulls back to look at him and smiles. He looks happy—it’s this bright, technicolor of feeling around him. This vividness that makes his edges stark against the backdrop of the laundry room—makes him less transparent and more alive. Like Ryan can see the pulse inside him. He likes it. He likes this version of Shane, as much as he craves the haunted ones that hunches so low it’s like he wants to disappear sometimes.  
   
Ryan likes this one better. He likes it better because somehow, doing nothing, he’s brought this about. So the jealousy seems petty, but still, he says, “Me? You’re the one who was flirting with him all freaking night. I was just saying what your face already said, _sir_.”  
  
~  
  
“I wasn’t flirting,” Shane says, but something flickers through his eyes and he looks away. “My face didn’t say anything, I was just being an idiot.” He swallows.  
  
“But it worked out, right? Didn’t it work out?” he asks. It feels like it did, only he’d forgotten all about Steven and apparently Ryan hasn’t, and Shane doesn’t know how to explain this without sounding like a complete fucking asshole. 

He thinks _You’re not too much for me_ , but he doesn’t know for sure if it’s true. “You’re just...”  
  
~  
   
Ryan flinches because Shane’s reaction is almost like shame. He’s cringing away from this. Ryan doesn’t like it, for one, it’s a drastic change, for two, he doesn’t know what it means. His heart starts to pound hard enough to hurt, hard enough to suck the blood flow straight to the center of him and leave the rest of him hollow and aching.  
   
Because then, Shane keeps _going_. Ryan feels something like anger, or embarrassment, or he doesn’t _know_. He’s not mad at Shane. It’s just frustrating to jerk back and forth. It’s just frustrating to have everything he’s afraid of confirmed in Shane’s hesitation, in his almost finished sentence. Ryan isn’t sure what he feels, but there isn’t much inflection in his voice, or in the half-formed smile, as he says, “Too much?”  
   
He stands up and takes a breath, finally fully redoes his pants. He doesn’t know what he’s feeling. It’s everything all at once. It’s whiplash and it hurts like hell. “I get that a lot.”  
  
~  
  
“Jesus Christ, Ryan, no,” Shane says, desperation sliding into his voice. “No, you’re—” how does he explain this without just baring everything? How broken he is, how much he’s scared of what it means that he is Ryan’s opposite, Ryan’s energy and light and Shane...

“Jesus, no. No, you’re perfect.” His heart flutters. He presses his fingers against his eyes momentarily.”I was trying not to do something stupid. And I wanted you to give a shit, I...”

 _And_ , a harder, darker part of himself whispers. _It’s still just you. It’s always just you._  
  
~  
  
He didn't mean to upset Shane, but then he couldn't have expected anything else. But it was just a knee jerk thing. Another flinch. He stops and looks at Shane before he leans back onto one of the washers.

Shane says all these things. Ryan wants to believe it, but he isn't perfect. He's so far from it, he almost laughs. He wasn't if he wasn't stumbling over Shane saying, Shane describing him that way. He's glad he's against the machine because he's off balance.

"I'm not perfect. I feel like we've established that pretty thoroughly. And wanted me to give a shit? I... Fuck, dude. I'm always gonna give a shit, especially about you." 

He can't connect what this has to do with Steven, or if it even does. Maybe Shane's babbling nonsense to make Ryan feel better. 

His voice is soft, almost lower than the music. "You try so much. I don't want to... I don't want to be another person that exhausts you, and I feel like I keep fucking it up. You don't have to... You can talk to Steven, or talk to me, or lie motionless on the floor for three days. Just don't do it for me. Do what makes _you_ happy. I'm gonna like you, no matter what you do. You could probably try to run me over with the car and I'd still... I'd still like you."

He takes a breath. He hadn't during that. He regrets it because it's too much. _Again_.  
  
~  
  
“I hope if I laid motionless on the floor for three days you’d like… make sure I was still breathing or something,” Shane says. He’s feeling a little like the water level’s rising, and he’s already swimming to keep his head above. They’re saying _so much_ , and it means so  much, and he still has the taste, the weight of him in his mouth and it’s…  
  
He’s still on the floor, still kneeling in front of him and Shane’s been holding his eyes while he speaks, he keeps holding them. “You are not gonna be too much for me,” Shane says, slow and steady, but he knows it’s not that easy. Not for Ryan. “Your mind works like a— like a little hamster wheel, just squeaking away all the time,” Shane says, “Don’t worry about…” He struggles for a second, swallows so his jaw clenches. He has to look away to get his thoughts in order, and he uses that moment to get up off the floor. His legs hurt, seizing up a little. Jesus, he hopes this isn’t going to turn into arthritis or something. In the fucking zombie apocalypse. He straightens as much as he normally does, shoulders still slouched, still worlds taller than Ryan. He wants to touch him but he doesn’t, because then it feels like coercion and this isn’t that. “I don’t want _parts_ of you. Whole deal. I’ve got it, Ryan, I’m okay. I’ve got you, I promise. Don’t— don’t don’t, just… sometimes you might— I dunno, wear me down. Okay, fine, maybe that’s… my thing, but I’m not _going_ anywhere. It’s like a commercial break… then it’s… back to your scheduled programming. Don’t fucking censor yourself for me, I really don’t… I don’t want that. You’ve… if this is what you want, you’ve got me. And if you keep trying to be someone else then I really will run you over with the car.”  
  
~  
  
Ryan doesn’t like the idea of wearing Shane down. But if it’s just him, then maybe it has to be fine. Maybe it’s an unrealistic expectation to think Shane won’t get worn down—but surely there’s someone… but, fine, Ryan’s going to accept this because Shane has this look of frustration in his eyes, making them too black in the dim light. 

“Did you just… call yourself a TV channel?” Ryan smiles. He doesn’t know where his head is at. He ought to be okay. Shane said he was perfect, for Christ’s sake. But then… he also said Ryan might wear him down. He also said if Ryan wanted him, he could have him. And holy shit, that’s something else entirely. Ryan thinks his eyes might be too wide, so he pulls off the washer.

Shane has finally got to his feet, and it looks like it hurts. Ryan’s brow furrows. He always seems feeble, like an old man—that’s the thing with Shane, or at least, his body. It’s scary in the world they’re standing in. Ryan looks away. “I won’t censor myself.” So tell him the rest. Tell him what you want. “I’ll _try_ not to censor myself. But, uh…” Ryan chews his lip. “Thanks, I… I do want this.” He gestures between them. “I like this.” But he’s not saying it. He’s still not saying it. “Except the part where you threaten to run me over with a car.” He smiles, but it’s dark at the edges. Because this feels like the right moment, but he’s so fucking scared. So terrified this will end the wrong way. 

Because it always does.

~  
  
Shane is shaking because here is Ryan saying that he does want this, this weird, intense, uncertain thing between them.

Shane had offered and Ryan took it and now here they are. He doesn’t know if they mean exactly the same thing and Shane has been standing too far away from him for too long. 

“That was your idea,” Shane says, about Ryan and the car. “You started that.”

_Are we really doing this?_

Shane’s fucking legs are shaking and he feels so unsteady. He laughs softly. “Stop looking so freaked out.” But he thinks he probably does, too. He hovers there uncertainly. “I gotta... make the bed. My legs feel like they’re about to give out.” 

He takes a step back and there’s this literal pull in him — like the tide — to Ryan, and Shane, uncertain, says. “I... you _are_ a lot. You are,” Shane holds his eyes. “And here’s the thing, Ry, I think it’s one of the best things about you, so stop thinking _you’re_ the fuck up.”  
  
Shane falters, wondering how to say it feels like Ryan cracked open the world for him and he’s... he _feels_ things sometimes, like—  
  
“I... okay, bed,” Shane says, before he says too much, and turns to start laying out the blankets. It occurs to him, vaguely, that that… there’s something wrong there. He shouldn’t be scared to say too much after everything they’ve already said.  
  
But what if…  
  
He stops himself. Because there’s something else in him and he’s too overwhelmed, too amped up, too tired to deal with it now, as he starts unfolding blankets. Now, he just wants Ryan. He wants his arms around him and the familiar smell of his hair and that should tell Shane everything he needs to know, but it doesn’t.  
  
~  
   
“I…” Ryan’s wheezing before he can finish. “It was hypothetical when I said it! You turned it into a threat if I didn’t meet your demands!”  
   
Shane doesn’t want him to think he’s a fuck up, but he… doesn’t know how to take that. Shane said himself that Ryan would wear him down, and that it wouldn’t be Ryan’s fault. But maybe Shane’s just conditioned himself to think getting worn down is normal—maybe no one’s trying for him. He’s so convinced he’s the fuck up—that it’s not Ryan. But Ryan knows from experience that it is him. It can be him.  
   
Shane looks like he’s about to faint. It comes out of nowhere. It’s terrifying—because Ryan doesn’t know if maybe something is wrong with Shane. And if there was, if he was sick, what could Ryan do? What could any of them really do if something was wrong with Shane? Not even a zombie bite, just… illness.  
   
Ryan grabs Shane’s arm and nudges him towards one of the washers as he takes the blankets away from him. Forcefully. “Wait, wait. Stop, just—sit down. I’ll do it.” He doesn’t really wait for Shane to confirm or stop him or say anything else. He just takes over unfolding the blankets and spreading them into the bed from last night.    
  
~  
  
He doesn’t sit, but he does lean back against the washer, holding onto it with both hands as he watches Ryan. “Thanks,” he says softly. And he knows he’s staring, that maybe he shouldn’t be, but he doesn’t look away as the bed it laid out. Finally Shane shuts his eyes for a moment and it’s like Ryan’s smile is burned into his retinas. It’s all he can see and it eases his shaking a little bit.  
  
He’s going over and over what Ryan said to him a few minutes ago, barely audible over the music, so that Shane had to watch his mouth to catch all the words. He feels himself picking it all apart, ruining it like he does… Christmas and birthdays and New York City and kissing someone for the first time, everything is analyzed before he can just accept the fact of its existence and feel that. Just that.  
  
He’s used to this. He’s used to how his mind just goes and goes and runs his spirit into the ground. He’s used to the empty feeling that follows, the heaviness, the grayness of everything. He’s had that all his life, and the zombies make everything fucking grayer.  
  
But lately, in the back of his head, there’s Ryan’s voice saying ‘you’re enough,’ and after what just happened, Shane’s almost-belief that that was true, he opens his eyes with a shock of desire, residual want that he’s pushed down, and supporting all that, this feeling. A real one, this feeling that Shane is so…  
  
His eyes fall on Ryan again, as he finishes the bed and Shane thinks the words that could change everything, and they are so strong, so overwhelming that he actually has to swallow them down. But he has to say something, so what comes out instead is “Finn.”  
  
It’s strange because it almost sounds like he expects Finn to answer. The name jars him and he pushes through it.  
  
“Finn understood, but you always notice…” He looks at Ryan so Ryan knows Shane’s here, that he hasn’t completely lost his mind, that he’s talking to Ryan, that he’s present. His voice shakes a little but he pushes himself straighter and continues, voice soft “I used to try so fucking hard when I was a kid to make sure people knew I gave a shit. And it just got to be so exhausting, and it didn’t really translate, and so I kind of stopped. But there were people, you know, a couple people I tried for again.” The girl, her cactuses, the apartment they shared… Shane takes a breath and looks at the ceiling trying to make these thoughts make sense.  
  
“But you’re the first person that actually notices… like every time, and. So, I mean it must seem like…”  
  
He thinks about how much Ryan worries about him. How much Ryan worries about Shane wearing himself out and that… that’s why, he realizes in a sudden flash of understanding, that’s why he’s not reaching out, isn’t it. Isn’t it?  
  
“It must seem like… pretty fucked up, like it shouldn’t be this way for me, and maybe it shouldn’t... fuck, Ryan, I’m trying to—” He rubs his fingers over his cheek, the bridge of his nose.  “I’m _trying_ because I really fucking want to, for you. And honestly, it’s enough that you notice, ‘cause no one’s ever…  I’m sorry it seems like… I’m sorry.”  
  
God damn it. He’s too drunk. He stops before he starts fucking crying or something.  
  
“I wouldn’t do it if I didn’t want to. I just… thanks.”  
  
~  
   
Ryan smiles quietly at Shane. He’s not totally sure he understands, but then, Shane is drunk. And Ryan does notice Shane—fuck, he notices everything about him. It seems like it’s a good thing. Shane looks like it’s a good thing, and he’s talking about Finn and Ryan in the same sentence. But then he’s sad and apologizing and… well, Ryan kinda has whiplash. Shane wants to try, for Ryan. That’s something he says. And Ryan gets it. As confused and uncertain as he is.  
   
“What are you apologizing for?” Shane is all about telling Ryan not to see himself as a fuck-up, but he seems incapable of turning that back on himself. “Are you apologizing for trying because that is… that’s a whole new level of stupid.” He walks over to Shane and grabs either of his elbow. He sits down, but he doesn’t pull Shane, instead he asks the questions with his fingers—tries to tug him down to the bed. Shane’s even further above Ryan than usual.  
   
Ryan is just trying to breathe in this dark space—this musty, tiny room, but all he can taste, feel, smell is Shane. And this want that’s clawing back up his spine. This want that he’d cast aside in favor of not getting the chance to fuck up. But jesus, he wants this. He wants to take this final step, jump this fucking chasm, and give everything to Shane. But he isn’t—for some reason, he’s still holding back.  
   
_Because you’re scared—that’s what’s gonna kill you, fear._  
  
~  
  
“I don’t know why I’m apologizing. It just… seems like it would be hard for you.”  
  
He tries to take a breath as Ryan tugs him down, but it catches somewhere in his throat and he kind of laughs a little as he goes. A wave of exhaustion sweeps over him, but he is also so so fucking alive. He feels like he’s got electricity running through his veins instead of blood, and it’s left him with these weird, full-bodied vibrations, and he doesn’t know what to do with it, so he just lets it shake through him.  
  
“Jesus, I… is this ‘cause I’m drunk?” he asks, and they’re so close, how did that happen? He meets Ryan’s eyes and they look somehow darker than usual and Shane’s a little lost for a second, a little too caught up. He swallows. “Is it… is it _cold_?” he asks, because he has to distract himself. He’s too close to the edge of this want again, and he’s already said no tonight.  
  
~  
   
Ryan would also like to know if this is because he’s drunk. He would ascend whatever stairwell to whatever deity to ask them specifically that and nothing else right now. Because Shane is acting… very different. Shane is acting like this is a real thing between them, and he’s talking, and he’s not pulling back—well, aside from the blow job thing. But Ryan’s giving that a pass because it doesn’t fit in with everything else.  
   
Instead, Ryan just laughs and presses his hand to Shane’s forehead and then back through his hair. It’s playful, but it’s also an excuse to touch him. Because Ryan desperately needs his hands on Shane. “Maybe,” Ryan says and pushes back onto his hands. His formerly (mostly formerly?) broken leg is bent and it hurts so he winces a readjusts. “To both things.”  
  
~  
  
“Are you checking my temperature?” Shane laughs, like that is an absurd thing to do. He half thinks about following him, about pushing him down, leaning over him, kissing his mouth.  
  
He’s not cold but goosebumps rush down his neck and over his arms anyway and he’s looking at Ryan’s… fuck, his bare chest, his face, the line of his shoulders and the place where his hips disappear into the waistband of his pants and it’s a whole lot, and Shane know what he looks like now, what it feels like to suck him off and he’s—  
  
He drops onto the bed beside Ryan, presses his face into the pillow. Jesus he’s tired.

~  
   
Ryan watches Shane fall, well—more flop onto the bed. He needs sleep. He’s got this complete glaze in his eyes. Ryan might not have been thinking overly consciously about Shane’s temperature, but at least he wasn’t warm. Ryan knows that, and feels better, and he wonders if Shane doesn’t understand the things he does better than he does sometimes. Unfair, because Ryan struggles to read Shane at all.  
   
Shane needs to sleep. Ryan falls back onto the bed too and exhales. “You don’t have a fever,” Ryan answers. “But you should go to sleep before you get one, you delirious idiot.” Part of him doesn’t want Shane to, part of him wants to shove him over and kiss him until the alcohol seeps from Shane’s blood to Ryan. He wants to keep this version of Shane, this talkative, intimate one. But Shane is exhausted, and it’s a selfish thought. “Did you ever drink any water?”  
  
~  
  
He thinks about it, then says “I have no idea,” and he reaches out and slides his fingers over Ryan’s thigh. It’s not sexual, really. It’s as far down as he can reach from this position. His arms _are_ freakishly long, he’s just waiting for Ryan to say something about it. “Hurt?” he asks, meaning Ryan’s leg. He wriggles closer until he’s got his chest pressed to Ryan’s side, to his arm, legs brushing. He speaks into Ryan’s neck. “Does it still hurt?”  
  
~

Ryan’s eyes go wide at Shane’s touch. He’s not moving like he means it, and eventually—the way he settles, Ryan gets it. Because Shane is asking him about his leg. He doesn’t quite know how to answer, because it does—in certain positions, and there’s this fear in him that it’s permanently fucked up… that he is feeling pain, this dull, quiet buzz, and he’s just forgotten what it’s like without that pain. It shouldn’t scare him. He can still move pretty well, and it’s the zombie apocalypse—everyone’s got issues. But it does.

Goosebumps slide fast up his arm, his neck, as Shane breathes against it. Ryan closes his eyes. He needs his heart to stop. He needs to let Shane sleep, but if Shane keeps pushing... 

He moves his hand down to press over Shane’s, and the bones of Shane’s knuckles dig into his palm. His intention was to pull Shane away from it. He doesn’t. Shane’s hand is warm, like a balm pressed over the fear, the phantom pain—the real pain, he doesn’t know, but he likes the way Shane’s hand feels. Doesn’t he always?

“Not really.” He leans his head so it falls against Shane’s. “ You need to drink water. Hangovers and zombie apocalypses seem like they wouldn’t mix well.”

~  
  
“We’re safe here,” Shane says, and he thinks he almost believes it. “Don’t get up.” He lets his body relax against him. He can’t care about a hangover now. The buzzing is back in his ears, but it’s not so bad this time, not with the steady sound of Ryan’s voice, his breathing. He keeps his hand where it is, beneath Ryan’s, on Ryan’s leg.  
  
“I won’t be uh, wasted next time,” he whispers against Ryan’s neck, and he’s half out. He’s not thinking about what ‘next time’ means or how it sounds.  
  
~  
   
Ryan sighs. Even if they are safe, and Ryan does think they are—Shane is going to be pissed off tomorrow if he does have a hangover. Still, Shane asked him not to leave and so he doesn’t. He lies there and stairs at the ceiling over him. Andrew is right. They could stay here. Shane feels safe, hell, Ryan feels safe—it almost doesn’t make sense to go. What are they even running to? A boat? Jesus, what if there aren’t any more boats? And Ryan knows better than anyone the Disneyland thing is crazy.  
   
He moves his hand away from Shane’s and brings it up to the back of Shane’s hair and idly runs his fingers through it, along his scalp, focusing on the ridges in it. His eyelids flutter when Shane says _next time_ like it’s a given. Is this a thing now? Ryan still doesn’t know, but he’s certainly not opposed to a next time. But then, Shane’s drunk. He might not even remember saying next time.  
   
“Whatever you say, buddy.” There’s a quiet, whisper-laugh in his voice.  
   
He doesn’t know if he’ll sleep, but he doesn’t know if he cares.  
  
~  
  
Shane’s out like a light. Not great when he knows Ryan’s probably not going to sleep at all. To be fair, it’s probably definitely more of a passing out than a falling asleep on Shane’s part, but it’s Ryan beside him that keeps him sleeping. When he wakes up, the first thing he registers is the fact that there’s no music anymore. For a moment he’s scared, disoriented, because he feels like he’s only closed his eyes for a second, but then he realizes… it’s morning.  
  
And he feels fucking gross. He’s way too warm even though they haven’t bothered to get under the blankets. He draws away from Ryan and sits up because he’s half on the fence about how sick he feels. Oh Christ, this is the worst. He draws his knees up and presses his elbows against them, face in his hands, groaning softly.  
  
He remembers it like a dream at first, on his knees in front of Ryan and the way Ryan had looked in the electric half-light, blues and golds, from the other rooms as he spoke. As he said the things he did to Shane…  
  
And what he told Ryan.  
  
It solidifies little by little. It really did happen. Shane drops his hands and twists to look back at Ryan, and suddenly he doesn’t care about the headache.  
  
~  
   
Ryan is at the edge of a dream, staring at a closed closet door, one that’s somehow every door in his old apartment and every door since he left it—it flutters, moves when he blinks, when the shadows stretch too far over it. It’s just this scratch in his periphery, this certainty that something is behind the door—waiting. He doesn’t leave, though. He can’t, something is holding him to this—he has to see it through, maybe for Jake, or his parents, or Shane. Or all of them. He just has to watch the door. Make sure nothing is behind it. Movement crashes the door open and it’s this culmination of all his fears, this zombie with Jake’s face, but smashed in.  
   
He jolts awake as it reaches for him. He doesn’t scream, because he never screams. It just doesn’t come out of him. Instead he just lies there in this sweaty and shaken daze as the image plays in front of him, over and over, and the fear clings even as it starts to fade. But it does, and he realizes it’s Shane that moved. There isn’t a door. It’s Shane.  
Ryan definitely slept a few hours. Something like that. At least one hour. He can’t tell—the night’s fuzzy and filled with opaque thoughts and dreams, but that usually means he slept more, not less. So it’s good. Even if his eyes burn. Even if fear stiffens his shoulders.  
   
Shane’s up, drawn away, and from the general set of him—Ryan can tell he’s probably sick. Ugh, Ryan never made him drink anything. Dumb, but Shane did ask. But Shane was drunk. Oh, god, Shane was drunk—he was drunk and they... shit, shit, shit. Ryan wasn’t drunk. That’s the whole problem. He remembers it all perfectly, vividly—in fact, he’s pretty sure he dreamt about that too. About Shane’s mouth, about kissing him, about… everything. Fear coils in him because he has no idea how Shane will handle this. Forget being sick. Fuck.  
   
Ryan’s mostly shaken off his fear of the nightmare and settled into his own skin, this own, very real anxiety, when Shane turns to look at him. He nods his head like they’re passing each other in the hallway at work. It’s the weirdest thing to do but moving too much seems dangerous, doing too much of anything seems dangerous.  
   
“You, uh… feel okay?”  
  
~  
  
Something’s wrong, he can see it in Ryan’s eyes — all this sharp glittering blackness fading to that softer, illuminated dark.  
  
Ryan nods at him almost like they’re strangers and Shane snags hard between a laugh and a horrible plummeting feeling. His eyes flicker away, then back.  
  
“I guess I didn’t drink water, huh,” he says and shifts, his hand sliding across the blankets towards him, but he hesitates. What if that look in his eyes is because of what they did?  
  
But no, Ryan slept. Shane’s felt Ryan’s body jolt against his before, when he’s coming out of sleep. Sometimes he registers the quick shift in his breath in the middle of the night, before Shane drifts off again.  
  
He swallows and his mouth is so dry, but he thinks… maybe. “Dreaming?” he asks, very soft. Because they don’t talk about that, but Shane knows it. He’s taken some pretty good guesses. He doesn’t call it a nightmare because… He doesn’t know why. That just seems to make it worse somehow.  
  
He makes the movement because he feels like if he doesn’t, Ryan will get up and Shane will be left on a pile of blankets on the floor, without Ryan, with a headache, with a churning feeling in his gut.  
  
He twists back. His spine cracks as he lays down beside him again, on his stomach, head turned to look at Ryan. They’re a little too close and Shane thinks that his skin probably smells like alcohol, sweet and still slightly damp from being overheated in the night. His hair feels gross. It hangs, dark and unwashed into his eyes and he brushes it away. He’s not… he’s not exactly the picture he would like to imagine for the morning after. He almost wants to apologize again.

~  
   
Okay, so Shane either doesn’t remember or he’s fine, because he lies back down. He wasn’t that drunk. He even remembers Ryan mentioning the water—or wait, is he just saying that about water in general? Fuck, Ryan is overthinking this. He’s got to slow down. It’s fine. Shane seems fine. He wasn’t blackout drunk, was he? Oh god.  
   
“Yeah…” Ryan never screams in his dreams, or talks in his sleep, not that he’s aware of. It’s good, even if he wakes up shaking, even if sometimes he wishes he could scream to expel some of it—but if he did, then Shane would absolutely never get sleep. And zombies would probably find them a lot more often. “But that means I slept at least some, so… I’m taking that W.”  
   
Shane lies back down. He’s half-reached towards Ryan but not touched him. Ryan props himself up on his elbow and twists so he’s facing Shane. Shane lied back down, which is weird for Shane, so it probably means he doesn’t want to get up. Ryan doesn’t know if that also means Shane doesn’t want Ryan to get up. Ugh, Ryan feels hungover with all the thoughts racing around in his head.  
   
He doesn’t want to make this awkward, but his mouth is moving without him. “So, uh… how drunk were you last night?”  
  
~  
  
Shane thinks about fifteen different things that could sound offhand. That could give them both an out, but he… he thinks maybe Ryan doesn’t want an out. Shane doesn’t. He’s been smiling a little about Ryan ‘taking that W,’ but it fades a little now, and he squints at him a little.  
  
“I remember,” he says, and it’s so simple. It’s so simple that it sounds, probably to Ryan, a little scary. Shane nods once, wishing his heart would just chill because it’s making his temples pound. He’s tense. He twists his fingers in the blanket then has to unconsciously untwist them. He raises his eyebrows at Ryan. “Is that cool, ‘cause… you know, I could just keep drinking until I don’t,” he teases, making to sit up.  
  
~  
   
Ryan exhales. He doesn’t know if he should be relieved or not. Shane just says _I remember_ , and leaves it at that. Then he’s asking if he should keep drinking until he doesn’t remember, and fuck if Ryan knows what he should do. “Yeah, no, I mean— yes, it’s—it’s cool. No, don’t keep drinking.” It’s more than cool. That sounds so ridiculous. Cool. But he doesn’t know how to say he might want it to happen again, does want it to, barring the hand-numbing anxiety at fucking it up. But, he does. He wants it again.  
   
But it’s hard to tell a guy you’d really be happy if you could… he doesn’t even know how to word that in his head.  
   
He tilts his head up, still looking down and away, though. “Not like, never drink again—you almost talk as much as me when you’re drunk. It’s nice.” And there’s all this rush inside him—his face is hot, his insides are tilt-o-whirling like he’s at the fucking fair.  
  
~  
  
Shane’s eyes are on him, on his face, on the way Ryan’s eyelashes brush his cheeks, and how _dark_ they are, because he’s not looking at Shane. He’s stammering all over the place and Shane can’t help it, he starts smiling because fuck, it’s endearing. He reaches out, pushing himself onto one elbow as well, almost on level with Ryan, and he touches Ryan’s chin, turns his face gently towards him.  
  
He feels bad, a little. Because he knows he doesn’t talk enough, he doesn’t give Ryan enough. He tries — fuck, he tells Ryan more than he’s ever admitted to anyone else, it’s just hard. He doesn’t always know when he needs to, or when he should. But everything they talked about last night was so serious, and Shane doesn’t know if he’s ready for that mood again and so he resolves to _try_ to talk more, then pushes it aside in favour of the laugh that bubbles up from his chest, the genuine one that seems to break out over his face before he even realizes it’s happening.  
  
“Holy shit, are you _blushing_ , Ryan?” Shane asks, the laughter all tangled up in the words. He’s the worst, he knows it. He only laughs harder. It makes the world wobble a little bit, but it’s really— it’s too good to pay it too much attention. “That’s adorable. You’re like a little schoolgirl.”  
  
~  
   
Ryan grabs the pillow beneath him and slams it directly into Shane’s face, without any amount of preamble. Fucking—really? School girl? He’s like a school girl? “Fuck you! If I’m blushing it’s probably on your behalf because you wouldn’t shut up last night!” But it’s not. He is blushing, and he hates it. He hates that Shane can notice it. It’s not like he’s fucking white. It shouldn’t be that apparent. But Shane is always watching him. That’s what Andrew said, and Ryan’s known it—a little bit, he’s always known it. Shane watches him a lot.  
   
He’s laughing, somewhere in there, between hitting Shane and trying to turn this around, Ryan started laughing. And he doesn’t want to be because Shane is a giant dick who doesn’t deserve to think he’s funny in the slightest. “You’re such a dick.”  
  
~  
  
Shane sort of crumples dramatically like he’s made out of sand and dust and not flesh and bone. “Ow, fuck,” he says against the pillow, and then he’s watching Ryan laughing and Jesus Christ, he’s so…  
  
Shane wheezes softly and presses a hand over his eyes, over his chest where he’s lying on his back. Laughing hurts, and he catches his breath. “Yeah, you got a taste of the mind of old Shane Madej. Now you know what a shit show it is in here,” he says, meeting Ryan’s eyes. “Also, if I recall, I don’t think dicks had anything to do with me, last night. That was _all_ you, buddy.”  
  
~  
   
Shane is either still residually drunk, or he has woken up with a fire in his soul that burns only to embarrass the fuck out of Ryan. Ryan’s still laughing, but he’s trying to stop, so it’s this gritted teeth kind of smile that’s making out for some very unconvincing anger.  
   
Ryan leans over Shane so one of his hands is on Shane’s shoulder,  he’s half on top of him—their legs are almost tangled. He almost straddles him, but he doesn’t because Shane’s hungover and Ryan’s still laughing because Shane just brought up his _dick_. “I’m not going to respond to your incredibly immature comment about dicks because, unlike you, I’m not twelve.” He hits Shane in the chest, gently. “And don’t flatter yourself, I was fully aware of the shit show before you got drunk and wouldn’t shut up.” Shane smells like alcohol, and yet somehow, all Ryan thinks is that he could so easily kiss him. He smells like wet, stale sugar—like a hangover, and Ryan might be fucking in love with it.  
   
“But I will take full advantage of your refusal to drink any water last night if you don’t shut your stupid mouth now.”  
   
This is the closest they’ve been in a while—well, in bed like this. He feels like this used to be common, but they stopped, and now last night happened and… Ryan can barely breathe under how much he wants this. Wants Shane.  
  
~  
  
Shane keeps smiling because it’s like if he doesn’t Ryan’s won somehow but his eyes are focused and dark. He’s breathing soft and shallow because otherwise he feels a little like he’ll lose himself. In this touch, this warm pressing down of Ryan’s hand on his shoulder, his — _ah, God_ , Shane can feel Ryan’s knee against the outside of his thigh. He swallows, shifts a little as the smile finally does fade. It’s a little alarming how fast his body responds to this, responds to Ryan, how easily electric tension slides into every part of him. It seems to spark, mouth hypersensitive beneath his own fingertips, as he pretends to zip his lips shut.  
  
Fine. Ryan doesn’t want him to talk, Shane won’t. He reaches down and catches the back of Ryan’s thigh and coaxes that leg over his own hips so Ryan’s mostly over him. A single rushed breath escape him before his eyes flicker back and forth between Ryan’s.  
  
~  
   
Ryan’s eyes widen when Shane pulls his leg over. He falls so his chest almost collides with Shane’s. That’s not helpful. It’s not helpful because Shane’s such an adorable piece of shit with his stupid zipping his mouth shut. Too much is rising in Ryan and he doesn’t know how to stop it. He doesn’t know if he should or why he’s still hesitating about this stuff.  
   
He readjusts so he is straddling Shane. But he doesn’t lean down, he just stares at him like he isn’t quite sure if Shane’s a human or another species entirely. “You aren’t a very good hungover person.” He runs his hands through Shane’s hair. It’s incredibly greasy. Ryan grins. It’s messy. Shane’s a mess, and it’s one of the few things Ryan can pinpoint that’s not together. He’s not together, Ryan knows that, but he feels so much better than Ryan. At this. At life.  
   
Hell, he got Ryan off like a fucking professional. Ryan doesn’t have the first clue how to do that. It’s not like he doesn’t know how to work his mouth, but…  
   
It doesn’t matter. Ryan’s pressed up against Shane—Shane’s bare skin warm beneath his palm, and Ryan wants to lean down and kiss him. He would try anything if he could get closer, touch him in these places Ryan’s never touched before. Make him feel what Ryan felt last night.  
   
So, the logical way to manage that is to say, “You still need to drink water.”    
  
~  
  
Something flashes through his eyes, like exasperation, because _seriously, Ryan, fuck the water_. Shane grits his teeth, braces himself against the pain in his head as he claps a hand over Ryan’s stupid, loud, gorgeous fucking mouth and pushes him over, coming down over top of him, catching himself with one hand and his elbow, before he hurts him.  
  
Shane’s not really that strong. He’s definitely not strong enough to easily maneuver them both, so the only reason he succeeded was because Ryan probably didn’t expect it. It’s clumsy. The blankets slide beneath his knees so that his hips fall against Ryan’s hips and they are very fucking close, and jesus, Shane knows— he knows he would have kissed him if his hand wasn’t there, pressed against the hot rush of air from Ryan’s lungs.  
  
~  
   
As much as he probably deserved Shane’s hand on his mouth, he did not expect it. It sparks a roar in his head that crackles down his throat like newly lit roman candles. Yeah, it’s definitely been a while. Since they’ve been here. Last night opened this whole new door, this whole new montage of feeling, and now on the back of it is this—this familiar, churning thing. And it’s crashing into last night’s feelings and oh fuck.  
   
He almost snaps—he doesn’t know what it would lead to, where it would go, but he doesn’t have to because Shane pushes him over and then he’s under Shane. It clatters through him, the impact, the want, this cacophony of colors inside him. It’s Shane’s hips against his and Shane’s depthless eyes on Ryan’s.  Ryan exhales this burst of air from the shock and everything else.  
   
He opens his mouth like he’s going to say something else. Like he wants to egg Shane on, but his breath’s caught in his throat like a butterfly against glass. And it flutters there.  
  
~  
  
The words _Can I kiss you_ are right there in his mouth, and Shane’s struggling to breathe around them. And he doesn’t know why he feels like he should ask after everything else they’ve done and everything they’ve said, and that worries at something in him, something he doesn’t want to think about, something he didn’t want to think about last night, so he doesn’t say it.  
  
He feels Ryan’s lips move against his palm and he has this quick flash, of coming apart in that fucking department store bathroom with his fingers against Ryan’s tongue and he thinks he half knows what Ryan’s mouth would feel like on him and he’s just hit with this overwhelming, desperate, aching need that starts where his hips meet Ryans and just burns out slowly through the rest of him.  
  
Shane hasn’t moved, hasn’t pressed his hips further down, hasn’t even shifted closer, he feels caught up in Ryan’s gaze even though he’s the one holding Ryan down and Shane lets out his little, accidental sound like the whispered beginning of a moan and oh God, it’s way too much. He’s forgotten the sick pounding in his head, even though it’s still there, peripherally. He draws his palm away from Ryan’s lips, letting his fingers drag against their warmth, that softness, his eyes flickering darkly between Ryan’s eyes and his mouth and they cannot do this here. There’s no more music, there’s not even a door, and it’s very quiet out there. Someone will hear them.  
  
~  
   
Shane starts to move his hand and Ryan’s hand snakes up to grab it. He pulls it back the little distance it’s gone. It’s not pressed against Ryan’s skin anymore. Ryan doesn’t know why he grabbed it or what he’s doing. He can see the hesitation, these firelights flickering in Shane’s eyes. These things that weren’t there yesterday—that aren’t there in the dark. Like the light casts different shadows in Shane. So he worries, thinks too much. That’s the problem, with them, with this—or one part of it—Shane _thinks_.  They do better when at least one of them isn’t.  
   
Ryan doesn’t know if that’s a good thing. They shouldn’t be able to talk themselves out of this, but then, Ryan’s always been able to talk himself out of anything—anything he really wanted. If he  tried hard enough. Maybe that’s what this is. Maybe it can be innocent. Shane’s gaze flickers back to the door. He’s right, obviously. There isn’t any sound anymore. Andrew and Steven could walk in at any time. This could be awful.  
   
But still, Ryan brings Shane’s hand down to his lips, mouth open so he gets one of Shane’s fingers caught between his lower lip and his teeth. His heart is pounding because he knows how this could go—he knows how Shane is when he pushes, when Ryan tries to move in this space when Shane pulls back. But for right now, fuck it.  
  
~  
  
“Ryan, Christ,” Shane whispers, eyes closing, and the words sound like they should be angry but they’re not, they’re desperate, almost pleading, but there’s uncertainty there, too, like a warning. Either way, he can’t help the way his body melts against Ryan’s as he just gives in, like water moulding to fill a space and he thinks of all the ways he could be closer. He opens his eyes again, trying to ground himself but he finds Ryan’s first, before anything else. Like a question, he slides his fingers fractionally further into Ryan’s mouth, past the white wall of his teeth, letting his fingertips hook the sharp bottom ridge.  
  
~  
  
Shane seems just short of angry. But not quite there. Exasperated and something else. Something hotter and brighter, something that licks across Ryan's waist and into his heart beat.  
  
Shane's fingers are salty in his mouth, dry and warm. A taste that spreads through his mouth like paint spilling down a canvas. Ryan's breath catches uncertainly against it. He doesn't pull back, though. Instead he pulls Shane's fingers further into his mouth so his tongue presses against the pads of them. They're softer, less, than the tops of them.  
  
He keeps his eyes hooked on Shane's, this blazing challenge, because he knows this Shane. Knows this is the one who always balks. He settles his teeth over the skin beneath Shane's knuckles, pushes, but doesn't quite bite.  
  
~  
  
His breath hitches at the possibility— there are so many possibilities. Someone could walk in. Ryan could bite him, he could take his fingers into his mouth like some weird, fucked up version of oral sex or— whatever this is. 

Shane doesn’t know. If it weren’t him caught up in the very middle of it he would think it was very odd. He probably wouldn’t like it, but Jesus, he does, he does fucking like it. He needs it.

There’s also the possibly that Shane doesn’t pull back. Isn’t that the logic of this thing called intimacy or whatever? They keep pushing and pushing and pushing for more? Because, now, he’s done more than this with Ryan. There are words that go with this that are too small, too insignificant for what Ryan is to Shane. Friend with benefits, boyfriend. Friend.

This is beyond that, it’s a thing Shane doesn’t understand in the slightest.

How does Shane explain to Ryan that he doesn’t understand how sex has always been so impersonal and awkward and difficult for him when Ryan is the one who got him off in only a handful of minutes in a bathroom weeks ago, just like this, _barely_ touching. How does he deal with the fact that he can’t shut his mind off even now.

And Ryan’s looking at him with this challenge and Shane wants to rise to it, but... Jesus, _I’m not—_ he thinks, _I don’t have enough to give you, I don’t have the words you need._

But he can’t say it. He can't because that would mean giving this up and Shane can’t do that either. 

“You wouldn’t hurt me, would you?” Shane gasps — about those sharp white teeth, about a thousand other things — not even fully half a joke. He’s shaking like he’s about to collapse into a hundred different pieces. He doesn’t pull back.  
  
~  
  
Ryan hates that he's right. He hates how much he feels it, the way Shane wants to pull away. On some level. It's exhausting, reading Shane. Ryan is all in. All the time. He wants to yank Shane's hand out of his mouth, kiss him, push this into something more real.

All this hesitation flickers through Shane's eyes like Autumn taking hold of a tree. His question is so secondary to everything else in his face, his breathing. Ryan hates pushing him. It feels _wrong_. Ryan pulls Shane's hand out of his mouth, though.

Isn't that what Ryan's worried about? What he did to his Mom? To Finn? Maybe it's not what Shane means, but... It's out there, between them now. There is anger in him, at the unfairness, at what he's done.

He drops Shane's hand and brings his own up to his forehead. Like he can wrench the want and fear and burn out of his own skull.

"I don't want to." He can't look at him, suddenly. Shane is shaking like he's scared of Ryan. Shane knows part of Ryan craves pain, distantly, for all the wrong reasons. What does that mean for the other side of it?

"Not gonna bite your finger off, though. I can confirm that." He's trying to joke, but it's jagged. Broken, almost.

~  
  
It like he’s swallowed something that ends up having spikes. It rips through him and all the slow-spreading pulse of warmth is gone in the space of a heartbeat.

He barely hears the joke but he hears how Ryan’s voice sounds when he says it. The intimacy, their closeness, the fact that Shane has to face it now after he’s fucked up again, seems almost unbearable. He pulls back, but he overbalances somewhere and has to catch himself with one palm beside Ryan’s head.

He hovers there for a moment, looking down at him, then quickly pulls away. “What did I do?” He asks, voice too tight. He really feels bad, for too many different reasons.  
  
~  
  
Shane pulls away. Ryan wishes he wouldn't, but he did start it. So he can't be too devastated. He pulls his hands down and faces Shane. "What?" It's genuine, even if he knows he's acting weird. Even if it makes sense Shane would wonder.

"No, that's... You didn't do anything." Shane didn't. Nothing he can be held accountable for. His hesitation isn't wrong. Neither is worrying about getting hurt. "It just freaks me out. The idea of hurting someone else. Especially you."

He sits up because he needs the distance because all these nightmarish memories and rushing through him and he's not totally sure how to contain them.

"I know I'm not making this easy."  
  
~  
  
He makes a couple sounds that are several different words at once, one leg drawn to his chest, the other folded awkwardly on the blankets.

“I didn’t mean it like that, Ryan...” or did he? He doesn’t know. “It’s not your fault. I just... What’re we doing here?” He asks. He’s asked it before, but they keep making tighter and tighter circles back to it. _Why was it easy, last night?_  
  
  
~  
  
Ryan's teeth almost grit. And there it is. The anger. This thing in him that he hates. Because Shane says it like Ryan should know. Like it's just a stupid correction Ryan can make. Like it's all so stupid. So pointless.

"I don't know."

Ryan scratches his fingernails through his hair. Until they scrape his scalp. He might be trembling, or maybe it's just his imagination. But he ducks his head anyway, tries to keep air coming in and out of his lungs. But even that feels like so fucking much.

"I don't _know_."

He can't do this when Shane's fully here. He can't beat all this fucking hesitation. And maybe it's wrong to try. Maybe it's awful. Or maybe it's weak not to.

"What did you mean, then?" His voice quivers. "How did you mean it? What do you want from me?"  
  
~  
  
This is a lot suddenly, and he realizes that some part of him didn’t expect Ryan to throw the challenge back at him. It shivers uncomfortably over Shane’s skin, like cold damp air from a storm blowing in.

Shane wants to hide, but Ryan’s voice shakes and Shane hates it and so he has to stop protecting himself so hard for Ryan’s sake.

He tries to hold Ryan’s eyes, but can’t. “I... I  just.” He taps the side of his own raised knee softly, barely touching. “I can’t separate you from... I’m bad at this. At being mutually...” He motions between them. 

“That’s always where things turn into a mess. If we... like if you really want to do this, any of this with me, it’s gonna be— you’re going to hit a dead end, there, that’s just. What I do.”

Jesus he can barely get the words out, his breath too tight around them as they struggle up his throat, like it’s trying to hang on to them. 

“It’s disappointing. You’ll be— disappointed.” He’s forcing the words to come now and it hurts. “I dunno if I can do it again, if it’s you.”  
  
~  
  
Wow, Ryan has no idea how to take or translate this. He wants to hand it back to Shane and say, _no thank you, I'm more confused now._

But he's going to have to try because Shane's vulnerable and scared and Ryan's acting like a bit of a twelve year old.

"I... And what? You think if you stop having mutual..." Ryan gestures between them like Shane did, almost playful. "For me that I'll do the next rational thing and kill you while you sleep?"

He sighs. Bends his good knee so he can hold it against him. "I don't understand. What you're afraid of. If you aren't that invested, if we're over-reaching, we can stop. Because I've had people stop before, and it's--it sucks but it's not... You're not disappointing. Even if you walked away right now, you've already given me more than almost anyone I've ever known." But there's this ache that opens in him and rips hard into his chest. At the reality of that. "So you aren't disappointing. It's not great, but you don't owe me anything. I have too many emotions but I will be fine. I'm not that unstable."  
  
~  
  
Oh God, Shane wants to backtrack so hard, hit the breaks and just turn the fuck around and start this conversation over. “No, no no no no,” he starts saying, voice too soft for the intensity behind it.

Jesus _Christ_ , he feels like his heart’s been broken. Like he’s taken it out and between them they’ve accidentally dropped it but that’s not— the pieces only add to Ryan’s on some hypothetical kitchen floor. It’s like walking into the room to find Ryan’s glass heart smashed into a million still glittering fragments and Ryan standing over it apologizing to _Shane_ for the mess. Like it’s somehow Ryan’s fault.

It’s so backwards. Shane wants to rip the words away from Ryan faster then he can speak them and just fucking obliterate them.

“You’re not, I’m not explaining this right, no, stop. Fucking— please stop. Thinking. Stop thinking and look at me.”

Fuck it. He pushes forward and reaches out tentatively. The touch itself flares through him, up his arm and into his chest and throat, because Shane wasn’t ready, but Ryan needs it.

He’s slides his fingers over Ryan’s waist, his skin cooler than last night. Shane doesn’t even know where his own shirt is. “I _am_ fucking invested in you, I’m. Sex, I’m bad at sex, I can’t— it’s so abstract sometimes. It’s not— Jesus, Ryan, you fucking idiot.”

Shane exhales this desperate humorless breath. Somehow the insult is so gentle. He lets him go to cup his face but it’s too much so he drops his hands to Ryan’s arms, his elbows, tugging gently with no real purpose behind it. Just, _don’t_ go.

“I don’t know what the hell is wrong with the people you’re talking about, but it’s— they’re so stupid,” he breathes. “I do want... I want whatever you want.” He can’t stop shaking.

“I’m definitely in no danger of not having mutual,” he makes the motion again, more of a parody than Ryan’s this time “whatever with you. I’m. It’s mutual. I’ve got it.”  
  
~  
  
Shane is what fucks him up. Ryan's still processing, still wobbling under whatever he just said. Because he's said it, and it's true, it's the right thing to say. It's fine. If he says he'll be fine, he will be. And he's holding up this weight, partially steady because he has to be.

Then Shane opens his stupid mouth and Ryan feels himself slip. His blood is too thick, like it's pulsing backwards against his heart. It's awful. Far, far too heavy to breathe over. Because there is this reality in front of him and he's written himself the playbook for how to manage it. He's run it before. But it's this frigid, icy water and he is shivering before he even touches it. Every word he said has sprayed him with it. 

Shane grabs him and Ryan's eyes snap open too wide. He looks blankly at where Shane has his waist. He's not looking at Shane like he wants him to. And he's not moving because if he does, all this heat in him is going to shatter and Shane's going to know that Ryan is actually that unstable.

Shane's talking about sex, and it's so bizarre. It makes no sense. Shane grabs his face, then his arms, and it's leaving all these blips of warmth where Ryan's gone far, far too cold.

"Sex?" He doesn't sound at all like a normal human.

It takes him another minute, working it all over. Collecting himself. If Shane hadn't so adamantly opposed him, he would've been okay. He keeps telling himself that. But now there's this flourish of hope because Shane's saying he does want this and Ryan's terrified of that because if Shane does pull back. Fuck, his veins seethe and vibrate beneath his skin.

"Okay... uh, that's..." He meets Shane's eyes. "I didn't get... You..." But okay, that's why Shane told him no. Or, well, didn't want... Okay, that does make sense. "That's not something you should feel bad about. You weren't bad last night, and even if... Jesus, Shane, that's..." He laughs breathlessly. "Definitely not going to make me disappointed." He's trying to contain this relief so he isn't belittling this thing that seems so big to Shane. And if it is receiving, then it does suck because he wants to do something for Shane but... It seems so manageable. 

After...

But he hates whatever made Shane so sure this means he can't be good for anyone. "You're worth more than whatever you think good sex is."

~  
  
He shakes his head because that statement, that last one to come out of Ryan’s mouth is not something he’s sure he believes. But then, he didn’t believe… much good about himself before Ryan, and he’s scared to take this, too, believe this, too, even a little bit, and then have it taken away if or when Ryan finally gets fed up and leaves. He turns it around.  
  
“We’re not, we’re not just talking about that,” Shane says. Ryan’s looking at him but there’s this blankness in his eyes, like maybe he’s still slipping away even while Shane holds onto him. Or maybe Shane’s just scared.

They’re talking about Ryan, too and how Ryan thinks that his being too much is his fault, and how, like Shane, he’s been discarded again and again, for the opposite reasons Shane has, and Shane wants to put his arms around him so badly but it seems so excessive and he hates that logical part of his brain.

“You _know_ — you believe me, right? I’m not trying to back out of this, I don’t think we’re over- _reaching_ , it’s just that… you pull back like I… you pull away.”  
  
~  
   
They should probably be talking about Shane’s thing more. But he’s avoiding it, which means he doesn’t believe Ryan. Fair. Sex is a big thing. It always came fairly naturally to Ryan, with girls anyway. Partially because there was plenty of ways to figure out how to do it. He’s never given a ton of thought to it—not beyond wanting it. He’s never been specifically told he wasn’t good at it. He thinks about it like anyone does. Except for now, with Shane—he worried about it last night. He’s worried about it before that. It’s never felt this big before.  
   
But then Shane’s asking him questions, and fuck… he doesn’t know if he does believe Shane. He wants to. But that moment when he thought Shane was admitting, telling him that he wasn’t in this like Ryan was. It was the first time things between them made sense. It was the first time Ryan’s mind wasn’t completely at odds’ with him. Because he hasn’t thought it was possible for Shane to want him like Ryan wants Shane. Not after everything Shane’s done—not after… this.  
   
“I know I do…” He’s trying to bring himself fully back to this conversation. He lost some piece of himself earlier. “But I… I told you, I don’t want to overwhelm you. I’m terrified of pushing you too far, and…” He looks away, breath coming like a hatchet across the inside of his chest. “I’ve never done… this… before. You think you suck—what if I suck? I’ve given three guys hand jobs in a bar _bathroom_. And none of them called me the next day to rate my performance.”  
  
~  
  
Shane swallows. “Oh. Damn, I... was I your first blowjob? I— fuck if I knew that I wouldn’t have been drunk,” Shane says, and he half means it. He slides his hands down to Ryan’s wrists and tugs them gently, his eyes down. He turns one of Ryan’s hands palm up and lets himself brush his fingertips over the length of Ryan’s fingers.

“You won’t be bad at it,” he says. “Everything you do to me is...” air slides into Shane’s lungs as if by accident. He takes a second. “It’s good. I’ve never... you make me feel a lot. More than... I’m just trying to process, I think,” he says, letting him go.  
  
~  
   
Ryan’s own skin doesn’t feel quite so wrong anymore. Like Shane’s pressing him back into his own body with these brief, too-quick touches. It’s enough, though. It’s more than enough. He chews his lip, still isn’t quite looking at Shane like he needs to be. Because this whole conversation has turned into something more than what they were doing a few seconds ago. More than the fucking blow job.  
   
Ryan laughs, a bubbly effervescent sound that catches on his lips. Oh god, oh god, oh god. Shane is killing him. This unsaid truth between them is killing him, but right now he’s just too fucking relieved to care. Because Shane at least _thinks_ he cares as much as Ryan does.  
   
“I could still be bad at it.” He looks at him, then looks away. “And yeah, you were my first blow job… that’s—that’s not something I ever thought would come out of my mouth, but okay.” He finds Shane’s eyes under the shroud of the humor, smile a little lopsided. “But I’d rather it be you drunk that someone else sober.”  
  
~  
  
Shane’s quiet, uncertain eyes catch Ryan’s and then be breaks into a smile. “You fucking—” he begins, softly, fondly, then reaches out to mess up Ryan’s hair, draws away, let’s himself collapse back into the pillows. “My head hurts, Ryan!” He whines, reaching out to backhand him, wrist loose, square in the chest.  
  
~  
   
Ryan flinches under Shane’s hand on his chest, makes a kind of groaning, half-sound that’s not quite an “ow.” But everything is more normal now, and if they can manage to be even normal after a drunk blow job, then it’s good. It needs to be good. Or maybe it means they’ll never move forward. No, Ryan is going to call it good.  
   
He slides so he’s sitting beside Shane again, but he doesn’t lie down. “How is that my fault? I told you like fourteen times last night, and this morning to drink something, but your response was to attack me.” He glances across the room where he left the bottle of water, untouched, from the bar. Instead of telling Shane where it is, he leans over him, first on his knees so just his torso is over Shane, but he can’t reach it. So he falls, deliberately, across Shane’s stomach, and finally gets the tips of his fingers on the water bottle. But instead of grabbing it, he lets his hand falls and then pulls it back to prop his chin on. Still draped perpendicular across Shane.  
   
“Well, I made an effort.”  
  
~  
  
Shane makes a sound of surprise and kind of gasp-yelps “Jesus,” and then he’s pushing at Ryan’s shoulder and ribs saying, “If you don’t get off of me I am going to vomit on you.” It’s not very convincing since he has to fight the words in fragments around his laughter.

He shoves at Ryan’s hand, dislodging it from beneath his chin, drawing both knees up on the bed for leverage and to half trap Ryan there. He tries to grab at his wrist so he can execute some plan of attack.  
  
~  
   
Ryan’s hand slips and his chin all but hits the floor. Shane’s got just enough width that Ryan stops himself. “Jackass.” He says it like there is absolutely no reason for Shane to attack him. Which there isn’t. He was trying to do him a favor. But Shane’s got a hold of his wrist like he’s going to wrestle Ryan. This is almost as sad as the basketball game. “Really?” Ryan catches his eyes and narrows his own, cocks his head. Ryan grabs Shane’s hand where Shane’s trying to maneuver his wrist. He pulls Shane towards him and scoots more of himself over Shane so he can use his other arm to wrap around Shane’s neck.  
   
He doesn’t squeeze hard enough to choke him, but he tries to free his other wrist so he can get him in an actual headlock. But Shane’s holding on to his other arm, so Ryan’s just got the one arm. He tries to bring the rest of his feet over Shane’s body but Shane’s wedged his own legs so Ryan’s lower half is potentially stuck. Instead, Ryan pulls Shane to him like he can separate him from the rest of his body.  
  
~  
  
“ _Ow!_ fuck,” Shane jolts beneath him, but he’s half gasping with laughter and exasperation. Ryan’s got ahold of his arm and Shane flails around like a fish ineffectually beneath Ryan’s weight. The fact that he’s laughing really isn’t helping him and _knowing_ that makes it harder to stop.

Eventually he gets one hand up and cuffs Ryan around the head with his forearm, then grabs a fistful of his hair, tugging his head back.  
  
~  
   
Ryan winces where Shane tugs his hair. He doesn’t release his hold on Shane’s neck but he pulls both of them back to the floor. It presses Shane’s hands between his weight and the floor, and he hopes it’ll be enough to make him let go. But the motion gives him a little more movement with his legs and he wraps them, cross-legged, around Shane’s middle. Shane’s on top of him, back to him—there’s a lot of friction between their skin. Heat that starts to mount again.  
   
He twists his other arm free and gets both of his arms around Shane’s neck. He’s panting. He always is with Shane. “Wow, so is this what you did in high school? Wrestling and basketball and D&D? What a well-rounded kid.”  
  
~  
  
He’s gone stiller now, save for his completely fucking insane heartbeat and the pounding in his head, and he relents in the fight and just wills himself heavier on top of Ryan.

“Yeah, I’m the best at uh, at the sports,” Shane says. He frees his hand messily from Ryan’s hair and attempts to twist around, but Ryan’s wrapped around him like a spider monkey and he starts laughing again in this soft breathless away. “Are you— what’re you doing?” He asks, like he wasn’t also just participating a second ago. Like he isn’t right now.

Ryan’s chest is hot against him and he can’t tell if he’s just feeling his own breathless pulse and shudder of blood or Ryan’s too. 

He reaches down and digs his fingers into the back of Ryan’s thigh near his hip.  
  
~  
   
Ryan sighs like Shane is the most obtuse person on the planet. He hates this, because it’s exactly what he did before. What’re we doing here? He twists things like he wasn’t actively participating. Ryan wishes he wasn’t in quite such a tangled position because he would absolutely hit him. Do something to show him he’s a fucking asshole. Granted, Ryan could just call him that—but that feels too honest.  
   
“Well, Shane…”  He pulls Shane tighter to him so he speaks directly into his ear. He’s panting—it’s breathy. But they’re wrestling. Something Ryan has done a thousand times with other guys, with Jake. And Shane’s hands aren’t on his mouth, his neck—his control is firmly in his hands. “It’s called wrestling. You’re supposed to tap out if you give up.”    
   
Shane’s got a hand on his thigh, and it spikes Ryan’s heartbeat, because he’s digging his fingers in and Ryan can taste his own blood.  
   
“Give up?”  
  
~  
  
_Jesus_ , Shane suppresses a shiver but goosebumps rise all over him. He shuts his eyes for a moment and fuck, what’s a mistake because all his senses center on Ryan.

He forgets the question and just emits this noise that’s halfway between “Um,” and wanting, while his mind spins its wheels to catch up.

“I’ve never lost a wrestling match in my life,” Shane informs him. It’s a blatant lie. “I’m just, uh, time out, it’s a time out. Red card, um—”

~  
  
Ryan laughs and then releases his legs around Shane and shoves him off. He untangles the rest of their limbs and sits up, still shaking his head. He meets Shane's crooked spine pressed down the center of him. The delicate hollows in his collarbone where Ryan's forearms touched. He misses the fire on Shane's skin. Okay, yeah, this was more than wrestling.

"I just feel sorry for you at this point." He grabs the water, much closer now and extends it to Shane. "How's your head?"  
  
~  
  
Shane takes it from him thinking that this kind of rapidfire hot and cold is going to fracture him right down the middle someday and his heart will crack in two silently pleading for Ryan.  
  
He twists the cap off the water and takes a drink before he answers, before he can even think about Ryan’s question. Jesus, he’s got this aching hollowness. His eyes flicker to Ryan’s as he lowers the bottle, and maybe they’re too dark, or too needy. Maybe they’re just… maybe to Ryan it looks like uncertainty. Maybe it is. But he’s uncertain about how to breach this, not about how to put on the breaks.  
  
“Well, it’s— it hurts,” he says. “You— threw me around so.” Absently Shane reaches up to scratch his throat and finds it sensitive. He remembers Ryan’s mouth on him last night and his fingers linger there a moment. He extends the water to Ryan in a kind of truce even though Ryan doesn’t need it and Shane most definitely lost that wrestling match. “Do we still have those protein bars or?”  
  
~  
  
Ryan snorts. Shane looks... wild, in this wanting kind of way. Ryan gets it. But they have to stop. This morning is just Ryan uncertainly fumbling and pulling back. It's him this time, maybe. Like he's anticipating Shane. Beating him to it. But Shane looks tired for it.

"Sorry, I know." He's apologizing for more than throwing a very dehydrated Shane around. He's apologizing for now knowing how to keep going this morning, without going too far. 

"Uh, maybe, but... oh!" He ignores the water and goes to rifle through the bags. He finds the protein bars and keeps looking. Eventually he finds it, the almost-empty pill bottle. He never even thought of it for Shane's leg. "Remember this?" 

He slides back over to Shane and puts the bottle and bar in front of him. He wants to wrap himself around Shane, make this better, but it seems like it'll make it worse.  
  
~  
  
“Oh yeah,” Shane says, brightening a little as he picks up the bottle. It seems sort of wasteful to use them for a headache. Especially one that’s his own fault. He already has, once. He toys with the bottle, listening to how many are rattling around in there. It’s still half-full or so… He opens it anyway, because he feels like that’s the right thing to do -- let Ryan take care of him, in some way, and shakes two out into his palm, because one won’t do anything, and it would just be a waste to try.  
  
He washes the pills down with water, quiet again. He’s still trying to come back from this -- from where they were. “Hey, so,” he finally says, softly, just in case the others _can_ hear them. “What are we doing? Do you want to stay here or… should we just keep going?” Shane doesn’t know. He could do either. He wants what Ryan wants, but there’s a part of him, if he’s being honest, that really wants it to be just them again. He misses it being just them, he’s used to it, and Andrew and Adam and Steven are nice, but he can’t see it being sustainable. Somehow. Maybe it’s the stupidest thing he’s ever thought, but he doesn’t say anything, he just watches Ryan to see if he can read him, read what Ryan really thinks, in his eyes.  
  
He opens the protein bar as he speaks and breaks it in half, holding part of it out to Ryan to make sure he eats, too.  
  
~  
   
Shane hesitates over the Advil, but it isn’t like they’ve used it. They really ought to get better about thinking about it for… things that aren’t headaches. But that’s the only time Ryan thinks of them. That’s what pain relievers used to be for, but now they’re for bear traps and fuck—who knows what else? Surprisingly, he doesn’t have to coax Shane to take them. He does it on his own, actually takes two.  
   
Ryan shouldn’t have started this whole thing with them again, because now this is the second time he’s pulled away from Shane—and Shane seems tied up under the weight of it. But, god damn it—Ryan spends so much time waiting for Shane to pull away, and then the rest of it wanting to kiss him. Physical has always been black and white for him—without the kissing, without knowing how far he can go—he’s waiting on Shane to ask the question: what’re we doing? What are _you_ doing?  
   
“I don’t… it’s whatever you wanna do.” God, he wants to leave. In some weird, stupid way, he does. But he doesn’t. This is so safe here. With three extra people and food and shelter and alcohol. It doesn’t make a ton of sense to leave. He knows it’ll hurt when they do. That some part of them will regret it. But it seems like the wrong thing to do. To just end it here, with nothing else—start this life in this dead city, give up on everything else. Eventually, it might stop being safe. And if Ryan’s honest—he doesn’t love the idea of sharing Shane. As selfish as that sounds.  
   
He takes the protein bar because Shane offers it, but he doesn’t eat it. He just lets it hang in his hands as he tries to work out what he wants to say.  
   
“It feels weird to just stop here. Like it’s… their place…” Ryan doesn’t like the idea of crashing what someone else has put together, either. Christ, though, isn’t that exactly what he did with Shane? The closest thing he and Jake had to shelter was an apartment that ended in Jake getting bitten. God damn it, he gave Jake so little—and now that he’s gone, there’s Shane, and people like Andrew and TJ and _Shane_. And he wishes, for the thousandth time, that it’d been him. That Jake could’ve found these people, could’ve found this hope that Shane’s given Ryan.  
   
He’s let his sentence trail in a cyclone of his own bullshit. “I don’t—it’s up to you. I could do either, probably. Did you mean what you said about the boat thing? If you want that, we can… try that.” He still hasn’t mentioned LA or Anaheim. Shane probably thinks he would never step foot back there—and some part of him doesn’t want to. Doesn’t want to see even more of what he loved ruined.  
  
~  
  
Shane is watching Ryan closely because he can see the moment Ryan starts getting swept under. Christ, it’s like an undertow and Shane doesn’t know how to stop it. All he can do is grasp for Ryan and try to pull him up to the surface again. And again and again.  
  
He eats his half of the fucking protein bar but it sticks in his throat. If they leave they’re back to this. Food that tastes like cardboard and leaves them hungry anyway. Headaches and gut-wrenching fear, Blue Gatorade and rationing what little they have between them.  
  
Shane nods when Ryan says it’s like their place. He feels it, too. And also Shane wants this. Wants it to be just him and Ryan again, like it was, and there’s something in Ryan’s voice that makes him think Ryan really wants it too.  It’s not just words. “Why did you even remember the boat thing?” he asks, laughing a little. _He’d_ forgotten about it, so he’s a little touched that Ryan’s remembered.. “Yeah, sure. Let’s find a boat. Maybe there’s no zombies in Hawaii or somewhere.”  
  
Ryan looks so sad, though, and Shane… he reaches now, pushes himself to actually reach, not just metaphorically, and gets his fingers around the back of Ryan’s neck. He shifts closer, leaving the protein bar wrapper on the blankets behind him and he touches his forehead to Ryan’s, let that rush through him, keeps his fingers loose beneath the electric onslaught so that it’s easier on them both. Maybe.  
  
“Okay,” he says. “We’ll go.”  
  
~  
   
He’s not sure why it feels like he talked Shane into this. But it definitely feels that way. Shane’s babying him, a little—because he certainly isn’t trying to do anything else. That or he’s a bastard because he knows exactly how Ryan feels about Shane touching his neck, no matter how loosely he’s doing it. In fact, the tentativeness is making it _worse_. And then Shane’s mouth is a few inches from his so Ryan can feel him breathing, fuck. Ryan wants to kiss him. Ryan wants to kiss him so much. It hits him all at once—this urge that’s been building in him. He almost asks Shane why not—why it’s such a weird threshold for them. But he doesn’t. Because Shane gave him a blow job. Kissing shouldn’t matter. It really shouldn’t.  
   
God damn it. Ryan is regressing back to middle school. He closes his eyes and tries not to think about the slender fit of Shane’s fingers against his skin, or the way his neck prickles beneath him. But then he’s thinking about Shane’s hand on his mouth and Shane’s shoulder blade pressed against his chest and—he takes a breath. Mostly to breathe in something besides the desperation coursing through him like frost, stripping everything bare and frozen. It’s a struggle to hold Shane’s eyes, but he does.  
  
“Maybe we should see if they can give us food or something before we go. Not that… we have anything to really pay them back but… they seem like they’d help. And our food really sucks.”  
  
~  
  
They leave that evening. It’s harder than Shane expects. There is no way to keep in touch anymore, not really. Emails, phones... even if the internet started miraculously working again all three of them had long since gotten rid of their electronics. They were just reminders of a past that wasn’t coming back, and Shane suddenly feels strange for holding onto his so long. It’s Adam who produces the USB cable though. “You can charge your phone with the car,” he says, then disappears before Shane can properly thank him. 

They are practically forced to take food. It isn’t the real food they’d had during their stay, but it’s better than the crackers and things he and Ryan have been eating. Steven makes them take a first aid kid. They aren’t allowed to refuse, nor are they in a position to. Shane can see it bothers Ryan, so he takes it. “They’ll be fine,” he tells him softly, and tries to believe it.

Andrew comes with them to deal with gas for the car. Shane finds the gas can and hose he’d dropped, and the car... the car in still fine. Not even scratched. At least, no more than it already was.

There really are no people out here, except these guys it seems. It felt fucking lonely before, and Shane tries not to think about why, about where they’ve all gone... it feels even worse leaving them there knowing that. Knowing about the quarantine zones. Shane thinks that maybe the strike zones were kinder, but he doesn’t say anything to Ryan.

At the same time, Shane thinks, as he climbs into the passenger seat beside Ryan, it seems a little like they expected them to go. Andrew squeezes his shoulder before he pulls the door shut. “Good luck.”

“Yeah,” Shane says. “You too.”

They drive through the night, just trying to get somewhere. They make it all the way to Nevada which is somehow more alive, even in the middle of the desert, for the death in all the states surrounding it.

Shane thinks about reaching for Ryan’s fingers on the wheel, taking them in his own, just to hold onto him again, but for some reason he doesn’t. He just looks at him, maybe longer than he should, and wonders how he’s going to keep making things okay once they reach the ocean. It might as well be the edge of the world.  
  
~  
   
Ryan hasn’t missed driving. At all, actually. As soon as he gets back in the car, he nearly suggests walking. But he’s pretty sure about half a mile into that, he’d want the car back. So he drives. And keeps his complaining in his own head. Shane looks at him when he’s awake, too intensely maybe. It’s in intervals. Ryan wants to reach for his hand, but he also cannot stand driving with one hand—so he doesn’t… because even in the apocalypse, safety fucking matters.  
   
He takes them towards LA without really, mentioning it. Shane doesn’t seem to care much about where they’re going, anyway. Or, he doesn’t have enough knowledge of the terrain to be able to tell Ryan he’s going to the wrong way. Or any way, really. Ryan loses track of how many days they drive, but it’s a lot. They stop, and mostly sleep in the car. Ryan kinda sleep. He sleeps some nights—and those days it’s easier to drive. Shane offers to drive some more. Ryan doesn’t let him. It feels like one piece of this enormous thing that he’s actually contributing. So he does it.  
   
The route he takes is roundabout, because truth be told, Ryan doesn’t know the routes either. He tries to plot things out on the map while Shane sleeps. It doesn’t do much good because fuck maps. How did generations of people survive on this bullshit? He keeps losing his place and forgetting where he is or never being able to find it in the first place.  
   
Eventually, they end up in Arizona. Which is further south than Ryan thought they were. But it’s semi-close to LA as far as states go. It’s been ages since he took any kind of road trip, and usually those went through Nevada because he had absolutely no reason to ever go south—but Arizona is close, anyway. The southern US just kinda terrifies him. His vision of Texas is just giant assault rifles wondering around, and in a zombie apocalypse—jesus Christ. To be fair to them, they may have faired better than most. But that’s just upsetting.  
   
Eventually, somewhere in the night-streaked desert of Arizona and the sixty-two billboards advertising adult stores and McDonalds in intervals—the car starts making weird noises. Ryan has this momentary panic about breaking down in the middle of nowhere, because Arizona is fucking spread out. The exits come like a thousand miles apart from each other. It’s all desert. There would be nowhere to hide, at all, and… he takes a breath. He needs the car to be okay. This is all they have. But it isn’t. He pulls off at the next exit he sees, which takes about four hundred more miles and his hands are all but melted into the steering wheel by the time he does.  
   
Shane’s dozed off in the passenger seat when he parks beside the pump. Ryan leans back in the seat and breathes. Mostly because he’s not dead. But then he bites his lip and turns the key again. The car sputters, angry, and then dies. He tries again—same thing. Shit. Last time a car didn’t start Ryan punched a mirror and Shane bit Ryan so hard it almost bled. “Fuck… fuck.”  
   
Ryan collects himself before waking Shane up. He’s learned that Shane pays a lot of attention to Ryan when he first wakes up, and if Ryan’s somewhere other than where Shane thought he was or acting different than usual—Shane notices. Ryan gets it, though… it is scary waking up in that split second before he knows where Shane is. What he’s doing.  
   
The times when he thinks Jake’s alive are getting less—they don’t happen as much, and as much as he doesn’t miss  the stabbing realization of the truth… he doesn’t like that it’s slipping away. Like he’s losing all these little pieces of Jake and one day, he just won’t be there. He’s been playing Jake’s voice back in his head for the past four hours. He really needs to get out of the car.  
   
“The car won’t start. Maybe it’s gas.” But the needle said there was a little under a quarter of a tank left. “I’m just… I need to get out.”  
   
He grabs the hammer and gets out. He doesn’t wait for Shane to have much of a reaction because he’s pissed. He’s pissed and tired and sad. Because nothing stays working in this stupid world anymore. He thinks about kicking the tire before he walks into the gas station, but he doesn’t. Because that would be childish. Maybe it really is gas—maybe it’ll be fine. Mostly he just needs this gas station to have something sugary because he wants a fucking candy bar. People have definitely been here, though. Because a lot of stuff’s missing—actually, almost everything is missing. He almost sighs, but something moves in the corner of the store.  
   
Ryan grips the handle of the hammer, and all his muscles hiss with the effort—with the reminder of how he was holding the wheel. It’s like he can feel the silhouette one aisle over—this nebulous existence. His heartrate crashes hard enough to suck the blood out of the rest of him. Everything in him tenses. The hammer shakes in his hand.  
   
Finally, he takes another step around the second aisle. The confirmation startles him to a recoil. It’s a guy, and he lets out this panic burst of sound. Or maybe that was Ryan. Or both. And then the guy has a handgun in his hand, pointed at Ryan—and holy fuck, any panic before is dwarfed in this fucking eclipse. It consumes him like the fucking apocalypse and he doesn’t know whether to throw his hands up or stay still, because bringing a hammer over his head seems like the wrong thing to do.  
   
He says, “wait!” like it’ll help, and the guy narrows his eyes. He’s not a zombie. But he’s definitely got a gun, which might make him worse.  
   
~  
  
Shane doesn’t like this. His eyes fall to the keys in the ignition and Ryan as he gets out of the car too fast like he’s suffocating inside it.

He takes a second, still not quite thinking at full speed, his mind fuzzy with heat and sleep and concern, but then he follows Ryan out.

He fishes the pipe out of the back then softly shuts his door and just stands quietly on the other side of the car, vaguely tapping the pipe against the dust that’s blown across the pavement, intermittently watching Ryan a little warily. He doesn’t say anything, just reaches up to scratch at his temple as Ryan finally turns and heads into the store. Of course, Shane follows.

He’s trying not to panic. There are worse places they could have broken down, he supposes. At least there’s shelter here, and maybe even tools, not that he’ll know what the fuck to do with them. He really hopes it is just the gas.

It’s quiet here, but the quiet is starting to be more familiar than civilization. Shane can’t even remember what that sounds like anymore. Cars on the freeway and people talking in crowds and coffee shops. It’s only a vague memory. Like the way Adam’s radio station gradually faded out into static as they left Nevada.

That’s why the sound scares him so much. Someone cries out. He circles the aisle and ends up behind something— no, _someone_. Someone blonde and tense and not a zombie. And pointing a gun at Ryan.

Shane very seriously considers killing him. It comes so easily, so suddenly, that the shock of it is the only reason he hesitates. That’s killing a _person_. A fucking human being.

“Hey man,” Shane says, in this voice that’s not his own. A different kind of soft; all dark. He doesn’t want to startle him in case he pulls the trigger. 

The guy yelps again anyway, and turns to look at Shane over his shoulder. He looks young, pale, not evil. It’s kind of funny, or it might be if Shane’s heart wasn’t beating in his fucking _throat_ over Ryan and the dark eye of that gun. He twists his wrist to tighten his grip on the metal and the pipe scrapes softly across the tiles. “How about you put that gun down.” His voice shakes with something. Panic. Dregs of laughter like this is just a movie scene and not real life. 

_God, please_ , Shane thinks, _don’t shoot him_.

He steps forward, crowding him in a little, pulling himself up to use every inch of his height. It feels wrong but at least he’s not looking at Ryan anymore. Shane holds his eyes, but he’s listening for anyone else.  
  
~  
   
Oh, shit, Ryan did not realize Shane was here. He’s been so wrapped up in his own head. But Shane is clearly trying to get this guy’s attention and it's working.  
   
The guy seems torn between moving the gun and keeping it where it’s at. Ryan would prefer him not point it at Shane. He would prefer him not point it at all. But when Shane speaks, he yanks the gun towards him. Ryan lets out a little hiss, but he doesn’t blame the guy. He mostly seems to be protecting himself. And Shane reminds Ryan of one of those trees from Lord of the Rings. It’s difficult not to respond at him. And Shane’s… different, he’s like a shark in dark water. If Ryan didn’t know him, he’d be afraid of him. It’s weird because, before a few seconds ago, he couldn’t really imagine himself afraid of Shane.  
   
“Why would I put it down?” blonde guy asks. “If I put it down, I’m definitely outnumbered.”  
   
“I promise we’re not…” Ryan projects his voice, mostly because he wants the guy’s attention. It works because he immediately points the gun back at Ryan. He really likes pointing the gun. But it’s a weird kind of relief. “I’ll put the hammer down if you want, just—we…” He almost mentions the car, but that seems like too much information up front. God, he hates guns. It’s just bringing back that lady back at the cabin with her gun biting into his temple. “We’re not dangerous.”  
   
“You have weapons.”  
   
“You have a _gun_.” Ryan’s voice raises an octave. “Pointed at me. I’m not _pointing_ my hammer.”  
   
The moment drags for a second, and then slowly, so slowly, he lowers the gun. “That’s fair.”  
   
Ryan doesn’t move. He even holds back his exhale of relief. He’s trying to meet Shane’s eyes to make sure he doesn’t. But surely he knows not to. The guy glances between them. He’s kinda cornered, but he seems to have made a judgment call on them and the fear in his eyes is receding.  
   
“What are you two doing here? I thought everyone in this town was dead or worse.”  
  
~  
  
There’s something gentle about the way the guy acquiesces to Ryan’s weapon-logic that softens something in Shane and then he’s just contending with his own slowly-dissolving fear and this horrible, swaying sick feeling he has over literally contemplating murder. It’s different when it’s not just a theory.  
  
What would Ryan think of him, then? Jesus, Shane doesn’t even know if he would be able to live with _himself_.  
  
“We’re just passing through,” says Shane, and that helps a little. It’s like a movie line. He clings to it, even though he’s clinging to the pipe, still, too. “Are you alone?” he asks. Probably not great in order to maintain this extremely tentative trust, but he wants to know. “What are _you_ doing here?”  
  
“I’m just… I’m— well _maybe_ ,” he says. He’s eyeing Shane’s pipe, fiddling with the gun a little with both hands, but at least it’s pointed at the floor now. Shane wishes he would put it _away_.  
  
He looks back at Shane then says “Okay, no, yeah, I’m alone.” His eyes flicker nervously to Ryan, then back to Shane, clearly wishing that that wasn’t the case. “And I’m trying to find something to eat, is that a crime?”  
  
It’s almost playful, the way he says it, and Shane’s eyes flicker to Ryan. Now what? Does he just say _carry on_ , and then go their separate ways? Is this the zombie apocalypse version of meeting an acquaintance your don’t actually want to talk to at Trader Joe’s or something? Shane hates this.  
  
~  
  
The gun is still out. Not great. Ryan keeps staring at it, and he feels bad. Like he looking at a pimple or some kind of deformity instead of the person. But it is a gun.

But the guy seems decent, almost nice. He's making jokes. Which is pretty commendable if he's really alone and outnumbered. Ryan smiles.

"I mean, it kinda is. Yeah. Are you gonna pay for it?"

The guy shakes his head and laughs. "Absolutely. I'll just shove it into dislocated jaw as he tries to eat me. Or I guess I could just cut off a finger and throw it to him."

Ryan laughs, and it surprises him because holy fuck that is morbid.

"Jesus Christ!"

The guy shrugs and holsters the gun. He got a holster on his belt. It's both badass and terrifying. He looks between them. "To be clear, I absolutely have a open carry license. Okay, no, I don't. I literally never used guns before people started trying to eat my face."

Well, that's a relief. Because he seems pretty good at it. The adrenaline fades from Ryan, takes some of his tension with it.

"I'm Zack, by the way. Zack Evans." He takes his time looking at both of them.

Shit, he's so friendly. Are they supposed to invite him with them? Oh wait, nevermind, they have no car.

"Ryan," Ryan says, and then after a little deliberation, "Bergara." He glances at Shane, almost like _what now?_ Shane's clearly uneasy.  
  
~  
  
He’s honest. He’s open and honest and he reminds Shane of Ryan, and he can’t be too far off because Ryan’s laughing, and suddenly they’re exchanging names and Shane’s still trying to calm his fucking heart rate.  
  
His eyes flicker over him — Zack Evans — it sounds like a literal boyband name. Shane wants to ask him if he was ever in a boyband. Instead he says “Shane,” and meets Ryan’s eyes.  
  
Zack waits for a second, but when no last name is forthcoming, he says “Uh… okay, well…” He reaches out and picks something up off the shelf right in front of him. It’s a dented tin of soup. “Do you guys like soup? There’s lots. Lots and lots of… cream of celery.”  
  
He’s clearly trying to diffuse the tension and Shane’s sort of thrown because he’s got the same kind of bright energy that Ryan has, somehow. Shane really wishes the fucking car wasn’t broken because he wants to leave, and he supposes that makes him some kind of asshole, but he doesn’t really care all that much.  
  
~  
  
  
Ryan raises his eyebrows and gives Shane this reproachful stare. He's not surprised Shane wouldn't give his last name. It's almost cute. But for Zack, it's probably awkward as hell. 

Also Shane looks like Zack is making him more uncomfortable. But Ryan likes this guy. And they may be stuck with him. 

"Cream of celery. Well, it beats drinking my own urine, I guess."

Zack holds up his thumb and forefinger, a fraction a part, to indicate the very slightness in which it's better. "I've raided most everything else but this place is like my fridge now. I come back and stare at it like new stuff will materialize. Even though I have shit back at my... Place." He isn't sure what to call it. Ryan gets that. "How'd you guys get here? Walk?"

Zack is being good about trying to toss Shane questions. He keeps looking at him, not quite sure how to approach him. But Ryan likes that he's trying. Mostly. Somehow everyone left in the zombie apocalypse is hot so it leaves him with this simmering jealousy. Why can't they run into any old fat guys with missing teeth?

But Shane is pulling back and Zack is trying. So it's good. 

"We, uh... drove." He meets Shane's eyes to let on what he's about to do. More of a beg-forgiveness than ask-permission. A kind of _I trust this guy._ "But our car might be dead."

"Oh, shit. Well, do you guys... need somewhere to stay or? Help?"  
  
~  
  
Shane can’t help the eyeroll. Somehow he does the eyeroll with his entire body and vaguely turns away. It says _Jesus Christ, Ryan_ , but he doesn’t have any better ideas.  
  
“Can you help fix the car?” Shane asks, because somehow he doubts it. Somehow Zack’s blonde hair is blonde enough that Shane can’t even imagine it being dirty and — that’s the other thing. It looks clean. Shane’s hair is dark with the need to shower, and even worse than usual. It’s all over the place. He hates it. He hates the way Ryan’s eyes flicker over Zack’s face like he wants some part of it.  
  
Shane needs some fucking air. He was contemplating killing a guy and now he’s overwhelmed with the most pointless, juvenile uncertain jealousy and they’ve been here for all of five minutes.  
  
“Yeah, I can take a look,” Zack jumps in, clearly trying to be helpful. “Is it outside… did you guys drive up? Shit, I didn’t even hear you.”  
  
_Great_ , Shane thinks. Just what they need, someone who has no danger awareness whatsoever. But he wants to go outside. He feels sick, so he indicates the door with the pipe. “Great.” He’s not turning his back on this kid just yet. “It’s just out by the pumps.”  
  
~  
  
Zack doesn't seem to pick up on Shane's irritation. He nods and heads for the door. It's nice, someone as open as this. He's clearly decided to trust them. And that's that.

Certainly a change from Shane.

Ryan waits for Shane before he follows Zack. Once he gets close enough, he nudges him with his shoulder. His hand falls down Shane's arm like he might grab it, but he doesn't. He just touches him and looks up at him before they follow Zack. This soft question that doesn't quite require an answer.

Zack's already got the hood up once they get out there. He's pulling out the rod to check the oil. He takes a weirdly long time under the hood, half of which Ryan spends trying to see what he's doing and the other half he spends trying to read Shane's expression. Both are equally impossible.

Zack asks him to try and start the car and listens like it's fucking talking to him. Then he checks more shit way, way beyond Ryan's comprehension.

Eventually, Zack pulls back. "I'm pretty sure it's a fuel thing. It might be a wiring issue with the fuel tank wiring. My expertise mostly stops at diagnosing but I can probably try to find some tools to see what I can do. I just gotta find them."

Ryan's eyes widen as he gets out of the car. "Wow, that's... You just knew that from...?" He smiles. "Damn."

Zack shrugs and smiles. "My friend was a mechanic. I heard a lot of it."

"Well, I feel like a fucking idiot."

"Nah, I can teach you guys if you want." Ryan's pretty sure it would fly completely over his head. Even though it might be useful. He finds Shane again but Zack barrels ahead. "But this is gonna take a few days to fix, at least. You guys can feel free to stay with me if you want. I have space. And food. And it's really fucking great to be around non feral humans again."  
  
~  
  
_Non-feral humans_. Shane feels like a feral human. He’s too warm, and he’s watching Ryan be overly impressed and it’s racing up and down his arms like a fever.  
  
Zack’s rolled his shirtsleeves up, and his forearms are thin and strong, tendons shifting beneath them in a ridiculously attractive way. In a way Shane’s aren’t.  
  
And Ryan, who was next to him a moment ago, has drawn away from him now, and he’s smiling at Zack and saying ‘wow’ and Shane kind of wants to slam the hood of the car down, but he doesn’t. He just stands uselessly off to the side, beneath the hot desert sun and frowns at the heat shimmering off the pavement as far as the eye can see. It’s fucking January. It’s worlds different from Illinois. He thinks they could probably walk. They’d see anything coming for miles but, he knows, it won’t always be like this.  
  
And Zack asks if they want to stay with him and he knows that, really, they don’t have much choice.  
  
“I’m… it’s up to you, Ry,” Shane says, and his voice sounds dry and strange, and maybe he’s using the nickname to show that he has something, something Zack doesn’t, and he has no idea why he cares so much, and why he didn’t care before with Andrew or Adam or Steven or TJ…  
  
Maybe because Ryan wasn’t smiling at them like he is now. Maybe because there’s something about Zack that speaks of normality and friendliness and an outlook on things that isn’t as bleak as Shane’s.  
  
And that’s what… that’s what Ryan needs.

~

Ryan squints at Shane like he’s sure if he looks hard enough Shane’s words will turn into something else. Because he looks… pissed, unhappy? Definitely not the kind of fine he was with Steven and Andrew. Closer to TJ, but still—different. Ryan’s almost concerned Shane’s going to punch Zack in the face without any kind of warning. 

“Uh…” Ryan laughs, and it sounds far more nervous and uncertain than he means for it too. “Zack, can you, uh…” He gestures between himself and Shane. “Give us a second?”

Zack looks between them like he doesn’t understand, and then his eyebrows lift and he nods, almost enthusiastically before walking back to the store. He only glances back at them once. Ryan can’t decide if he’s a badass or a dumbass. Probably some masterful combination of the two.

But once he’s out of earshot, Ryan turns to look at Shane. “What’s the matter? Are your spider senses tingling or something?” The air is warmer here, still not… hot, but Ryan is starting to want to peel off his sweater. He can’t remember the last time he wanted to do that. That’s good, though. Summer’s easier than winter. Well, maybe not in Arizona. “Would you rather figure something else out?” 

He can’t imagine why Shane wouldn’t trust Zack. He’s seemed as trustworthy as anyone else they’ve run into, but it doesn’t matter. He just doesn’t like the tension coiling through Shane like a current. If they need to ditch Zack and his potential car knowledge to get rid of it, Ryan is more than willing.

~  
  
Shane’s a little started at the fact that Ryan actually asked for this. It feels very... it feels intimate, somehow, so it throws him. But Zack leaves without so much as a murmur and then Shane’s left with Ryan looking at him like he’s concerned which, Shane thinks, is probably valid.

“I... I don’t know. You trust people too easily.” It sounds like a criticism and it’s not meant to be and Shane backtracks. “I... maybe he’s fine.” Everyone else has been fine. “I don’t know. I don’t _know_ , he has a _gun_ , Ryan. He might... neither of us knows anything about cars, who’s to say he even knows what’s going on… or that he doesn’t just murder us both and take it once it’s fixed?”

Or maybe he’ll just murder Shane. Since he and Ryan already seem to be getting on so well.

Jesus. Shane hates this new little voice in his head.  
  
~

Ryan huffs, because Shane’s taking jabs at him and it’s not really fair. But okay, he’s not wrong. Zack did point a gun at them both. Ryan rolls his sleeves up, and then back down. All the way over his hands as he watches Shane. Shane’s looking at him with this laser sight eyes and Ryan feels like he’s on the wrong side of sniper rifle. Shane’s not standing up straight, but it doesn’t do much for Ryan. He’s still a lot taller than him. “Okay, yeah. But… he’s here now. He knows about the car, and before you blame that on me—he would’ve seen it when he left, anyway.”

He’s pushing back. Shane’s clearly uncomfortable staying here and Ryan’s fighting him on it. But Ryan doesn’t know what else to do. He doesn’t know how to go back and tell this guy that they aren’t going to stay with him. “He seems like a good guy. I mean, we have a gun too.”  He almost regrets saying we, implying ownership of the gun. It seems… weirdly aggressive. But you would’ve been throwing it all on Shane.

“If we stay with him, we can watch him.” Ryan scratches at the back of his head. He cannot get rid of this overwhelming need to please Shane, to see him stop half-glaring at Ryan and light up the way his eyes do when he’s impressed. But—Ryan has never been as bad at impressing anyone as he is at impressing Shane. “If you feel like it’s a terrible idea, we can just… stay in the car or… somewhere nearby, but... he is going to be around. He obviously lives somewhere around here.”  
  
~  
  
He’s got this awful anxious feeling in his gut that he can’t quite figure out. He knows he’s nervous about people, that’s a given, but it’s the way Ryan’s pushing, it’s the way he says ‘he seems like a good guy,’ and suddenly the air feels too hot for Shane to take a breath. 

He watches Ryan toy with his sleeves. _I thought it was going to be just us_ , he thinks and it’s... that’s not being fair. It’s being stupid.

“If we sleep in the car we’ll have to keep taking watches I’m... I’m tired of it.” He looks in the direction Zack went. “I’m tired. I don’t care. If you want to stay we’ll stay.”

Fuck he’s being a dick, he knows it. It’s like he’s trying to sabotage himself.

And maybe he is. Maybe he’s already trying to push Ryan away, into the safe, easy brightness of this complete fucking stranger who Ryan’s just latched right onto.  
  
And suddenly Shane doesn’t feel like he’s somehow special anymore. Maybe Ryan would have been attached to anyone who owned that cabin door.  
  
~

Fear has worked its way into Ryan now. Shane is being different, different than he has for the past… for a long time. Ryan’s fidgeting. He chews his lip, toys with his sleeves, shifts his weight. But he keeps watching Shane, and he can feel his brow furrowing. Shane’s whole aura is darkening, like he’s casting shadows over himself. Almost like he wants Ryan away from him. 

Ryan doesn’t want to freak out. It’s not going to help, but his breath is getting shallower. Because he doesn’t really get this. He doesn’t know if Shane’s mad at him, or Zack, or what. “Shane…” It comes almost wilted. Ryan’s tired too, and now Shane’s saying all this stuff like he’s tired of being around Ryan—and Zack does have energy, maybe it’s this weird combination of too much energy, or maybe Shane’s so sick of Ryan he can’t deal with another person like him.

His head’s getting away from him. But he keeps looking at Shane and there’s no answer there. Shane is saying I’m tired and somehow Ryan’s hearing _I’m tired of you_. It’s stupid. They just talked about this. Shane likes him, and Ryan’s exhausted. He hasn't slept. _You never sleep._ He isn’t thinking straight. He gets needier like this, when he's tired. _When Shane's not coddling you._

“I want…” There are a thousand things he could say. He could just end it with you. He could tell Shane the only thing that matters to him anymore if Shane being happy, so much so that Ryan’s only peripherally aware of his own body, his own needs. “If you’re tired—I just want you to be comfortable.”  
  
~  
  
Shane exhales, and his eyes find Ryan’s. He looks so— fuck, Shane feels bad. Ryan's _trying_ and Shane isn’t and he doesn’t want it to be like that.

He looks back towards the store and shakes his head once. “I’ll be fine.” He checks Ryan’s shoulder with his arm softly as he passes him. Not quite playful but affectionate. “Come on. Before he changes his mind.” He slows his pace when he’s a couple steps ahead and looks back, half holds a hand out to him as he steps backwards. “Come on,” he says, softer, almost encouraging.  
  
He’s… terrified. But it’s an old fear, the fear of the inevitable. Someone will be enough for Ryan, someone will make him feel like his energy, his spirit is welcomed, and it won’t be Shane. But he’s still not leaving, he’s not leaving him. Shane will fucking look out for Ryan as long as Ryan wants him there, no matter what happens between them.  
  
~

Ryan doesn't say anything. He just watches Shane go. Something is absolutely wrong, but... Shane has elected to pretend it isn't. Fine. Maybe it's just... maybe it'll pass. Maybe it's completely fine. Ryan takes a breath. Isn't this a confirmation of what he just thought? And Ryan only responds when Shane's coddling him.

Okay, fine. He wants to give Shane this. He follows him. He doesn't say anything else. He isn't sure what to say. Everything that comes up is needy, some continuation of the half-argument they just had. Shane wants to be done with it. They should be done with it.

Zack looks so hopeful when they come back. He's leaned on the outside of the store wall and perks up when he sees them. 

"Hey, sorry..." Ryan says. "We, uh... if you're... fine with it, then we'll stay. Until the car's fixed or whatever."

Zack grins and it is this megawatt affair. He is very bright. And he looks so happy they're staying. It's almost flattering. "Awesome. I was kinda worried after the whole..." He gestures to his gun. "But I promise it's only for zombies."

Ryan shakes his head. "It's fine." They haven't mentioned they have a gun. He doesn't know if they should.

"Do you guys have stuff? If not, it's just up the road."

Oh, right, the bags.

~  
  
He smiles and Shane thinks _oh fuck_.

If Ryan thought Steven was hot, with his kind eyes and his sweet smile, this guy is also that. He’s golden pale where Steven was glittering dark but Shane supposes that doesn’t matter, it’s the brightness behind it. And he can’t see himself at all, in either of these two men Ryan smiles at, who Ryan said, out loud, was hot. They’re tall without being too tall. They’re coordinated, casual, easy in their movements. Shane is plain brown hair and brown eyes and sort of strange looking. People look at him because he’s tall, not because he lights up the room.  
  
Zack’s really. He’s very summery. It’s a weird way to describe a person but that’s what it is. He looks like he’s spent all his life soaking it up. 

They grab their bags from the car and shoulder them and it’s like Zack’s read his mind. He’s talking about Sacramento and where are they from? and he gets all excited when he finds out Ryan’s from California, too.

 _Great_ , Shane thinks. Zack asks him and Shane tells him Illinois and feels every rainy winter, every windy day, like it’s wrapped around his bones and darkened his spirit. He is not part of this little sunshine crew. 

And then, Jesus Christ, he’s asking about sports and the Sacramento Kings and Shane’s eyes are on Ryan, just waiting for him to light up, animated. Because all Shane’s ever managed for Ryan and sports is a string of questions and half-understandings and one awful basketball game in an abandoned court and it’s... it really doesn’t feel like enough anymore. Not even close.


	16. Part 16

Jesus Christ, it’s been so long since Ryan heard anyone talk about sports—since Jake died. Way before that. Jake wasn’t exactly talking sports right up until the moment he died, and now someone’s here talking about the Sacramento Kings. A sad team to like, given Zack’s from California too, but at least it’s a basketball team.  
   
A smile edges at Ryan’s mouth, but he feigns a scoff. “You’re a Kings fan? Wow… nevermind.” He acts like he’s going to turn around. “You’re obviously an idiot.”  
   
“An idi—what, you like the Lakers? Is that who you like? Of course you do because only Lakers fans are that obnoxious.” It almost feels like time’s crawled backwards, like Ryan needs to check a score to know what to throw here. To know how to combat this. It’s almost like the NBA isn’t a thing of the fucking past.  
   
“The only reason you think we’re obnoxious is because we win.” He smirks. “I guess you wouldn’t really know what that looks like.”  
   
“I kinda regret not shooting you now.”  
   
“I regret you not shooting me too, because now I’m just sad to have had this conversation.”  
   
Zack clicks his tongue, grinning, as they come up on what looks like a grocery store. Half the letters across the store are missing, so Ryan doesn’t know what it’s called, but it’s got the wide entry way. Zack, or someone, has boarded up all the windows, though, so he can’t see inside. But Ryan’s almost sure it’s a grocery store.    
   
So Zack had no real reason to be at the convenience store, then—but, oh, yeah, he did. They walk in, and it is a supermarket—but every shelf is picked completely clean. A few of them are turned over on their sides. “Yeah, there wasn’t much left when I got here. A couple things, but… mostly just…” He grabs one of the overturned shelves—one too close to the door—and shoves it in front of the door. Then he gestures to the mess. And it is certainly a mess.  
   
It’s a weirdly vacated scene. Ryan has been in a few since this all happened, and none of them have been quite this empty. It looks like someone tries to smash open some of the self-checkout kiosks… maybe looking for money? As if it did them any good.  
   
Zack takes them to the back, where he’s recommissioned a storage room with a fairly massive bundle of sheets, blankets, and pillows, and he’s jammed a filing cabinet full of food. Noticeable because it’s overflowing with it. Ryan’s pretty sure he sees cream of celery.  He’s also got a little desk pressed into the side wall with a bowl on it.  
   
But he’s right, there’s space for people, and blankets seem to be what he has the most of. Ryan must be staring at it, because Zack says, “I get cold.”  
  
~  
  
Shane’s been quiet. He’s pretending to be picking his way carefully between messes of shelves but he’s been listening, even if he has been a few feet away. Way further from Ryan than usual. And he’s torn between Ryan’s obvious delight at this conversation and this hot, sick feeling that won’t leave his chest.

It’s when they get to the room in the back that Zack’s been living in that it kind of sinks in. What it must be like, living here alone. It was different in the cabin. There were still birds sometimes — well, crows mostly. Corvids. And deer even, once in a while and the nature surrounding him, when it wasn’t decorated with a zombie or ten, was... good. Peaceful. Other things were living even if people weren’t. The sun still rose and set and the grass was going to grow again after the snow melted and the trees would get new leaves... this...

This is different. Zack’s surrounded by nothing but desert and dust and no people at all. It’s just the wind outside. It’s lonely. Shane feels for him. Zack needs people the way Ryan does, and Shane doesn’t. Or thought he didn’t.

“How long have you been here?” He asks.

“Oh, I don’t know,” Zack says. “Maybe six months? What month is it?”

“It’s January.”

“January?! Oh man... I missed Christmas...”

Shane takes a breath and looks at Ryan and resolves to fucking try. He’ll fucking try this, if only to keep that happier tone in Ryan’s voice. He’s looked so tired, lately. More than usual. Shane hates it. Maybe... maybe this will help. Sports. This guy... “It was easy to miss,” Shane says. “No _crowds_ this year for some reason...”

Zack laughs. He’s so bright. Shane drops his eyes to the ground and tells himself that he feels better.

“Do you know where we are? Like, what city?”

“Not too sure. I think we’re close to Phoenix, though,” Zack says. “I saw a poster or something somewhere for some live band at a bar or... huh. I guess they probably never got to play.”

“Yeah. Thats’s— bummer,” Shane says, because how do you respond to that other than wondering if they’re dead and walking. Or just dead.  
  
“Anyway, you guys can make yourselves at home or whatever. Just take what you need from the…” Zack waves at the food and blankets. “All this, it’s all good.”  
  
~  
   
Ryan notices Shane wandering, and tries not to stress out about it. He really tries. Sincerely. It does not work. But Shane eventually comes back and talks to Zack. He seems like he’s warming up to him a little, maybe, but then they’re talking about a band that never got to play and Ryan’s back to thinking about quarantine zones and strikes zones and all the wrong kind of fucking zones. And it’s funny because he and Zack can talk sports all they want, but it doesn’t change the fact that there will probably never be another game again.  
   
It’s just… sobering. In the worst possible way. He focuses back on Zack’s little nook he’s created for himself. Has he been alone this whole time? Did he lose anyone? Well, he had to have. He had a mom, a dad. But Ryan really doesn’t want to think about how he lost them. All he thinks about anymore is how to lose people. He doesn’t need more ammunition. But maybe Zack needs to talk about it.  
   
Whatever. Not right now, he doesn’t. “Thank you,” Ryan says, and it’s a little late. They’re sharing a space again—and yeah, he needed a break from the car, but it’s different when it’s not just him and Shane. The walls between them feel even higher.  
   
“You guys can sleep in one of the other… There’s a couple storage closets and a maintenance room or break room or something over that way. If you don’t wanna have a sleepover or whatever.” That’s thoughtful of him. Ryan likes it—that this guy is so willing to help, so thoughtful, given he seems like he’s been on his own for… a while. Ryan doesn’t know how long, but he doesn’t see signs of another person being here. And Zack’s been here for six months.  
   
Ryan is, once again, struck with the uncertainty of sitting down in someone else’s place. He glances at Shane, but Shane’s in his own head. Where he always is in these moments. Ryan’s drifted closer to him in the past few seconds. He didn’t mean to. It just happened.  
   
“Is it, like—do you ever see any?” Ryan doesn’t know why the word doesn’t come out.  
   
Zack gets it, though. He glances towards the door, like the zombies are people and they might overhear themselves being discussed. “Uh, I mean, some. Not a lot, though. They cleared out once all the people did. There were more… at first.” Zack unconsciously fingers the gun at his belt. Nerves creep through Ryan.  
   
Shane had a gun, but he never used it. It’s something about him that Ryan likes. Something he hasn’t thought of until now. This gentleness, this unwillingness to use a gun. He probably had the opportunity to find more ammo than he has. But he never looked. Ryan flickers a glance his way, but Shane’s occupied himself with his own shoes.  
   
“Yeah, I, uh… I think they were everywhere at first.” He thinks about dragging Jake by the arm, stumbling away from their dad’s ruined fucking car, into masses of them. God, there were so many of them near LA. That’s why they got lost. Ryan’s never been that tense for that long—never been that scared for that long. Fucking weeks of it.  
   
It pisses him off that they survived it. If Jake was going to die, they both should have died there. Before. Not after, when it could’ve been _so_ easily prevented.  
   
“Yeah, it seems like it got really bad in the bigger cities,” Zack says like it didn’t get bad everywhere. Like it doesn’t feel like the whole world is made up of seven real people anymore. “Weren’t there airstrikes in LA? Were you out by the time they…?”  
   
“Not completely, no,” Ryan says. He doesn’t love how clipped it sounds, but he really doesn’t want to talk about the trauma of nearly getting bombed by people meant to help them. He hasn’t even really talked to _Shane_ about what happened before he left LA. Still, he tries to keep it light. “But I didn’t lose any limbs, so it worked out.”  
   
“Yeah, always a plus.” Zack finally gives up and wanders into the room. He sits in the lone chair by the desk. To be fair to him, he did give them ample time to sit. “Speaking of limbs…” Zack reaches up and picks up something at his feet. It’s a fucking football—kind of deflated, but definitely a football. Ryan’s eyes widen a fraction. “Do you just root for shit teams or do you actually play sports? Because there’s a field like one block over if you wanna get your ass kicked.”  
   
Some things about Zack feel so… non-apocalyptic. Like around him their immune to all of it. Kinda like Steven and Andrew, except Zack does have the gun at his side. He’s so starved for human interaction, though. It’s endearing. Ryan tilts his head at the challenge. “I will be happy to kick _your_ ass—and as much as I’m sure I could still kick it even after driving for sixteen hours straight, definitely not today.” Ryan glances at Shane. “Try not to be too disappointed. I know you love sports.”  
  
~  
  
Shane’s eyes are on the football, thinking that this guy, Zack, he’ll probably be able to distract Ryan from the apocalypse too. It seems like in a handful of minutes, he’s got more in common with Ryan, more to talk about with him, than Shane has discovered in months. And he feels like kicking himself for being so withdrawn. And he thinks about how all they ever seem to talk about is their own shortcomings when it comes to one another.

He almost doesn’t hear Ryan, but he looks up, away from the ball when he realizes Ryan’s speaking to him, and says “Hmm? Oh.” He laughs, just a little, “Oh— okay, yeah. I’ll do my best.” His eyes turn troubled way too fast.   
  
“I don’t like sports.” He feels like he’s announcing it to the room, putting it out there for Zack to just take, reaffirming it for Ryan. For Zack to use it against him. “So... I won’t uh, embarrass myself. But you two go on.” He smiles, it’s empty. His eyes linger on Zack a second too long.  
  
~  
  
  
Yeah, Shane's not over whatever was bothering him. Ryan bites back a sigh and goes over to grab some blankets from Zack's stockpile.

"No one's going anywhere right now, except to bed, hopefully. But if we play, I'm making you play." 

Zack gets up to help him. Ryan doesn't want to share this room with Zack, mostly because exposure to Zack seems to be sucking the life out of Shane and he doesn't know why. 

"Yeah, football might be limited with only two people. You could be all-time QB."

"Quarterback.” He looks back at Shane who is barely listening, if that. “That means you just throw the ball to us," Ryan explains anyway. He imagines Shane trying to throw a football and it's kind of hilariously adorable so he smiles. 

Ryan gets a few blankets in his hands and Zack purses his lips. "Are you sure you left LA with all your limbs—it seems like you're limping.

"So much for his leg healing right. "Yeah, that's just a part of my whole thing. I broke my leg forever ago. It's fine."

~  
  
“I’m _not_ playing football, Ryan,” Shane says, but Ryan’s apparently just ignoring that. And then Zack is mentioning Ryan’s leg and Shane’s a little rattled. He’s so used to Ryan, so used to the little skip in his step that he’s almost stopped noticing it as a limp at all. And he shouldn’t have, especially if it’s hurting him.

“You broke it?” Zack asks, incredulous. “Did you just let it heal? Man, that’s— how did it happen?”

“Let’s not,” Shane says, immediately protective. “Let’s not do that tonight.”  
  
~  
  
Ryan's happy Shane cuts in. Zack is a welcome distraction but he also seems down to ask about anything. Which is the opposite of a distraction.

Zack winces under Shane's voice. It's not particularly harsh, but the words are enough. "Sorry."

"It's fine. Room?"

Zack nods and shows him go a maintenance room a little ways down the hall. It's not particularly inviting but it's big enough for Shane and Ryan. He assumes Shane's going go stay in this room with him. What if he isn't?

Okay, he has to stop.

"This work?" 

"Yeah, thanks."

Zack tosses down the blankets after Ryan does.  
  
~  
  
Shane hovers in the doorway, because it felt different with Steven and Andrew and Adam, this sharing a room with Ryan. This time... he isn’t sure. Zack doesn’t seem like a bad guy. Ryan’s right, there, but just... he doesn’t know. He always feels like he never knows exactly how to be with Ryan with other people around. 

“Thanks,” he adds, and then slips around Zack and sets about making up a bed because he hates how uncertain he feels. He needs to do something and this way he’s busy, and he can keep his eyes down and hopefully the conversation short. 

Zack takes a step back and says, “I’ll be out there if you need anything. Uh.” That smile again, Shane catches it even in his peripheral. “Night,” Zack says and disappears, pulling the door almost all the way shut behind him but not closing it completely. Maybe that feels too final.

And Shane is suddenly struck with the thought that TJ was perfectly happy on his own and Andrew and those guys had each other but Zack... maybe Zack needs someone and Shane knows Ryan won’t be able to leave him, if that’s the case, because Ryan is so good... and this might just be how it is from here on out.

And Shane’s going to have to just... deal. 

He sits crisscross down on the blankets and rubs his forehead. God, he’s so tired. He can hear Zack faintly, and it sets his nerves on edge. It’s not music and laughter, it’s just quiet movement. It makes Shane think _zombie_.  
  
~  
  
Ryan lies another blanket next to Shane's and doesn't bother with sitting. He lies down on his stomach, right next to where Shane is sitting, though. And he's kinda over caring if Shane doesn't want him to. He wants to be near him. Jesus, he is tired. His whole body is rejecting every thought his brain sends it. 

Zack almost seems like he wants to stay near then. Ryan feels bad. But he needs this space to figure out what's wrong with Shane. Before he can see if something's wrong with Zack.

Ryan folds his arms and lays his head on them so he's facing Shane. "Are you okay? You don't seem okay..."

~  
  
“I’m okay I’m just— I’m okay. He seems nice.” Okay he’s got to pull himself together. He tells himself he’s just tired.

Reaching out he touches Ryan’s hair, lingers a second too long. “He seems like you,” he says and pretends it doesn’t have this underlying fear. _He’s better for you_. He sighs and draws his fingers away, then lies down beside him, messes with the covers until he’s under them.  
  
~  
  
Worry spatters along Ryan's edges but exhaustion keeps it from spreading too far. That and Shane's hand on his hair. "Is that why you don't like him?" There's a playfulness to it, but it's also flat because Ryan's barely keeping his eyes open. He may not be keeping his eyes open, in fact. 

He really needs to talk to Shane about this. This is why he wanted a room for just them. To see if he could fix this. He tries to coax himself up onto his elbows. Imagines it very vividly. But doesn't do it. He should at least get under the covers. But he doesn't do that either.

He tries to say why it's bothering him, make Shane tell him, but what he gets is a kind of sleepy: "I don't want to play football if you don't."  
  
~  
  
Shane lets out this soft, startled laugh, and he’s glad that’s his initial reaction because there’s an embarrassing rush of warmth that spreads through his chest in a way entirely separate from the jealousy of earlier. He’s so cute, and Shane— god, whatever Ryan makes Shane feel, he feels it pulse strongly through the very center of him.

He stumbles breathlessly through a couple words, then says, “Fine.” He tugs his blanket over Ryan too, then wraps a long arm around his shoulders, pressing his thin chest, his pounding heart against Ryan. “I’ll be your stupid quarterback,” he whispers, almost against his ear. He doesn’t let him go. Like their time is limited.  
  
~  
  
Ryan smiles at Shane's voice at his ear. A satisfied sound is his only response. It's a little short of a grunt or a laugh, but it goes with the whole. He's only partly aware of Shane or the blanket and their position. But it's warmer, so Ryan turns so his forehead is against Shane's chest. He gets ahold of Shane's shirt for no real reason. He doesn't tug.

In fact, the grip loosens to half curled fingers after a minute. He sleeps, probably because he knows he shouldn't. Because he needs to talk to Shane. But he sleeps, still curled against Shane, anyway.  
  
~  
  
Shane doesn’t fall asleep. It’s weird, like their roles are reversed, and suddenly he has an inkling of what it must feel like for Ryan when he isn’t sure what to do. Shane isn’t sure what to do. So he lies beside him, he holds on and feels Ryan’s soft, even breaths against his chest and wishes that sleep were this easy for him always. Hopes he has no nightmares. And he listens to Zack’s soft movements in the other room until it sounds like he settles down, too, and then it’s just Shane and whatever sleepless creatures are outside.  
  
He wonders if they know what they’re doing, the zombies, or if it’s just this fundamental instinct, this drive. If they’re just like a virus, spreading, clever but somehow mindless. Or… he wonders if people are like that, like zombies, and it’s a part of the brain that the virus eats away — the part that controls the monster — that causes them to revert to their natural selves. Hungry, empty.  
  
Jesus Christ, he hopes they’re empty. He hopes that Jake and Finn and his parents and Ryan’s parents… he hopes they weren’t sitting behind those cold, dead eyes, watching everything, helplessly. Finn, who had waited weeks for a cure, for help, and had finally seen Shane again only to be… what? Ended? He was _already_ dead.  
  
And that’s the thing, Shane thinks. They are already dead. Even if they find a cure for this thing, for their minds, their bodies would still be decayed. Would you just bring the person back in a vegetative state? Didn’t the virus wreck the brain? Shane doesn’t know if he believes in souls, but suddenly he wants to. He wants to believe that that part of who someone is slips away when the virus takes over and gets away from this horrible, fucked up place.  
  
But then, he thinks, ducking his face into Ryan’s hair for darkness, for comfort, because he feels hollowed out and sad and uncertain and tired — it’s this horrible, fucked up place that’s brought him Ryan.  
  
“Don’t leave,” Shane’s lips shape the words against Ryan’s scalp, but they are silent things.  
  
In his dream, Shane’s bitten. He doesn’t see the bite or even feel it, but he knows it somehow. In his dream he’s stuck in some place, some dark, crumbling place that smells like the damp, swampy earth they buried Jake in. It presses in on him as the walls bend and bow beneath some unseen weight. He’s trying to get to Ryan — he can hear him out there, where the sunlight’s filtering in through the cracks in the straining, buckling walls but Shane can’t move. _What is going on?_  
  
It takes him a while to realize he’s tied up. The red burning he thinks is blood at first turns out to be the rope that he's dragged all the way from the cabin in Illinois to here, digging into his wrists and ankles, and across his chest, rubbing his skin raw. He wonders how long he’s been trying to get out there into the sunlight. To Ryan. He tries to shout but he can’t speak. It’s just those sounds the zombies make, like droning bees. It’s a sound that crawls beneath your skin, beneath your fingernails, into the places joining your bones and stays there, reverberating this constant, quiet fear.  
  
So Shane goes quiet. He can hear Ryan talking, happy, animated, the familiar rhythm of his voice, even if Shane can’t make out the words. Or maybe he just can’t understand him anymore, and for the first time, he realizes how quietly Ryan will slip away from him. And Shane, like always, is too buried beneath a thousand layers of himself to stop it from happening.  
  
Zack’s voice joins Ryan’s out there and Ryan laughs and the red rope burns into Shane’s skin like it’s becoming a part of him. It will twine through his bones once his body decays, because he’s going to be forgotten here, in this dark, shrinking place.  
  
He doesn’t have to see himself to know that whatever looks out his eyes has turned them milk white and, Shane thinks, hasn’t he always lived as if he were dead, anyway?  
  
~  
   
Shane’s still asleep when Ryan wakes up. He didn’t dream much. He woke up, a few times, but never enough to keep him that way. It’s a nice feeling. Unexpected, given all the shit going on. Maybe he just needs to tell Shane to act weird and get him in a position where he can’t properly ask him until they’re alone. Ryan will just immediately fall asleep and that’ll be the end of it.  
   
He can’t wait to tell Shane his silence bullshit has cured Ryan’s insomnia. Zack’s awake already. There’s soft noises outside, so unless they’re about to get murdered by some zombies—he’s definitely awake. Ryan thinks he might be being intentionally loud—like Ryan used to do when he was twelve and he woke up before his friends during a sleepover. Like he’s done a few times with Shane, at night, hoping he’ll wake up.  
   
But Shane looks… off. Ryan’s not going outside until Shane wakes up, and his face is kind twisted—not a peaceful sleep face. Nothing extreme, but it’s definitely not… or maybe Ryan’s imagining it. He sighs. Another few seconds pass, and Zack honest-to-god knocks on the door.  
   
Ryan gets up rather than answering from where he is. He opens it, slightly. “Hey?”  
   
Zack steps back, like he’s amazed that Ryan actually answered the door. As if there’s some other thing to do when you knock on someone’s door. “I was just… seeing if you guys were up.”  
   
“One of us is up.”  
   
Zack stares at his shoes. Ryan does too. They’re not boots—they’re sneakers. And they’re about one step from completely coming apart. “Sorry, I’m not normally so clingy—I just, it’s been fucking forever since… you’d think I’d be used to being alone.”  
   
“I don’t think it’s something you get used to,” Ryan says. He glances back at Shane and wonders if he should take this conversation out into the store. They’re definitely going to wake him up if they stay here. But Ryan has a weird hang up about not being in the room when he wakes up. Fuck, he didn’t respond super well when Ryan was on the balcony.  
   
Zack tilts his head, smiles gently. “I’m pretty sure you still think I’m like a clingy seven year old.”  
   
Ryan laughs, as subdued as Zack’s smile is. “Well, you are a Kings’ fan.”  
   
“Fuck you.”  
  
~  
  
Okay, Zack thinks, he really wants company. It’s a little selfish— okay, maybe it’s even a lot selfish, but it’s not like he’s asking for much.

He’s constantly caught between these two realities. Before the apocalypse and during. It’s not a lot to ask Before, but During it’s a lot... still, Zack tends to operate under pretending it’s not Apocalypse Now in order to maintain his sanity.

That’s fair. And anyway, he didn’t wake them up even (he doesn’t think) and maybe he can get some tips or something on how the hell to interact with Shane.

“Come on,” Zack says. “If he doesn’t know where you are there’s only one way to outside and we’ll be right there. He’ll probably even be able to hear us.”  
  
~  
  
Ryan rocks back, ducks his chin. "Are you asking me to come out and play?" Zack closes his eyes as Ryan grins. "You really are a little kid!"

Zack throws out his arms. Like he's surrendering. "I just didn't want to wake him up. I'm being a responsible adult."

Ryan scoffs and glances back at Shane. "I dunno. He's..." Ryan does not want Zack thinking Shane can't wake up without him. Shane would throttle him for that. "It's weird when things happen differently than you expect. Kinda scary, in the apocalypse."

Zack crosses his arms and almost moves like he's going to look at Shane over Ryan's shoulder. "Is he like... okay? He seems..."

"He's fine." It's more defensive than he meant it to be. "He just takes a second to warm up to people, and he's quiet. And the car broke down and... He's just got a lot on him. He's actually kinda great once he's... once you get to know him. He survived in the middle of the fucking woods for months by himself, and then I showed up and he has essentially kept both of us alive, so... yeah."

Zack watches Ryan a beat too long. His eyebrows lift and he almost smiles as he says, "Okay."

"What?"

"I just said okay."

"Why are you smiling?" Ryan knows exactly why, he thinks. Because he can't keep his fucking mouth shut.

Zack shrugs. "You could've just said you wanted to stare at him while he sleeps."

"That's—shut the fuck up!" Ryan lunges across the threshold of the door. Zack runs and crashes into a shelf, but he's still laughing, giggling really.

Ryan is so twisted and flushed and wild that it takes a second to register the soft crash. Not that loud, but he glances back at the room and slides the door closer to shut. "Jesus Christ, you fucking idiot." He's laughing too because Zack's giggling but holding his face and whispering, _shit ow fuck._

Ryan takes a step towards him like he might help, but doesn't. "Good. That's what you get." He's still modulating his voice, but laughter keys it up further.

~  
  
It’s one of those things where, when you’re trying not to laugh that just makes the whole ordeal ten times funnier.

Zack presses his hands over his mouth and giggles a little wildly into them, trying to smother it before he looks at Ryan. “Do you think it’s going to scar?” He asks, rubbing his cheek, like he’s an upper class lady in some Victorian film.

He tries to lean casually against the shelf but part of it caves inwards and the metal shelf squeals and hits the ground.

~

Shane wakes up after the second crash, and it’s _Where’s Ryan?_ before it’s anything else. 

Something shifts, the light, the air in the room and Shane sits up fast because Ryan’s not here.

But no, he hears him just outside and he sounds fine. He’s laughing at something and Shane’s face is wet and at first he thinks it’s sweat or something — fear, a nightmare — but no. It isn’t. 

It comes back to him in fragments, that dream. He’s quick about scrubbing his cheeks, digging his fingers into his eyes where his eyelashes are wet, and just stays like that for a moment, calming his heartbeat, before he drops his hands.

What the fuck is going on, anyway? He stands up like he’s putting himself together. He feels like his body doesn’t belong to him. He feels like he might catch a glimpse of his reflection and see dead eyes staring back. He wants to shower, because it clings to him like wet earth, this fear.

And Ryan not there with him.  
  
Shane goes to the door and pulls it open, schooling his expression into one of casual, squinting curiosity.   
  
~  
  
Ryan's mouth, and really his whole face, just falls open when Zack knocks half the shelf over. Because it is loud. Zack looks petrified, like a juvenile that's been caught stealing a neighborhood sign.

And then Zack is laughing again. Ryan is sure that woke Shane up. He presses the heel of his palms to his eyes and tries not to laugh. 

"How are you not dead? This shelf is somehow getting the better of you? How have zombies not killed you?"

"I don't have my gun!" Zack stares at the wreckage. And then he's laughing harder and harder.

Ryan gets it because now he's imagining Zack unloading a few rounds into this shelf. "Yeah, too bad you didn't have the gun when you smashed your face on a shelf."

He feels Shane before anything else so he whirls to face him. It's weird. Shane looks like he's sculpted his face almost. Not quite natural. Shit. Ryan definitely left him to wake up alone, and if he was having a nightmare... even if he wasn't...

"Hey." It's immediately softer than anything he's used with Zack. "Sorry, he ran into the shelf like an idiot."

"Because you tried to attack me."

"I didn't touch you!" 

"Because I ran!" Zack winces as he looks at Shane. "My bad, definitely didn't mean to wake you up."

Ryan almost asks if Shane is okay, but it seems ill-advised with Zack a few feet away from them.

~  
  
Shane takes in the damage and smiles a little and, in this purposefully annoyingly-condescending tone he says “All right, kids. Settle down or you’ll attract the neighbours.” The undead kind. He ventures out as he speaks, feeling sort of weird and alien in his own skin, because this whole thing is a bit this morning. “You okay?”

“Me?” Zack asks, apparently surprised he’s being addressed. “Oh, obviously me I guess. Yeah I’m okay. Sorry,” he says again. “No, I was— It’s fine.”  
  
~  
  
Ryan probably could've asked Zack if he was okay. But it's not at the forefront of his mind with this guy. Zack makes him feel like he did with the friends he had before all this, back when things were normal and Ryan didn't feel like he was constantly failing.

Damn, though. Shane looks weird. Weirder than yesterday. This is what happens when Ryan sleeps. He wakes up and things are worse.

"So, uh... Should we try to get car parts or whatever? For the car?" He adds, like they might be for the kitchen sink. 

Zack nods, but his eyes catch on Ryan in a weird way. "Yeah, there's a couple places I can check."

Fuck. Zack doesn't want them to leave. Zack came to the door to ask for company. Zack's alone. Oh. This changes things. 

"I wasn't rushing you." But, fuck, what if Shane doesn't get better? What if he's miserable with Zack and Ryan because they are literally children apparently. All this anxiety crushes against Ryan in a breath.

"No, I get it. If I had a car, I would want it fixed. ASAP."

Ryan is trying not to stare at Shane. Trying not to forget Zack needs someone too. And Ryan can't ignore that. But Shane's this screaming, blinding focus in the middle of everything. And Shane is so far away from normal. Ryan wasn't there when he woke up so he doesn't know what it is. He doesn't fucking know.

Respond to Zack. He needs to respond to Zack. "Well, it's not like we're gonna miss anything if it takes a while."  
  
~  
  
He’s changed everything, he can feel it. All Ryan’s laughter is gone, not even a hint of it in his eyes anymore, and Shane did that.

“We don’t have to do anything today,” he hears himself say, and it’s like tearing himself down the middle because he wants to fucking leave. 

But that’s not what Ryan needs. Or Zack for that matter. He looks at Ryan in this weird way that Shane just catches, like he’s a kid who’s used to being left alone too much, but can’t demand the company. He takes a breath. “Or I mean, we could at least eat something first, if that’s cool...”

“Yeah, totally, sure,” Zack says, grasping this, clinging to it. “Oh, hey, I have coffee. Like real coffee, not the Nescafé crap. There’s no milk though. Obviously.”  
  
~  
  
Trying to read Shane right now feels like trying focus a camera zoomed in too far. It's smears of color and malformed shapes. He doesn't want to stay, Ryan doesn't think. But he's... exactly. It's just like always. It's like every other time Shane pushes for something when he's not ready for it. He's trying to be nice.

"Sure." His voice isn't right but Zack ignores it valiantly.

Except he's not doing it for Ryan, he's doing it for Zack and his perfect blonde hair. Ryan doesn't know whether to be jealous or frustrated. He settles for both. He likes Zack, but he gets this creeping sensation that if Zack had shown up at Shane's door it'd have ended just like he and Ryan. Because Shane does shit because other people... because it's what they need. Ryan becomes what people need. Shane does it.

Ryan doesn't know whether to look at Shane or not. He craves him like a fucking sweet tooth. He wants back the seconds Zack tricked him out of. He wants to comfort Shane like Shane comforts him. Because the one thing Ryan can't seem to become is whatever Shane needs.

Zack reminds him of this past, where everything was easy, maybe too easy, maybe shallow. The parts of Ryan he hasn't used since the apocalypse. This unfiltered boyishness, but Shane's been everything else. Shane has pulled out this piece of him no one ever saw, that Ryan never saw, because no one's made him want to. Made him think he should.

And now going back feels stilted, not horrible, but weird. And he just wants to drag Shane back to the car and make it start. Fuel lines or whatever the fuck be damned.

Zack makes the coffee and gives them each a bag of chips. He's got plastic cups for the coffee because, well, it's the apocalypse. Zack's commissioned a breakroom table and metal chairs so they don't have to sit on the floor. Jesus, he's trying so hard.

"Kinda sucks you're stuck here by yourself," Ryan says because it's way too quiet.

"Are you saying I'm not great company?"

"I..." Ryan laughs, but it's skeptical. "Yeah, that's one hundred percent what I meant."

Zack's dodging it. Because of course he is.

~  
  
Jesus, this is sad. Shane’s fucking sad for Zack. He’s sad about this fucking apocalypse. He can’t seem to shake the weird, deep aching hollow that that dream left in him. Jesus, he can’t even look Ryan full in the face, which is so unfair, because it’s not like he really tied him out back like a rabid dog waiting to be shot (or a zombie), so he sits beside him so he doesn’t have to.  
  
The coffee is actually hot though. Zack’s rigged up this little cast iron thing. It’s tiny, takes forever to cook anything but God, hot drinks. It almost touches the coldness in his bones, but not quite. He clings to the cup like it’s his firstborn or something, both hands around it, huddled over it even in the warmth of this place.  
  
Zack said he was cold, here. Shane wonders if if has nothing at all to do with the desert and everything to do with the fact that he’s so desperately lonely. He thinks that… he thinks that Ryan won’t let Shane leave, but that if Shane did,  somehow, slip away, that Ryan wouldn’t follow.  
  
And Shane tells himself that he doesn’t really get lonely.  
  
He’s so aware of Ryan next to him. He’s always aware of Ryan. He’s very careful not to touch him, even accidentally and it’s weird. It’s weird because he’s always felt like he _could_ before, if he wanted to, even with TJ… he’s always felt like he could and now he feels like that will ruin everything.  
  
He’s tired, still. He has to stop thinking this stuff. He has to start acting normal.  
  
“Chips and coffee isn’t a taste I thought would work, but it sort of does,” he says when silence falls again. Zack latches onto it and talks about a few other weird food combinations he’s tried -- Apocalypse Cooking. He’s really trying, really just flinging himself out there, trying to make them laugh and Shane smiles — makes himself do it, because he can’t not.  
  
He feels like he might even like Zack, in all his exuberance, if… if things were different.  
  
~  
   
Ryan can’t deal with this. This overwhelming need to know what the fuck is going on. And Shane and Zack are just moving on, while he’s here—feeling like he’s about to tear the table in half with his own frustration. Shane won’t even look at him. He can’t be that mad Ryan wasn’t there when he woke up. It doesn’t make sense he’d be mad at all. At least not in a way he’d express. Fuck.  
   
Ryan hasn’t touched the coffee. He doesn’t even like coffee all that much. He never did. Granted, it’s the apocalypse so things ought to taste twenty times better than before. But he’s already so wound up. If he drinks coffee, he might just throw Shane and Zack straight through the wall. They can have their dumb food conversation away from him.  
   
He should not be this grouchy. He actually slept. He didn’t even have nightmares. But that’s the problem. Every time he does shit like this happens. He loses a grip on things he thought he fucking had. He finally lets his eyes settle on Zack. He’s easier to look at, just because he isn’t pointedly avoiding Ryan. He’s just being a normal fucking person. Thank god someone can. Because Ryan and Shane seem incapable.  
   
Shane’s trying but it’s so completely fake that it’s like he’s slipped into another skin and it doesn’t fit him. It’s unnerving. All of this is unnerving. He looks around, and finally, once Zack’s tired himself out with food talk, he asks: “Why’d you decide to stay here? Isn’t there some place nearby with a bed you could use?”  
   
Zack shrugs. “I mean, I guess… at the beginning I was just… terrified, so I ended up backed into here and it ended up feeling safer than anything else.”  
   
“I get that…” He almost says Jake’s name, but he doesn’t. “I think I stayed in a tool shed once for like a week because I was positive zombies were still outside.”  
   
“Did they leave?” Zack asks, like Ryan could still be in the tool shed.  
   
Ryan squints, then says, very seriously, “No. I’ve actually just astral projected myself into this grocery store. I’m still physically back in the tool shed.”  
   
“So if I punch you, you won’t feel it?” Zack is trying to ask earnestly, is trying to keep the shit-eating grin off his face.  
   
“Go ahead and try.”  
   
Zack really is a good distraction. If Shane didn’t seem like the alien at the beginning of Men in Black, then Ryan might even be okay with staying with him.  
  
~  
  
It’s so easy for them, Shane thinks. They fall into this kind of friendship so quickly. This is like a boys club thing that Shane doesn’t get, and he’s pretty sure at this point in his and Ryan’s relationship he’d already thrown a box of Goldfish at him and slept as far away as he possibly could, and now he’s listening to this fucking story about a tool shed that Shane _didn’t know about_ , and he thinks about saying it _‘I didn’t know that,’_ but that seems… it feels like revealing a wound, and he doesn’t want to do it with Zack here.  
  
Zack actually leans across the corner of the table, fist raised to playfully punch Ryan. Of course, he doesn’t actually go for his face, but he grabs Ryan’s sweater over his shoulder and tugs, and Shane moves. It’s not a big movement because he catches himself sharply. Some of the coffee spills over the edge of the cup and onto his fingers and he puts it down, his whole body tensing up.  
  
It’s like with TJ only back then he had a reason. TJ wanted to see the bite on Ryan’s neck so Shane stopped him, fine. This time it’s just play, but his reaction is the same. He thinks about how close he was to just swinging the pipe into the side of Zack’s head yesterday and feels suddenly sick.  
  
~  
   
Ryan is partway through shoving Zack away from him when he notices Shane. It’s not much, but it’s definitely something. He tries not to look too hard at Shane while he readjusts his sweater. And then he says, “Dick.” Mostly because he’s worried his looking at Shane is going to make Zack look at Shane and it’s going to make Shane feel weird.  
   
For the second time, he wants to ask if Shane’s okay, but he doesn’t want to make it a thing. So instead, he just says, “Look, you hit the table. You made Shane spill his coffee, you dick.”  
   
Clearly, Zack is really worried about Shane’s good favor, because he snaps his head to Shane so fast Ryan is surprised it stays attached. “Shit—I’m sorry. I’m not normally. Normally, I’m better than this. I haven’t dealt with people in forever…” And when he glances back at Ryan. “And one of them is _a Lakers fan_.”  
   
Ryan doesn’t mind the jab, mostly because he’s worried Shane’s going to be even more pissed at him for pointing it out. But he did make it _completely_ Zack’s fault, even though Ryan isn’t sure Zack caused it. “Yeah, I guess that would be upsetting since you have to remember there were actually good teams in the NBA.” Ryan glances at Shane’s hand. “Was that still hot? Did you burn your hand?”  
  
~  
  
“I’m, it’s fine, I’m fine,” Shane’s saying, and he barely knows who he’s talking to. He feels like they’re both waiting for him to completely snap, and suddenly, two pairs of eyes are on him and he’s just fucking… he feels like he’s burning away beneath it like when you throw thin foil into a fire.  
  
“I didn’t sleep well,” he stutters out and pushes his chair back because fuck, it’s a lot, and he feels flushed and embarrassed and sick. “I’m gonna just… I need some air.” He leaves his cup where it is, doesn’t even bother going for the pipe as he heads for the front of the store. There’s hardly any zombies in the cities because they’re surrounding the quarantines zones — the bleakness of everything is just crashing in around him  
  
“Shit,” Zack says, softly, turning concerned eyes onto Ryan, “I didn’t mean—"  
  
~  
   
Ryan shakes his head and then drops it into his hands. “No, that was probably my fault.” As much as he wants to, he’s pretty sure his general presence is about to give Shane legitimate hives. It’s the worst he’s felt since Finn. And he just keeps fucking up. “Don’t worry about it.”  
   
Zack settles into his seat again. He tosses another glance back to Shane. Ryan doesn’t, because if he does, then he’s definitely going to get up and go try to talk to him. Which would be a planet-sized mistake. “Are you guys… fighting or something?”  
   
Ryan shrugs. “I don’t know. Everyone always asks us that.” Andrew said the same thing, didn’t he? “I’m starting to think I’m giving him an anxiety disorder.”  
   
Zack laughs, then covers his mouth. “Sorry, I… it’s not funny.” Ryan smiles to relax him, and he lets himself laugh again. “I don’t think you’re doing anything wrong. I mean, if he’s got anxiety it’s probably like… all the death and decay and shit. Not you.”  
   
Ryan widens his eyes as he stares at the table. Shane was absolutely fine in his cabin before Ryan showed up. Now he’s fleeing from supermarkets without a weapon just to get away from him. And it’s giving Ryan whiplash because a few days ago he thought he and Shane were talking about… being something. He knows Shane was talking about being into him, and now this… fuck, he is confused.  
   
“I think he’s just overwhelmed,” Ryan finally says.  
   
“Well, yeah… zombies are… kinda overwhelming.”  
   
Ryan smiles sympathetically. “No, with us. Specifically me. But probably you too.”  
   
Zack laughs again, and it startles him so he has to duck his head onto the table to deal with it. It’s a good laugh. If Ryan’s chest wasn’t filled with tar, it might pull a genuine smile out of him. But it is, because Shane’s outside, and Ryan’s so scared he’s fucked this up. “Are you guys—” Zack revises. “How’d you guys meet?”  
   
“I kind of stumbled up to his doorstep with a crisis, and he helped me out.” He looks at the door, then, because he knows Shane’s gone and it’s not a risk anymore. “Some part of me worries he’s here because he thinks if he leaves, I’ll end up dead.” He clicks his tongue. “Which is potentially true.”  
   
“Really?” Zack asks. “I’m not—I mean, just… you seem to be handling things a lot better than he is.” Zack’s peeling at the little shreds of fabric that have come away from the table. Ryan knows how he feels, he can’t stop moving his hands, his feet, anything.  
   
“Not really. He just handles things differently. It looks different.”  
   
Zack looks between Ryan and the door like he’s trying to piece together a puzzle. And Ryan wants to tell him, _good fucking luck_. “He’s kinda terrifying.”  
   
Ryan laughs. “ _Terrifying?_ Yeah, maybe because a strong gust of wind could probably scatter his entire body.”  
   
Zack drums his fingers on the table, setting Ryan with a long look. “You should just go talk to him. You obviously want to.”  
   
“Here’s a fun tip for interacting with Shane. When he says he wants air, give him air.”  
  
~  
  
Zack nods. Okay, fine, he gets that. Well, no, he doesn’t, because he’s not at all like that, but he can understand, maybe, where Ryan’s coming from. He has a million more questions, but it seems really invasive so he resolves not to ask.  
  
The resolve lasts about ten minutes. They decide that they will go look for car parts today, because it’s better to just get these things done and out of the way. As he clears off the table, including Shane’s spilled cup of coffee, he _has_ to know. “Is he… always like this, though?” Maybe Zack’s getting attached too quickly, but that doesn’t seem healthy, for either of them, and he’s kind of worried about Ryan, if things are like that. He also doesn’t want to jump to conclusions. They’re both a little reserved. Zack feels like he’s only getting pieces of the story, and not the whole thing.  
  
Man, he wishes he were that cool. They’re all mysterious and shit and he’s just spilling everything as fast as he can think of it.  
  
~  
  
Okay, now he's defensive. Zack probably doesn't even mean it and Shane has been weird as fuck but terrifying and _is he always like this_ presses into Ryan like that clothing store rack clawing up his spine.

"No, he's... No. He's stressed out right now." Ryan wishes he knew why it was worse now. "He's good, he just... He's a private person. Trust me. He's one of the best people I've ever met."

Zack sighs and nods. "Sorry, I'm not meaning to piss anyone off."

Ryan shoves his shoulder into Zack's. "Then you never should've brought up the Kings." He walks towards his room to get the hammer for... Car parts searching, or whatever. And he really wants to go make sure Shane's okay. "Seriously, stop apologizing, dude. You're fine. We're the weird ones."

Zack's laugh filters through the door even after Ryan. "I'm not arguing with that!"

Ryan grabs his hammer and stops. He chews his lip, thinking, then pulls open his bag further until he finds the hat. He's worn it a few times, but mostly he's scared of losing it. And wearing it now seems weird. Like Shane's going to be like, okay but I still don't like you. It feels pushy, but it isn't. Ryan needs something right now to remind him Shane doesn't actually want to throttle him in his sleep.

Plus Zack will hate it.

He puts it on, grabs Shane's pipe, and walks back out. Zack's groan unknots some of the worry in his stomach. 

"Do you guys not have a gun?" Zack asks as he's strapping his stupid thing on.

"Guns freak me out. I nearly broke my toe with the hammer. I don't wanna find out what I'll do with a gun."

They find Shane outside and Ryan gives him the pipe. And tosses the very lofty, unassuming question about car parts. But Shane does goes with them. Ryan's glad but also concerned it's more: these children will die if I don't and less: I want to.

They pick through a few shops. Zack finds mostly everything he needs, but some kind of fuse. Ryan and Shane are useless. They mostly stand around kind of awkwardly. Shane's maybe a little better, but mostly quiet. Ryan keeps trying to get up the nerve to talk to him while Zack looks but Shane's still avoiding him pretty  thoroughly so he can never quite get up the courage.

They end up at a fucking landfill and it's a lot of garbage. A fucking lot of garbage. Ryan's pretty sure he's going to run into a needle and get hepatitis. Which, to be fair, isn't the zombie virus at least.

Eventually, Ryan regresses to twelve years old and grabs a gargoyle shaped lamp and holds it up. "Hey, this it?"

Zack jerks up and then nearly chokes on his own spit. "Okay, no that's not, but I was kinda worried you were gonna have a dildo."

Ryan grunts like he's gonna be sick and throws the lamp so it crashes beside Zack. "I'm not touching a used dildo, you freak."

"Well, who knows what someone used as an improvised dildo?"

"What the fuck?! Now I'm just scared of you."

Zack finds something he thinks will work and they go back. There haven't been any zombies. It's quiet here, but Zack breaks it up.

When they get back, he looks at Ryan. "It's still daylight. And you didn't drive today." He picks up the football.

Ryan glances at Shane. Shane said he'd play last night, Ryan remembers that. Ryan's been tentative today, but he doesn't love the idea of playing a whole game and leaving Shane on his own. Maybe Shane would like the solitude, but maybe he wouldn't.

"Are you gonna murder us if we make you play football now?"

Zack throws up his hands. "We? We!? Don't drag me into your coercion."

~  
  
Shane’s off in his own little world. He has been all day. Or, well, mostly he’s been hovering around the edges of these two idiots, checking for zombies, for people, but there’s absolutely nothing. It’s starting to not even be weird anymore, and he doesn’t know how he feels about that.  
  
Ryan’s wearing the Lakers hat, and something about that makes Shane stick a little closer to him. It pulls at something in his gut and he just… jesus, he wants to touch him, just catch his face in his hand for a second, because Shane thinks he would be able to read everything in Ryan’s eyes if there wasn’t so much outside noise, but Zack’s like static and Shane—  
  
Shane’s scared. He’s scared of what he’s gonna read there.  
  
He looks up, now, sees the football and says, “Ugh, Jesus,” looking away in disgust, but almost on top of it, like making up for it he says, “…I said I would, didn’t I? All right, let’s go. But we’re finishing before it gets dark.”  
  
And he’s waiting for it, for Ryan to light up. He actually looks at him for the first time all day, waiting, needing it.  
  
~  
  
Ryan brightens. Smiles in spite of himself. Shane looks at him and it's almost jarring because he's been treating Ryan like a contagious illness all morning. Still. It's not exactly a kind agreement. It's borderline the opposite, but he's playing, at least. Maybe he'll have fun. Or hate it.

Okay, he's not gonna ruin any chance of this being fun by worrying. "Don't sound so excited."

Zack is excited enough for the three of them. He essentially bounds out the door. Ryan's trying to balance between being legitimately happy about playing a game and the rest of himself. He stays behind Zack, trying not to look too much like he wants anything from Shane.

He's trying to figure out where the field is when Zack throws the ball at him. He catches it but it's not graceful. Ryan glares, half-heartedly. Zack says, "Just seeing if you could catch."

Ryan throws the ball back a little too hard. His spiral is still pretty good seeing he hasn't tried in over a year. 

"Do you at least like the Chargers?"

Ryan grins. "Yeah, so you've gotten one thing right."

Zack fist pumps and spins around where he's been walking backwards. Ryan thinks he sees bleachers, and a spike of thrill slices through him.  
  
~  
  
Shane’s been about a half-step behind Ryan, but he moves away when Zack throws the football like he’s got some kind of childhood trauma of being smacked in the face. (He does). Still, he doesn’t miss Ryan’s expression as they get closer to the field and he actually laughs. “Look at you, it’s like Christmas.”  
  
Saying that judders through his chest oddly. He didn’t mean for it to be— he didn’t mean for it to be like _this_ Christmas past, hard floor, salt on his tongue, Ryan’s fingers in his hair. Shane looks away fast.

~

Ryan smiles sideways at Shane.  Then Shane looks like he’s swallowed acid. Jesus, his moods are really changeable right now. Oh, he said Christmas. Maybe he was— _okay, stop._ Ryan shakes his head and keeps walking, never quite over the smile. He _is_ excited. Zack obviously knows how to play—it’s someone else to play with that, well, that he isn’t just going to imagine kissing the entire game. As fun as imagining kissing Shane is, it’s not necessarily great for a basketball game.

~

They drop their weapons in a pile in the grass close by. Shane doesn’t like that, but it’s not like he can play football with the pipe. He can’t play football at all, but that’s beside the point. “Try not to murder me,” he pleads, and Zack laughs.  
  
“You’ll be fine,” Zack says, and he’s so reassuring, so fucking genuine that Shane almost believes him.  
  
“Thanks,” Shane says, “But you’re— it’s too much faith.”  
  
“We’ll see,” Zack says. “You’re still corruptible. If you don’t like sports, you don’t have a sports team yet. It’s not too late to get you on the side of the Kings.”  
  
“I don’t… is that football?” Shane asks, just to be difficult.

~

“Okay, first off—no, don’t ever say that again.” Shane being a Kings fan is just about the worst thing Ryan can imagine. “Secondly, it might as well be football. Maybe they’d be better—” He grunts and barely catches the ball Zack throws directly at his head.  
   
“It’s an NBA team,” Zack says. “Basketball.”  
   
“No tackling,” Ryan says, back to the game. “We’ll do touch for three seconds or whatever.” _Any_ touch seems too easy. There’s only two of them.  
   
Ryan hands the ball to Shane. He cannot stop grinning at the idea of Shane trying to throw this football. It’s going to be fucking hilarious, he’s pretty sure. “Here, we’ll just take turns trying to get to the end of the field. All you have to do is throw it to whoever is trying to get to the field.” He pats Shane’s arm reassuringly. The touch sends this brand new burst of adrenaline through him. “Don’t throw it to the person on defense. You got it.”  
   
Shane does not have it. He doesn’t at all. Zack plays offense first, and Shane’s throw is just… tremendously bad. It hits the ground about two feet in front of Shane. Zack does a great job of not laughing, but Ryan has to full on cover his face, and even then his body’s shaking with how funny it is. Potentially because he’s been imagining it all morning.  
   
“Let’s just do hand-offs.” So then Shane just had to hand the ball to Zack or Ryan which he is somehow still not great at. It’s really adorable. And, yeah, funny. It almost makes Ryan forget Shane seemed all day like Ryan is a zombie he’s trying to avoid.  
   
Zack’s hard to catch. They keep the score pretty even. Even though his version of touching is certainly escalating. He likes to pull on Ryan’s sweater, so eventually Ryan takes it off to make it harder—also his body heat is definitely rising. He keeps glancing back at Shane to make sure he’s not just going to explode, but he seems… okay. Now that he’s been relieved of the duty of throwing the ball. He’s not having to do much running.  
   
Ryan pisses Zack off by feinting left and scoring—and really, he ought to be pissed. It was a stupid move and he fell for it. But his being pissed off makes him even stupider on offense. And then he starts to lose. Ryan doesn’t generally trash talk—that generally ends in him eating his words, but he does toss Zack a couple looks.  
   
He tosses enough, apparently, that the next time Zack can’t quite get his hands on Ryan’s arm long enough to stop him. He just gives up and slams almost face-first into Ryan’s middle. It throws Ryan completely. It shouldn’t. Zack has clearly been contemplating breaking the rules for several minutes now, but it does. They hit the ground in this heap with Zack huffing over top of him.  
   
“Ha,” is all he says.  
   
Ryan’s completely out of breath, but he manages to say, “Okay, well, congrats but I get the ball back because you cheated.”  
   
Zack looks like he might spit directly into Ryan’s eye, but instead he shoves his face sideways into the grass and pulls himself up. “Worth it.”  
  
  
~  
  
Shane watches them go down and it’s… it’s stupid, really. He knows it is, because it’s fucking sports and people do this stupid shit in sports all the time, but then Zack’s holding himself up by his his arms over Ryan’s chest, and their legs are all tangled, and Shane forgets to breathe.  
  
It’s nothing, he tells himself, but what he can’t push away is how he _knows_ it feels to be suspended over Ryan like that, breathless and close. And Shane’s not quite far enough away to miss the way they’re breathing. He wishes he were. He wishes he were far enough away. He wishes _he_ were able to breathe and he wonders, because his mind is the worst — it deserves to get eaten by zombies. At least in this moment he almost wishes it would be — he wishes a zombie would wander along, crack his head open, and just scoop out whatever part of his brain can’t stop replaying the rise and fall of Ryan’s chest, the way his lips are parted to get enough air, and how _close_ Zack is too him. Probably close enough to see how fast Ryan’s heart it beating.  
  
Shane sort of flinches. It’s this weird involuntary motion, a twitch. He takes two steps back almost like he’s stumbling — maybe he is — then turns and just… heads for the bleachers. He’s fucking done. He’s done now. He’s tried fucking sports and it’s going to be dark soon and he’s done.  
  
He climbs the bleachers, taking his time so that he doesn’t have to look over at whatever the hell is happening out on the football field. He can’t get the clenched feeling in his chest to go away and he sort of rubs at his sternum, knuckles bumping over ribs as he sits down at the very top.  
  
~  
   
Ryan glances over first, still out of breath, and furrows his eyebrows. Because Shane doesn’t even say anything, he just walks off like someone’s knocked him over the head. Zack eventually sees it and looks at Ryan, eyes wide, like _what did I do now?_  
   
They have been playing a while. Zack extends his hand and pulls Ryan up when he takes it. “Should we, like… see if he’s okay?” Zack whispers it, as if Shane has supersonic hearing and could hear all the way from where he’s just… sitting on the bleachers.  
   
And Ryan doesn’t know if he should or shouldn’t. Maybe he should let it be, but if he does, then Shane might actually think Ryan doesn’t give a shit. Ryan starts to walk over there, and then Zack says, “Is he mad that I tackled you?”  
   
Ryan frowns. “No, why would he be mad that you tackled me?” It doesn’t make much sense, unless Shane is still worried about Ryan’s leg, or something else—like maybe… no, that’s dumb. Ryan can’t even fathom Shane being annoyed with something like that. It seems so outside the things that matter to him.  
   
Ryan shoos Zack in the other direction before he walks over to Shane. He doesn’t need a repeat of everyone asking Shane what’s wrong with him. Zack occupies himself with tossing the ball up and catching it. Ryan stops at the bottom of the bleachers, trying to school his face into nonchalance.  
   
“You okay? Should we go back?” They’ve probably got a couple hours until sunset, but it’s definitely closer to dark than it was.  
   
~  
  
Shane fiddles with the sleeve of his shirt so that he doesn’t have to look up right away and says “I mean, it’s gonna eventually get dark…” he says, like this is new scientific evidence.   
  
Ryan keeps checking in on him and he’s half annoyed and half ridiculously grateful, because it means he gives a shit and… fuck, of course Ryan gives a shit. He’s the most genuine person Shane’s ever met… it’s Shane who can’t get his fucking heart on straight. It’s Shane who’s been messing up everything since Zack came into the picture.  
  
“Are you guys done?” he looks up and half-smiles. “You look… _impossibly_ small down there.  
  
~  
   
Ryan crosses his arms. The wind’s a little much with the missing sweater, sweat, and fading adrenaline. “We can be.” He wants to ask Shane if he could just write a dissertation on what he wants and needs and give it to Ryan. That would be really cool. Instead he says, “Do I look small? Well, you should be at about your normal height up there so I’m going to assume that’s how you see me on a daily basis and try not to be offended.”  
   
“You look small.” Because he does, because he’s further away, and he’s not standing up and he looks all sad and crunched on these bleachers.  
   
“Hey Ryan!” Zack yells because he is a child that can’t go four seconds without attention apparently. He really does remind Ryan of Jake. “I bet I can get this football through that hoop more times than you can.”  
   
Ryan is one hundred percent Zack cannot do that. He rolls his eyes. “No, you can’t.”  
   
“Wanna bet?” Zack yells again.  
   
“I don’t have to bet! I already know!” There’s a very slight, tiny, insignificant need to prove himself. But he’s fine. Ryan sighs and glances back at Shane. “I don’t think we found a person. I’m pretty sure we found a dog in a human skin.” Shane said Zack was like Ryan, and okay, maybe some—he is. But Ryan is nowhere near this bad. He’s not. He refuses to believe he is. “Do you wanna go in?”  
  
~  
  
Shane’s shoulders are tight against the wind and something else but he sort of attempts a smile. Then he glances at Zack and then shrugs one shoulder at Ryan. “No, you can go— play your— little ball game.”  
  
He feels about fifteen years old, hunched up here and sullen. It sucks, so he uncurls himself a little, plants one foot on the step in front of him and leans back a little, fingers curling around the metal that’s still warm from the day, so he doesn’t tip over and fall off the back. He cocks his head at Ryan, eyes flickering for a moment too long over his arms and the way the wind blows his hair into his eyes and he takes a breath. “I don’t think you _can_ get it through the net, frankly,” he tells him. “The shape’s all wrong.”  
  
~  
  
Ryan watches Shane. His tongue curls over his teeth like he doesn't know if Shane's trustworthy. He obviously wants to go in, but if Ryan pushes, Shane will push back and, "Fine. I'm gonna go prove you're wrong and then we'll go in and you can go on bed rest for three days because all this excitement is too much for your toothpick bones.

"He walks back over to Zack, at the hoop. He's just tried and failed to get the football through it. "He good?" Zack asks and glances back to Shane.

Ryan doesn't know, really, but he says yes anyway. His first try doesn't go any better than Zack's, or his second, but he gets it through the third time. They take turns, and Ryan has no idea who's winning, honestly.

"You think... I kinda wanna go talk to him."

Ryan bristles. He shot hits the edge of the backboard and Ryan has to work to stop it. "What? Like now? Why?"

"Because I feel like he hates me." Zack tries again, makes it. It's not nearly as satisfying as sinking a basketball. "I wanna get to know him."

It doesn't make sense to throw Zack to the ground and act like a territorial mountain lion so Ryan shrugs and shoots the football.

"Don't be jealous," Zack says.

Ryan laughs and it's this fake, bouncing thing. "Jealous? Why would I be—yeah, I'm not jealous." Except he threw the ball hard enough it wobbled the backboard.

"So I can go talk to him? Without you?"

Ryan scoffs. His jaw is rigid, tongue pressed hard enough into his teeth to hurt. "Do whatever you want."

And Zack just does, and Ryan ignores him. Pretends rage or irritation or nerves isn't clenching every fucking part of him. He shoots again and it doesn't even hit the backboard. "Goddammit."

Zack leaves Ryan to simmer in his not-jealousy and makes his way over to Shane. He's potentially figuring these two out, but Shane's still kinda horrifying. Ryan could've been a friend, before all this, Shane... He's about to find out.

"Hey," he says. "Can I sit?"  
  
~  
  
Shane can’t hear their conversation even from here, so he’s surprised when Zack wonders over in all his… his blondeness and his eager eyes.  There’s a beat where Shane just looks at him in surprise, but then he says “Sure,” shifting slightly as though there’s not enough space on the bleachers for both of them.  
  
He’s nervous suddenly, and his eyes flicker back to Ryan who’s trying and failing spectacularly to get the ball through the net. If things were different Shane would probably yell to him that he sucked. Now though, he’s wondering if maybe Ryan’s told Zack something, or if Zack’s about to— fuck, if he’s about to ask him if Ryan’s into guys or if it would be a big deal if they hooked up and now Shane’s mind’s spiraling off down that disastrous line of thought, like it’s been swept up with a bunch of other garbage in a tornado. He closes his fingers tightly around the wood on either side of his thighs and swallows.  
  
Ryan misses the backboard and has to go chasing after the ball which bounces crazily over the court and Jesus Christ, something in Shane just aches, even as he laughs softly. And then he’s remembering the way Ryan had looked on the other basketball court, the one in Illinois, before… and it’s stupid, and Shane wishes he could hate the fact that one of his fondest memories of Ryan is on a fucking sports-court, but the way he’d looked at Shane back then, spinning halfway around the basketball pole, how happy Ryan had been… How happy _Shane_ had been.   
  
_Look at you_ , he’d said, and he still feels it now, even separated by more distance and more confusion and more death and more pain... Shane wonders what Ryan would do if he just picked his way down the fucking bleachers right now and crossed to him, and wrapped his arms around him again like the had that day, but even then… even back then, something had slipped like a shadow between them. Shane wishes he’d held on longer.  
  
~  
   
Zack looks between Ryan and Shane a few times. Shane is just… watching him. Which confirms Zack’s suspicions that Shane is either a serial killer who just hasn’t had the opportunity to murder Ryan, or is playing a very long game, or, and more likely, Shane is into Ryan. It was easy for him to tell—because he and Ryan are similar, that Ryan liked Shane. But now he thinks he’s getting it, slowly. Even though he is still slightly terrified of Shane.  
   
He takes a breath. “In retrospect, that game was not one of my better ideas.” Ryan is clearly tired of chasing the ball because he’s just tossing it up and catching it now. “Thanks for humoring me, by the way. It was fun.” But Shane wasn’t humoring Zack, not really. If Ryan wasn’t part of this, and Zack had asked Shane to play any kind of sport—Shane would probably have gotten the car running by sheer force of will and run Zack over with it.  
   
He can feel where his brain wants to take this conversation, and he knows it’s dangerous, but he doesn’t say anything yet. Feeling Shane out seems like a better approach that forcing anything.  
  
~  
  
“Oh, yeah,” Shane says, forcing himself to loosen his death grip on the seat. “Was I as bad at it as you expected me to be? You should see me play basketball,” Shane says, glancing over at Zack. “Ryan will tell you.”  
  
Shane wonders if Zack really has been alone this whole time. He wonders how many of the people they’ve met have lost someone, and he wonders if it’s inevitable, only a matter of time, in a world like this. He wonders if he and Ryan are just lucky.  
  
Lucky. He’s not sure if that word fits right. Shane feels like everything he’s ever done since the zombies came was leading him to Ryan. He wonders if Ryan feels the same.  
  
~  
   
Zack laughs. “Nah, you were fine. Honestly, throwing a football is awful. It took me forever to figure it out. It’s awkwardly shaped.” Shane seems a little more at ease—maybe it is because Ryan’s at a distance. Because there’s no threat of Zack and Ryan. It’s a shot in the dark, but Zack’s had a long time to introspect and figure out himself. Maybe he’s gotten better at reading people. He didn’t used to be good at it.  
   
He’s potentially still not and Shane is neither a murderer nor into Ryan. Zack looks at Ryan, who drops the ball after spinning it on his finger. Man, Zack’s always been hyper but Ryan is giving him some major competition. He likes him—Ryan, and he thinks he’d like Shane too if he could get him to open up more. He’s admitting to himself that he doesn’t want these two to leave him, and he doesn’t know… how to say that. Or if he even should. It’s not fair.  
   
Zack’s trying to find the best way to talk to him. Starting with Ryan seems… weird, like he’s trying to get something out of this. Funny, because he isn’t. But all the questions he thinks of are lame. He knows where Shane’s from. Finally, he settles on, “So… what do you do for fun?”  
   
Ryan throws the ball at the net again—and this time, it gets lodged in there. Zack smiles because he would love to hear Ryan’s internal monologue about this. He imagines there’s a lot of fucks. Ryan doesn’t do anything for a second—he just stares at it. Like he’s thinking about giving up on life in general.  
   
“Oh, damn. I guess I shouldn’t have left him alone with the football.” Ryan jumps up and takes a swing, but he really is _tragically_ short.  
  
~  
  
“I don’t really know what I do for fun anymore,” Shane says slowly, but then he breaks into this genuine, ridiculous laughter as Ryan jumps and misses. Maybe he lets himself laugh a little louder than he normally would, just so that Ryan can hear him making fun of him.  
  
“Yeah you can’t— don’t leave Ryan alone,” Shane says, and as much as he tries to keep the dark undertones away from this, as much as he tries not to think of every possible terrible outcome if he _were_ to not be there when Ryan needed him… they still filter in, through all the cracks. And it’s not just that, it’s everything else, too. Ryan gets sad, his eyes fill up with too much regret, and Shane hates it. He wants to swipe it away, hold onto him until he can take some of that into himself, anything. He just doesn’t always know how.  
  
~  
  
Zack watches Ryan for another few seconds then looks at Shane. Ryan hears Shane laugh because he looks, for a quick moment, then looks away. 

It's sad, that Shane doesn't know what he does for fun. No one does much for fun these days, but that doesn't mean there isn't something he likes.

"Yeah, you... Okay, you know, you two seem to have a lot going on. So, can I ask you something that might sound weird?"

He has no idea why who's doing this. Why he feels compelled to help these two. Specifically Shane, who seems constantly, achingly miserable.

Ryan swipes again and this time the ball comes loose, belatedly so it hits the back of Ryan head. Even from this distance, Zack hears, "Fuck, ow."  
  
~  
  
The anxiety sweeps right back in at the same time as Ryan somehow manages to get hit with the ball and they sort of cancel one another out.  
  
“Sure,” Shane says, in this voice that’s halfway to laughter, and half strained. He looks away from Ryan to fix Zack with this wary gaze. “What?” he asks, voice dropping a little lower.  
  
  
~  
  
Shane looks serious. Zack regrets everything. He's a murderer. Nevermind. Zack's about to die. No, okay, he's got this. "Are you... I know you two aren't a thing, but are you into him?

"I could be way off base, but like... it sorta feels like it. Like you're into each other? And I mean... It's just, if you are, why not... like what is there to lose there?" He looks back at Ryan because it's an escape. Ryan looks so much more tired than he did a few minutes ago. Zack is pretty sure he wants to come over, but he isn't.

"Sorry. Just you've been... You're kind of different from most people I've met so... You don't have to answer, by the way. I know this is personal."  
  
~  
  
Shane’s whole body snaps tight and he looks away very fast, but the only place to look is at Ryan.  
  
“No,” Shane hears himself say, and even coming out under this crashing layer of shock, it feels so wrong, and Ryan deserves better than that, and— yet. Shane’s breath hitches sharply in his throat and he furrows his brow. “No, I’m not…“ He half-wonders why the ground hasn’t just opened to swallow him up because it is _such_ a lie, and he’s sure he was being more discreet about it, but now he’s all caught up in how small Ryan looks out there, and sort of cold without his sweater. He looks lost.  
  
“Ryan’s… I mean, I care about him. Obviously, I… I care. I know he probably thinks that I feel like I’m babysitting him, but it’s not like that, I just… I’m trying to keep him safe. We’ve all gone through enough terrible shit, he doesn’t need to go through any more, so I just— I just want him…” he stops there, for some reason, licks his lips. He can’t take his eyes off of Ryan down there and it’s Nebraska all over again. _Jesus_ , he misses him. “I’m trying to make him happy and sometimes it’s hard— not… not him. I know he thinks I’m struggling to be around him, but that’s not… I’m just trying to keep the world… liveable. For him. It’s getting harder.”  
  
He’s saying so much. Way too much. It’s like he’s cut an artery and it just bleeding out in front of a stranger.  
  
Because he can’t admit it. Zack asked Shane the question and Shane can’t admit it because he’s afraid that… that it’s not enough. Not next to Zack’s bright smile. Not next to everyone in the world that feels things the right way.  
  
 _What is there to lose there?_  
  
 _Jesus_ , Shane thinks, _everything_. There’s _Ryan_.  
  
~  
  
Zack isn't sure whether to believe it. On one hand, he doesn't, but Shane is like an alien. It's possible this is all a big brother instinct. Ryan does have that air to him. He seems small sometimes. Zack's known him for a day but he remembers the way Ryan shrank from his gun. Little things. Ryan could probably take both of them in a fight, but he is small, and he's got the big eyes. Zack's pretty sure it's an automic human response.

"Oh, yeah, I guess that makes sense. The world really sucks. Like hell, I used to say that before and now, man, didn't know how good I had it. He does, though, think that. Earlier he said he was overwhelming you."

Ryan looks like he's contemplating trying to dunk which is absolutely going to end in his death.

"But he seems like he's okay." He doesn't know if he should push the feelings thing. Shane might be being entirely honest. Zack doesn't know. "And maybe that's... I mean I was more worried about you when you two showed up. It's not your responsibility to make this okay, and honestly, what seems harder on him than anything is you being distant. Even if you aren't into him, your friendship obviously means a lot."

But if Shane doesn't have feelings, then poor Ryan. Because Ryan definitely does. And if Shane does, Zack doubts he can say anything to bridge the gap.  
  
~  
  
“Oh, so he told you that, huh?” Shane says. It’s not weird. Ryan opens up about a lot of things. Ryan’s like that — honest, open, trusting. And Shane’s the fucking opposite.   
  
“I keep telling him it’s not like that, I’m not… I’m not trying to be...” Shane exhales hard and finally looks away from Ryan. He braces his elbow on his thigh and runs his fingers over his forehead like his head hurts.  
  
The wind whispers past them and for a moment, it’s quiet and Shane squeezes his eyes shut and then says, very soft, “ _Yes_ , I’m into him. How could anyone not be?”   
  
It’s just that the same fate that brought him Ryan is the one that made Shane incapable of a single goddamn human feeling to its fullest extent. He doesn’t need to tell Zack why he’s not enough. He’s already told Ryan.   
  
~  
  
"Oh." Zack didn't expect the one eighty. Maybe it means they're making progress, just seems like a fast time frame for their relationship to have evolved. But Shane is into Ryan and that almost makes the way they are with each other worse. "Oh, yeah, he's..."

Zack is not into Ryan but he doesn't really think Shane needs to hear that. "You two should do something about it. Because he's definitely into you. And I'm not usually someone who talks about this shit but... I lost my girlfriend to this bullshit and just... I'd kill just for another minute and you're..." Wasting it. Both of them are. "This world does fucking suck. It will take whatever it wants. I'm sure you've already lost people. Important people. And it can... It'll happen again."

It's a lot. Too much, really. And now Zack is missing his own memories and caught up in his own emotions."Sorry. I know it's not my call. Or my business."  
  
~  
  
Oh God, Shane thinks. He’s not good at this. There’s a flood of heat and ice through his chest and he drops his hand and looks at Zack and says, “I’m sorry,” because he is. God, he is. “Sorry,” he whispers, again, and then looks away back at Ryan.  
  
He wants to… be good enough that he knows that he could handle staying here, with Zack, who clearly needs someone, too, but he doesn’t know if he is. He thinks maybe he’s not, and that he only has room for Ryan and himself and outside of that… outside of that, maybe that’s why Shane’s lost everyone else.  
  
 _It’ll happen again._  
  
It can’t. It can’t happen again, because Ryan’s all Shane has left. He’s all that matters anymore.  
  
“Don’t keep… apologizing,” Shane says. “This is my thing, you’re not doing anything wrong…” he looks at him again, exhales because it’s a lot, but he actually looks at him. “Thanks. Thanks for giving a shit, he needs… something like that. You’ve been really… good. You’ve been really good for Ryan. And to us. I’m just… I’m bad at people, I’m s—… yeah. Okay. I hear you.”  
  
~  
  
Well, that didn't work like he hoped. But at least he knows Shane isn't going to kill him. The sun's getting lower, and they have a bit of a walk back to the store.

"You should stop apologizing too, then," Zack says. "I'm glad I met you guys. Both of you." Since Shane loves to frame everything around Ryan. And Zack is glad, god, he is. "We should probably get back, though. It's getting cold. Though, I'm sure for someone from Illinois, it's nothing." He grins and stands up.

Ryan glances over, for the sixty two millionth time and Zack actually stands up. Great now maybe they can go find a zombie officiator and get married. Wow, he's gotta relax.

"Are you two done flirting?" He manages to make it playful, cut the irritated tremor from it's core. "Do I need to leave and give you guys some privacy?"

Zack rolls his eyes and laughs. He looks happier, relieved almost, one part of Ryan's glad it went well, the other hates that it's pushing Ryan closer to this fear that everything between he and Shane is just... Because it's what Shane does.

"No, it was fun watching you embarrass yourself." Zack hops off the bleachers and walks towards the weapons.

Ryan pauses, letting the cold wind bite down on him and tear out the anger, before he grabs his sweater.

~  
  
Shane makes his way off the bleachers with decidedly less grace and ease than Zack does and sort of meanders in Ryan’s general direction. He comes up behind him and draws the hood of Ryan’s sweater over his head and down too far over his eyes and says “Did you have fun? I saw you smoke yourself in the back of the head, you idiot.” He smiles, and it’s so genuine, but he pulls away before he wants to. He always does.  
  
He knows he’s wasting time. All this fucking time that’s been given to them… so why can’t he make himself reach out? Why can’t he take Ryan’s hand, like he did in the car? Because he wants to.  
  
~  
   
Ryan pulls his shoulder away from Shane, playfully, even though Shane’s mostly done by the time Ryan’s got a chance to react. Shane’s in a better mood. Because of Zack. Which really, is great. Everything is absolutely wonderful. At least someone can improve Shane’s mood. “I’m not answering your question when it was obviously just an opportunity to mock me.” He smiles, though, genuinely. He’s still happy Shane’s in a better mood, just—it sucks that it’s not him. It’s always Steven or Andrew or Zack. It’s never Ryan.  
   
There’s got to be a reason for that.  
   
They grab their weapons and Zack leads the way back. Ryan may have miscalculated how long they had until sunset earlier—it’s creeping in fast. Not so fast that getting back to the grocery store will be an issue. But still. It’s always unnerving, in this world, when the light starts to fade. Once the storefront comes in view, Ryan barely gets Zack’s attention before he throws the ball again—potentially at the back of his head.  
   
Fortunately, Zack’s quick enough that he turns and catches it. He throws it back, and they start this impromptu catch session where their passes get further apart each time. They were supposed to be _done_ playing. But the store’s right there and they’ve definitely got some light left. Ryan eventually drops the hammer again, because catching footballs and hammers are a bad combination.  
   
Zack throws it again and it might be worse than Shane’s throws. No, it is. Because this one misses Ryan completely, entirely out of his reach. It sails past him and right through the shattered glass of what might have been a nail salon. At least it was already shattered, because even from where he’s standing on the opposite side of the street—Shane would’ve heard it and potentially had an aneurysm. Ryan glares back at Zack. Zack throws up his hands, but makes no move to go get it in Ryan’s stead.  
   
Ryan rolls his eyes and half-jogs to the broken door and opens it. The inside is covered in dead leaves and glass from the shattered frame. It was definitely a nail salon, there’s manicure tables at the front, and those little recliner chairs at the back. One of them is filled with something that may have been water… at one point. Ryan cringes as he moves gently through the glass and bends down to grab the football—  
   
He stops. Something moves.  
   
His heart jerks straight into his throat. He clenches his fingers like he’s got a hammer—but he doesn’t. He does not have a hammer. He didn’t even grab the football. And now he’s frozen. Sweat slicks along his hands like he’s stepped into a sauna. His chest heaves with breathing that feels too shallow. He scans the room frantically. Just chairs, recliner chairs, and…  
   
It comes from behind him. That fucking sound. Because he didn’t look at the corner when he walked in. Why didn’t he look at the corner? He whirls, and there it is. A ragged as fuck looking zombie. Its left eye isn’t in its socket—it’s fucking hanging down around its cheek. Ryan jerks back to the door, and there’s the football. Helpfully.  
   
He slams onto the ground. His hand catches on a piece of glass where he tries to break the fall. Fuck. It hurts, like its burning open his hand, but more importantly, it bleeds, this slow, dark trickle down his wrist. The zombie smells it, sees it—something, because it shrieks louder and does its best impression of running.  
   
And holy fuck, Ryan doesn’t have a weapon. There’s a zombie and he doesn’t have a weapon and how did this _happen_? There’s just this blinding, black fear that rakes up his spine, his back. His vision blurs with it. His breath shakes with it.  
   
“Shane!” He doesn’t mean to yell it. It’s an automatic response, because he’s terrified and a little trapped and in desperate need of help. But Shane was across two separate parking lots. He probably can’t even hear Ryan and if he can… Ryan chances it with the glass again and tries to scramble back up. But he isn’t fast enough. He’s nowhere _near_ fast enough.  
  
~  
  
Shane fucking _does_ hear him, because he’s started making his way over. And he’s thinking in his head, Ryan don’t go in there, but he doesn’t say anything because everything has been so quiet and so calm and he is a fucking fucking idiot.  
  
His heart lurches into his throat and the world loses all of its colour. It’s just Ryan crying out for him and Shane breaks into a desperate run, but he’s not fast enough.  
  
Zack is closer. Zack’s eyes go wide and he starts running, too, and he, at least, is several yards ahead of Shane.  
  
Shane watches him skid to a half in front of the broken glass. Shane has this raw cry clawing up from his chest into his mouth, but his lungs are too tight to make a sound. He’s not going to get there in time.  
  
There’s a gunshot.  
  
Zack’s shot the gun. It goes wide because he panicked, pulled the trigger before he even had the thing pointed. The bullet ricochets off something. The pot holding a long-dead potted plant against the far wall explodes into ceramic and clods of dirt. “Shit!” Zack shouts, aiming again, at the zombie this time, but Jesus, it’s so close to Ryan, he’s scared to pull the trigger again.  
  
~  
   
Ryan actually cries out when the bullet hits the pot. There’s this expectation at his center and he’s so sure it’s the zombie. But it’s not. It’s a gun. But the bullet didn’t hit the zombie. It’s still there. It swings its arm. Ryan just drops back to the floor and gets his hand around another shard of glass. He doesn’t kick its legs. He wants to. He almost does, but if he does, then it’s going to fall on him. And Zack is already hesitating. If it’s on top of Ryan, then he’s probably definitely not going to want to shoot.  
   
“Shoot it!” He would rather be fucking shot. He would take being shot if it meant this thing didn’t bite him. It lurches, mouth open, and Ryan swings with the glass shard and it jams into its face, knocks it away from him. The loose eye swings and drags across Ryan’s face. Bile rises in his throat as he jerks back. Putting as much distance as he possibly can between himself and this thing, but it just swings its head back around, mouth still open.  
   
“ _Please_!”  
  
~  
  
Zack’s trembling all over, frozen in horror. Just behind him, Shane screams “ _Don’t_!” but he’s already squeezing the trigger.  
  
The gun goes off a second time. It catches the zombie’s shoulder and the thing jerks sideways. Zack shoots again and its head bursts. It crumples in a horrible, brittle kind of way.  
  
Shane pushes past Zack into the room, slipping on glass. Zack’s right on his heels.  
  
“Are you okay?” Zack asks, and his voice is shaking all over the place. Shane grabs Ryan and pulls him away from the zombie in case it’s not dead. It looks pretty fucking dead. He hauls him up by one arm and the sleeve of his sweater. “Did it—? Are you okay? Did it bite you?” He’s touching him everywhere, his chest, his face, his back, his eyes are black with fear. There’s nothing that he can find until, _oh shit_ , Ryan’s hand is bleeding. Shane actually shakes him a little. “Jesus _Christ_ , Ryan! _Jesus Christ_ ,” he catches his breath too sharply. It’s the closest he’s ever come to shouting at him, to shouting at all. God, he almost feel like he could hit him, but of course, he doesn’t, he just meets his eyes as he struggles to get even a little bit of air into his own lungs.  
  
“What were you _thinking_?”  
  
~  
   
Ryan can’t do anything. He’s barely breathing. He turned away from the zombie and never got to come back because Shane is yanking him up and away and in all kinds of directions. Shane’s shouting in this weird way, where he’s not actually shouting but Ryan’s shrinking away from it anyway. Because Shane shakes him and Ryan’s still on the floor with the zombie trying to process this pool of fear that’s formed at his center.  
   
Ryan doesn’t hold Shane’s eyes long, half because he’s blinking too much, and half because they are intense. They’re like black ice, and it’s not doing much for the fear that’s still sloshing around in Ryan’s stomach. “I… I don’t…”  
   
Zack can see this fear that’s just exploding between both of them. But neither of them is doing anything to stop it—Shane’s definitely making Ryan’s worse, and Ryan’s probably making Shane’s worse by not responding to him. That, or Shane’s already fucking maxed out and it doesn’t matter anymore.  
   
“Hey,” he says, kinda weakly. As bad as he feels for Ryan, he’s worried Shane’s anger might hit twice as hard if its turned on Zack. “Let’s take a breath.”  
  
~  
  
Shane looks at Zack, sharp, half-wild and steps closer to Ryan. He’s clinging to his arms like if he lets go Ryan’s gonna disappear. But Zack says take a breath and Shane does, then another one. He squeezes his eyes shut for a second, then, much gentler than before he turns away and starts tugging Ryan’s sleeve down over his hand and pressing it gently into the cut.  
  
“We have to get out of here,” Shane says, trying his best to pack the tugged down fabric into the wound without hurting him. It’s bleeding enough that he can’t see how deep it is.  “They’ll come if they heard it. Ryan… close your hand on the—.” He ducks a little, speaks softer. “Ryan… Close your hand for me, okay?”  
  
~  
   
Ryan’s slowly figuring out how his body works again. The zombie’s dead—the gunshots are gone. Everything is significantly less terrifying. Except Shane, who he is confident might kill him later tonight. But Shane’s scared. It was dumb, to come in here without thinking about it. Everything had been so calm—he just hadn’t thought about it. Not smart. That’s exactly what got Jake killed.  
   
“Yeah, I got it.” He closes his hand. It definitely stings, and his hand’s adopted this quiver to combat it. But he can still move his hand so it can’t be that bad. Shane has gotten his anger under control, but it’s still there. “Let’s, uh… let’s go.” Because Shane’s right. The gunshots were loud. If there are any other zombies nearby, they are going to come.  
   
Zack nods and shuffles awkwardly back towards the store. Poor Zack. This is probably more than he bargained for when he offered to help them. Zack holds open the door when they get there. Ryan keeps tossing glances back into the street, waiting for a fucking horde of those things. Jesus, he can’t stop seeing that thing in his face, smelling it. Just decay and _rot_.    
   
“Let me see if I have any bandages or anything you can use for your hand.”  
  
~  
  
Shane’s been practically on top of Ryan as they walked back, but he hangs back now, in the doorway. “You should clean that before you— bandage it,” he says. “I’m gonna… I just need a second,” he says, and without waiting for an answer, he switches the pipe to his right hand and turns away. He’s shaking. He can feel it in his legs, his hands. He grips the pipe to keep them steady and moves towards the corner of the building.  
  
Zack bites his lip, but then turns to Ryan. He’s not sure this is such a good idea, especially not right now, but Ryan was the one that said to leave Shane alone. “He’s right, ouch…” There’s a lot of blood soaking the sleeve of Ryan’s sweater. A lot, but definitely not an alarming amount. Still. Any blood is too much blood when it comes to the zombies.  
  
~  
   
Ryan’s whole self is quivering. His body, his face, his heart. It’s just one, giant, tremor. Shane leaves and Ryan doesn’t say anything. It’s really fucking stupid because there are probably zombies out there, and it’s so stupid. But Shane would rather be outside with zombies than dealing with Ryan and he just... He brings his good hand over his eyes, because everything is hot and stinging and hurting. And he wishes Zack wasn’t here. He wishes he was alone.  
   
“Are you—”  
   
“ _Don’t_.”  
   
Ryan’s mouth is trembling, or maybe it’s his chin. All of it. He’s sure he looks seconds from an absolute meltdown to Zack. He wants to care. He should care, because it was his own damn fault for going into the stupid store. But god fucking damn it. He can’t do anything right anymore.  
   
Zack stands away from him. Ryan feels him looking at him, feels this sad, sorrowful kind of sympathy that thickens the air. Ryan needs it to go away. He needs everything to go away because he doesn’t want to cry in front of Zack. He doesn’t want to cry in the middle of a fucking grocery store over nothing. So instead, he slides down one of the shelves until he’s sitting on the floor and drags his knees closer to his chest.  
   
Silence settles between them. Zack disappears into his storage room and comes back with a bottle of water and a bandage. Ryan doesn’t know if he’s glad Zack’s staying quiet, or if he wishes he’d say something to stop the freight train of his thoughts. Finally, though, Zack does come up with some words. “That wasn’t your fault. I was gonna do the same thing, and I threw the damn football. He’s just freaked out. So are you.” Zack takes a step closer. “We need to get something on your hand, it’s still bleed—”  
   
“Fuck my hand!” Ryan’s voice echoes off the shelves. Zack winces but doesn’t back away. Instead, he sighs and falls down on the floor beside Ryan and nudges him with his elbow. Ryan’s dropped his hand and is staring, vision still blurred, at his knees.  
   
“Well, that would just be unsanitary.”  
   
Fuck. It’s so unexpected that Ryan has to lay his head against his knees to keep from laughing, or crying, or this watery in between thing that manages to escape anyway. “I don’t know what to do. I don’t have any idea what to do anymore… I swear it would’ve been easier for him if you’d just let the damn thing _bite me_.”  
   
“Don’t, c’mon, don’t… don’t do that.” Zack brings his legs up so he’s sitting cross-legged. Ryan focuses on the motion so he can steady his breathing, steady everything else. “People get pissed off when they’re scared. You mean a lot to him, and he couldn’t help you, and he just… I dunno. If all the therapists I know wouldn’t try to eat you two, I’d say you needed to see one.”  
   
A sick feeling starts in Ryan’s chest again and he drops his head in his hands. “What if we’re just horrible for each other? All I do is make him miserable. Every time I turn around, I have done something that he hates.”  
   
“That’s not true.”  
   
“Yes, it is. You’ve known us for a _day_. How would you even know? I mean, fuck, Shane’s the most cautious person I know and I just walked into that stupid salon without even… I didn’t even…” He grits his teeth, and then he clenches his fists, both of them, and hisses—because one is still cut open.  
   
Zack takes his hand and rinses it. “This is all I’ve got for cleaning. But it’s better than nothing.” He takes his time wrapping it, and eventually says, “I don’t think he’s that careful, I mean… he’s out in the street after he made that huge fuss about getting away from the store.”  
   
That’s true. They’re close enough that they’d hear if anything happened. But Shane is just standing out there. And Ryan’s in here fucking feeling bad because _he_ made a mistake. Shane has been something like a nightmare since they got here, since they found Zack. Shane wanted to leave this perfectly safe place with Andrew and Steven, and now he’s half-miserable with Zack. And then he stopped playing football when Zack tackled Ryan. Yelled at Ryan for getting attacked. Now he’s standing in the fucking street where he could get fucking eaten and that’s perfectly fucking fine.  
   
Maybe that’s it. Maybe Ryan has spent all this time ascribing this impossibility to Shane, when really he’s just a petty fucking brat. Ryan stands up abruptly, glaring at the door.  
   
Zack isn’t even done with the bandage. He looks up, eyes wide. “Ryan, Ryan—your face doesn’t look like a conversation-face. What are you doing?”  
   
“I’m gonna go talk to him.” He doesn’t look away from the door.  
   
“Wait, hold on—I think…” Zack scrambles to his feet. “You were the one who said this morning that we need to give him air if…”  
   
“Fuck his stupid air.” Ryan leaves Zack, still stammering, by the shelf and walks out into the almost chilled air of red and orange sunset. He finds him, just standing there. Because it’s fine when he does it apparently. “What are you doing?” Ryan’s voice is hoarse, almost hoarse enough to be irritated.  
  
~  
  
Shane’s really struggling not to just scream. He’s gripping the pipe so hard his fingers are cramping, and there’s a sharp pain in his wrist from some injury he’s half-forgotten. He’s not sure whether he thinks that he should take Zack’s gun and toss it into the nearest dumpster, or if he should be wearing his fucking own. If Zack hadn’t been there… if he hadn’t stepped in today, Shane thinks that it’s very likely that Ryan would have been bitten, or dead, and he doesn’t know which one is worse. Either way, he’d have lost him.  
  
And they’d just been talking about how fast people were torn away from you. How Zack would kill for another minute and Shane closes his free hand into a fist so hard his nails bite into his palm.  
  
When Ryan speaks, it scares him. He wasn’t paying attention, and he startles and spins around, looking at him incredulously. “What are you doing?” he asks, “You didn’t even, jesus, man, you’re still bleeding,” he says, waving a hand at Ryan but pressing back into the post that holds the rain-roof up over the store’s entrance.

~  
   
Ryan takes a step forward, but he keeps Shane leveled with this semi-glare. “I thought you were about to punch me a few minutes ago for walking into a building, and now you’re standing in the street knowing Zack just fired two gunshots. And it’s almost nighttime. So I’m trying to figure out what’s so bad inside that you’d rather stand out here and risk getting bitten.”  
   
There’s a thousand emotions warring inside of him. Some part of him is still riddled with this awful guilt, this uncertainty—this need to make Shane happy. But another part it angry, angry at Shane for being so difficult, angry at himself for still being scared of a zombie whose head exploded fifteen minutes ago.  He wants to do something, to let this out of him in some productive way. No punching any mirrors. No punching anything.  
  
~  
  
“I’m ff— j—, I’m fucking— because you _didn’t_ just walk into a building, Ryan, you went in there, blindly, without checking, without a weapon, and I wouldn’t have been able to do a damn thing. I can’t just stand in that store and _look_ at you knowing that—”  
  
He can’t even say it, he takes a couple too-shallow breaths. “You’re the one standing out here bleeding everywhere, you’re going to attract them,” he says, softer. “Just— go bandage your hand— where’s Zack?"  
  
~  
   
“Fuck you. If a gunshot hasn’t gotten their attention, my stupid hand isn’t going to. You’re standing out here, knowing they could be coming, but I’m the idiot for making a mistake. I get it, it was dumb, but _Jesus Christ_! You have been a complete _ass_ ever since we got here.” He takes another step, gesturing with his hand like he’s explaining something really complicated. “And here’s what I think—I think it’s bothering you how well I get along with Zack.”  
   
He takes a breath. “Did you not specifically tell me that you wanted whatever this is between us? I have been trying so hard not to push you. I thought you were backing off because you didn’t know what you wanted. I was trying to give you space. But I’m starting to think you’ve been acting like a moody teenager because you’ve decided you’re my fucking parent and Zack’s a _better person for me to be with_.”   
  
His lip curls. He’s yelling, a little bit, he thinks. “I’m so sick of thinking about this. It’s the end of the fucking world—I want this, I want you, and if you are making me think—if you can’t do this, Shane, it’s fine. I don’t need you to do this, but I want you to. And if you are just making excuses because Zack helped me or Zack likes sports or Zack’s better for me, fuck off—because I don’t want Zack, I want you…” He’s right up on Shane now. The height difference _sucks_ , but Ryan is about to grab his stupid sweater and yank him onto his level.  
  
~  
  
Shane doesn’t think he’s ever had anyone fight for him before, not like this, and he’s so startled for a second that he can’t even say anything, but then something strong, heated, flares through him, and his joints shudder and jolt all the way up his arms to his tight shoulders as Ryan corners him in and he sets his jaw in this tight, frustrated way. Because Ryan’s right, and Shane— Shane _hates_ being wrong, but this is everything he’s been so desperate to hear only it comes at precisely the wrong time. Because Zack protected Ryan, not Shane…  
  
“Well, I’m sick of thinking about it, too! I’m sick of a lot of things, Ry, but maybe I can’t—” He tosses the pipe down, heedless as it clangs against the pavement, and drags his fingers through his hair. “Look— _look_ at what this thing is doing to us, it’s a mess, can’t you see how simple it would be with someone else, someone who can— _do_ this? Who isn’t going to have to take a month to process every fucking thing that happens, I _want_ —”  
  
 _I want to be good enough_ , he thinks. He thinks it so desperately it hurts but he can’t say it out loud.   
  
“I think you just— you’re too willing to settle for less as long as you think you can’t do better,” he says, voice rough like the words sear his throat.   
  
~  
  
Ryan stares at him. God, he's right. He's right and Shane's just... Ryan feels bad for him. He knows how it feels. To not fit this thing he so desperately wants to fit. But it's bogus. It's all based on nonsense. And Ryan is too pissed off to empathize quite enough right now.

He scoffs. This could go on for ages. Shane finding excuses and avoiding him for arbitrary things that Ryan can't disprove. It is difficult, Shane's right. It's a mess. But it's this light speed blast of color, this thing Ryan knows is right like he's never known anything is. Maybe some people do get it easy. They find each other and it works.

But that doesn't mean it has to be. Shane's so stupid wrong about this. It's hard because he's paranoid he isn't enough, not because he isn't. And if Ryan has to spend the next however long he's alive convincing him he is, he will.

"Shut up, Shane..." He fists a hand, the not-bloody one, in Shane's sweater and yanks him down, hard. And then he opens his mouth, breathes this ragged gasp, and kisses him. He kisses him like the fucking scream that's been building in his throat since Shane threw the fucking goldfish at him, since Shane didn't want to call them zombies, since Shane touched his neck. His lips are hot with battered breaths and anger, and maybe fear. But mostly with want. With a plea.

And he stays there, heavy and hard and hoping—hoping Shane will yield. Just this fucking once.


	17. Part 17

It’s too much, but it’s always too much. Maybe it’s always going to be too much and fuck it. Fuck all these limitations he’s set up, all these blockades and barriers and fuck how careful Shane has learned to be all his life, with his limbs and his voice and his words.  
  
Ryan’s gasping against his mouth, and it’s so broken, but God, he’s breathing life into Shane, and there is a moment, there is a beat where Shane gasps, where he starts thinking, where he doesn’t quite respond… but then it melts away.  
  
It slips from the tight aching emptiness that he’s been holding in his stomach for months, it goes up in his ribcage like palest smoke, and there is a hair’s-breadth between their mouths for the smallest of seconds, and Shane breathes it out, this doubt, as much as he can in this shuddering, cut-off moan, and then they’re kissing again, and he’s got both hands on Ryan’s face and he’s pressing against him as much as he can with his height, but they’re off balance. In the end he presses his shoulders against the post and slides down just slightly, just enough to brace himself with his legs and pulls Ryan against him by the back of his neck and the material of his sweater, his knuckles digging into Ryan’s ribs, as he opens his mouth to him over and over like he should have fucking done a long time ago.  
  
~  
   
There’s this split second of hesitation, and Ryan is just suspended in this, blank, uncertain space. There’s this breath lodged in his chest and it’s caught on a thousand brambles he’d been trying to breathe around. And then Shane lets out his own breath in this sound that sinks impossibly deep into Ryan, so his mouth is open when Shane kisses back and Ryan breathes—and it feels like the first time in fucking forever.  
   
He gets his hand out of Shane’s sweater and slides the back of his fingers along Shane’s jaw, his cheek, and then back into his hair and pulls him. He keeps his second hand, the bleeding one, against Shane’s neck just above his shoulder because it is still bleeding. Shane’s sliding down the back of the pole he’s against, so Ryan presses himself to every piece of him that he can’t without breaking their mouths apart. His back arcs and his mouth slides low enough that he gets Shane’s lower lip in his mouth and tugs at it. He holds on in this rush of breath before he finally pulls apart and catches the whole of Shane’s mouth again.  
   
And it’s this wild, tempest of feeling. Like he’s a room of fucking candles being lit one, by one, by one until their all burning in these flashes of heat and color and light where it’s just been dark and black and cold. Every second another candle, another flicker, of things he thought were dead—were gone.  
   
He doesn’t care anymore. He keeps his first hand tangled in Shane’s hair, and brings the other onto Shane’s cheek and pulls because there’s no way, nothing, that could get Shane as close as Ryan needs him to be. Because Ryan can taste his breath, this hot glide of mouth and momentum, can feel the hand buried into the back of his neck—and he still wants him closer.  
   
Because if he lets go, then he doesn’t know if he’ll remember how to breathe, how to exist separate from Shane. Maybe he didn’t already. So he keeps kissing him, kissing him with this unsaid whisper:  
   
_You are enough. You have always been enough._  
  
~  
  
Ryan tugs at his lip and Shane’s breath cracks out of his chest in this desperate rush, and he’s so, so aware of every sensation, every feeling of their mouths. God, he’s been watching Ryan’s mouth forever, every day and night since he’s fucking met him and now it’s—  
  
Ryan kisses him again, harder, overwhelming. Shane lets himself slide beneath, because it’s like a tidal wave; lets this intense, passionate, pulsing overwhelm that is Ryan sweep him out, away from the shore that Shane has clung to his entire life, and offers no resistance.  
  
Maybe other people fought against this, but Shane just gives in to it. It’s not too much. It’s not Too Much, like pulling away from him was, like knowing he was going to have to pull away, but it is all-encompassing. He doesn’t even know which one of them is holding him up anymore. He’s vaguely aware of the rough slide of the post against his back where his shirt’s ridden up, and he’s aware of how hard Ryan is pressed into against him and Shane lets him go just long enough to pull him against his chest, harder.  
  
He gets one hand around the base of Ryan’s throat where he can feel every swallow, every sound, and presses his index along Ryan’s his jaw where he can feel his pulse. The other hand he buries further into Ryan’s hair, let’s it slide over his cheekbone. It’s kind of a mess, Shane doesn’t know where to touch him. He wants to touch him everywhere, all at once, get around him the way it feels like he’s around Shane.  
  
_Zombies_ , his brain says.  
  
_Shut up_ , Shane thinks, but he can’t… he breaks away from him after a moment, still holding on, panting. It’s darker than he remembered, but the last of the sun is catching along Ryan’s skin and in his hair like dying firelight and he is so, so beautiful and Shane just looks at him for a second and fucking… he tries to control his breathing to _listen_ , but he hears nothing. He is an idiot, he’s a hypocrite, because he can’t take his eyes off Ryan’s to look around.  
  
He ducks his head to kiss him again, hard, lingering, tongue sliding soft against his mouth and inside and his whole body tenses. He lets out a breath that’s almost a groan, and pulls away again. “We—” he tries, but oh God. How does he make sentences? He still hasn’t let him go.  
  
~

Shane’s hands—god, fuck. Ryan’s whole body wavers. His fingers slide from Shane’s hair to the top of his spine and he digs in. Because he needs something to hold him up. He needs something to keep him from giving complete ownership of his body to Shane. Because he can’t right now, they are outside, near dark, kissing in front of deserted fucking supermarket. He can’t break into him right now. He can’t. So his fingers grind harder that they should.

He can’t stop tasting every brush of Shane’s fingers, every brush of his own—all this damp skin and rigid teeth. Ryan can’t get a grip on himself, so he’s just trying to keep a grip on Shane. Shane pulls their chests closer and his hand catches around Ryan’s throat so every breath throbs against Shane like it’s asking permission. Every thud of his pulse, every swallow—it beats against Shane, for Shane.

This whimpered moan slides from Ryan’s mouth into Shane’s. All he’s got to tether him to reality is this wavering steadiness in Shane. And he doesn’t know how he’s been a person before now. He’s this chaotic mass of screaming energy—and the first time it’s made sense is with his mouth slammed against Shane’s. With his hands pressed so hard and deep into Shane’s pale skin that he’s touching bone—all these heavy, too-big bones that make up Shane. Shane and his half-corporal eyes and hands and mouth. Because he’s not half of anything, he’s not transparent—he’s hot and vibrant and solid beneath Ryan’s hands.

Ryan’s lips cling a little, resist, and he leans into Shane the first time he pulls away. He lets him go, eventually, because he has to. He’s breathing hard. This has been a lot, and they’re outside. And he’s not totally sure how they got here, but he’s pretty sure he did it. Shane’s staring at him, and the black in his eyes from before has gone golden in the light. Ryan’s left blood on Shane’s cheek, and a smear down to his neck where he drifted. Where he’s still holding him. One hand on his neck, the other at the top of his back.

He’s about to say something, anything, to help them step out of this. But Shane kisses him again. Ryan gasps this surprised kind of sound, and it works because Shane’s tongue sweeps across his lips and flutters through him. Then Shane jerks back, again, and he’s maybe trying to say something but Ryan doesn’t hear it. And he doesn’t let go. Because he laughs, this soft, disarmed kind of laugh. Shane is trying so hard to stop. It’s adorable, but he’s laughing and now it’s going to look like he thinks this is funny. But he’s so out of breath and wrapped up in this kiss—this kiss that’s ended, he thinks. And it should, because it’s getting dark. But Ryan’s still tangled up in it.

~  
  
He furrows his brow, confusion and amusement kind of colliding in his expression. In the end he laughs softly and asks “What’s—?” and it comes out soft and uneven.  
  
He pushes himself up a little straighter, crookedly because he’s still trying to figure out how to untangle them both, here, and he’s not sure that that’s even entirely possible anymore. He’s not sure he wants it to be. He can still feel all the places Ryan pressed his fingers into him too hard, beating with his heart, wanting that touch back.  
  
And now Ryan’s laughing and somehow, there’s not even a part of Shane that’s worried about it. It’s perfect. Ryan… Shane watches him like he’s never really been allowed to look before, and maybe he’s never really let himself. Not like this, with Ryan’s heart beating against the place Shane’s fisted one hand in his sweater. Shane pushes his free hand through Ryan’s dark hair, pushing it away from his forehead and at some point he started smiling and now he doesn’t quite know how to stop.  
  
~  
  
Shane isn't weirded out. So that's good. He eventually collects himself. He's not going to explain why he's laughing because he doesn't know. He's just happy. He's happy because Shane didn't push him away.

Shane pushes a hand through Ryan's hair. And Ryan has to work every muscle in his body to keep from grabbing him and kissing him again. Ryan's almost got his laughter under control but then he thinks about Zack.

"Zack's gonna think we're dead." And he's gone again.  
  
~  
  
"Yeah," he says, laughing a little, silently, trying to care a little bit more. "I guess we should go back." He pushes himself up properly, pulling away from the pole and so, a little closer to Ryan, but he's concentrating on untangling himself from Ryan's sweater. It breaks the moment a little bit, or at least the rapidfire beat of his heart calms a little as he takes a couple real breaths that aren't just breathless gasps against Ryan's mouth.

Shane looks up, a little sharply, and he already has to squint to see into the darkness. The pipe is still on the ground. An edge creeps into his frame, making him tense, erasing the smile, making him speak softer, lower. "Okay," he says, and sidesteps Ryan a little to pick up the pipe. He feels weird without Ryan against him, too light. He finds his eyes as he straightens up. "You ready?"  
  
~  
  
It's weird being apart from Shane. Ryan isn't sure he remembers how to walk, but the shadows are moving and he's pretty sure he heard something so he watches Shane get the pipe and nods.

They get back inside the store and Zack half collapses with relief. "Jesus, I didn't know whether to go out there and get you guys or..." His eyes widen as he looks at Shane. "Is that blood? What the hell?"

Ryan shouldn't laugh. He's not going to laugh. He just throws up his hands. "It's... That's mine. It's fine."  
  
~  
  
Shane reaches up and finds it, already drying on his skin.

“Oh.” Zack’s eyes flicker between Ryan and Shane again and then he starts to smile. “ _Ohhhhh_ ,” he says. “Okay, yeah, all right. Really not the time, guys,” he’s saying, like he’s berating them, but his grin is so huge.

“Oh my… Christ,” Shane whispers, face hot. He tries to gain some control of himself. “Did you even wash it? You need to… here, where’s the bandages?” He makes to escape to the other room even though the first aid kit is clearly on the table.  
  
~  
  
Ryan isn’t sure whether to laugh or cry. Zack makes it so much worse. Poor Shane. Ryan can practically feel the heat coming off him. It’s awkward—they’ve got to figure out how to deal with it, what it means, and here’s Zack acting like he set them up himself. Shane’s halfway out of  the room before Ryan fully registers what he’s doing.  
   
“Wait… it’s…” Shane is definitely looking for an excuse to get out of this room, and Ryan doesn’t blame him but he’s halfway through the sentence now. “We did wash it—the first aid kit’s…” He nods kind of reluctantly to the table.  
   
Zack’s trying not to laugh and doing a horrible job of it. Ryan’s surprised he isn’t laughing—it seems like the only thing to do here. Other than go hide in his little bed pallet for a few days. “Hey, you don’t have to be embarrassed. I’m not gonna make it weird,” he says, instantly making it four hundred times weirder.  
   
“Thanks,” Ryan replies, with what is potentially the least amount of sincerity someone can put into a word.  
  
~  
  
“Yeah,” Shane says dryly to Zack. “You’re doing great.”  
  
He hovers a moment more, halfway to the exit, then sighs and comes back into the room. “C’mere,” he says softly to Ryan, opening the first aid kit again.  
  
“No more fucking… going anywhere alone,” Shane says, pulling out a roll of bandages. “Nobody.”  
  
He thinks he might still be shaking a little. He can still feel Ryan’s mouth against his. He passes one hand vaguely over his lips, his jawline, eyes down.  
  
Zack raises his eyebrows at Ryan. He’s still making it weird because it’s a look that clearly says _how was it?_ He’s definitely milking this, a little.  
  
~  
   
Ryan valiantly ignores Zack. His brain still isn’t quite functioning. He’s half back outside, half with the zombie, half with Shane… there’s definitely too many halves of him too, so that’s an issue. Shane tells him to come there, and he does. He’s barely present. He’s not quite sure he’s a whole person anymore without Shane—all he’s got is this mild embarrassment and annoyance at Zack. And memories. A whole new batch of fucking memories.  
   
He lets Shane wrap his hand because, slowly, really fucking slowly, it’s silvering back in—and it hurts. He rubbed it all over Shane’s face and it’s stinging and every time it stings, it’s bringing him back to this moment with Shane’s tongue in his mouth and… wow. Okay. He’s gotta get it together. He is so not together. He makes the mistake of looking at Zack, and he’s smirking like a fucking asshole.  
   
Ryan rolls his eyes and watches Shane bandage his hand, but then he’s focused on Shane’s hands and thinking about them on his throat—oh man, he needs to lie down. He may need to lie down for the next three days.  
   
“I would’ve been _fine_ if I hadn’t put the hammer down.” He doesn’t know why he says it, because he knows Shane’s going to bristle. Maybe that’s why he says it. Because there’s all this heat, and he just wants to see it again.  
  
~  
  
Shane looks up at him sharply, fingers tightening around Ryan’s wrist — not to hurt, more to keep hold of him.

“I don’t care,” he says, and his voice is quiet but it’s got all these sharp edges. He never takes his eyes off Ryan’s and he’s pretty sure it’s not just fear of that ever happening again that’s got his heart pounding like a drum against his ribs.

“It’s not happening again.”  
  
~  
   
Ryan bites his lip. He’s pretty sure this is what he wanted, because there’s a thrill bouncing around in his chest. Still, Shane was fucking pissed. And he doesn’t need him thinking Ryan’s going to go bounding around the street corner first chance he gets. Ryan would like to never have that happen again too, and he did call Shane’s name. So… he can’t argue much.  
   
He doesn’t divert his eyes for a minute, almost like he’s going to challenge Shane—almost like he’s going to do something else. Something so much realer now that it’s happened, now that he can taste it between them, but then he does look away—lip still caught beneath his teeth until he says, “Okay, okay.”  
   
He shoots Zack a glance. “Guess you’re gonna have to learn to throw better.”  
  
Zack laughs and says “Maybe _your arms_ need to be longer.” Shane knows it’s what Ryan intended, lightening this weird mood, but it prickles at Shane, furls around his ribs and makes it harder to swallow, and he grits his jaw slightly. He knows it will do no good to try to make this as serious as he needs it to be. He understands the need to make light of something that’s too much, and today was definitely _definitely_ too much. For all of them.  
  
But he’s not gonna forget the way Ryan called for him any time soon. The way Ryan called out and Shane was nowhere even _near_ him, and if it hadn’t been for Zack, Ryan might be…  
  
And that moment outside just now, still glowing warmly in him like embers, might never have happened...  
  
Shane honestly doesn’t know what he would do if Zack hadn’t stepped in today. He doesn’t want to think about it.  
  
There’s this energy between them, he can feel it radiating from Ryan’s stillness, but Shane can’t — he just can’t focus on that in this moment, because he doesn’t know what he will do. So he looks at Zack. “Thank you,” he says, as he finishes with the bandage and draws his hands away from Ryan’s. Because he thinks maybe no one’s said it to him yet. He can’t really say anything else — can’t say ‘for saving Ryan’s life’, because the implications of it are too huge, way too much for Shane to even realistically comprehend beyond a tentative, detached acknowledgement. If he gets any closer to it, he thinks he’ll either have to kiss Ryan again or kill him himself, or both. But Zack deserves this at the very least, and the words don’t nearly do it justice, but Shane says them anyway, as best he can. “For doing that, today.” _When I couldn’t_ , remains unsaid.  
  
Zack sobers up a little, looks a little overwhelmed, maybe, beneath the intensity of Shane’s tone and the heaviness of its reality. Shane holds his eyes just long enough for understanding to pass between them, and then Zack says, “Yeah, totally, it’s— any time. I mean let’s try to avoid it, but yeah. It’s…” he glances at Ryan. “You’re welcome.”  
  
And now that Shane’s made everyone thoroughly uncomfortable again, he falls into silence and leaves them to deal with it. Zack grabs the opportunity and starts dealing with supper.  
  
When they finally say goodnight, Shane is so fucking ready for it. It’s so much easier to just be with Ryan, but now it’s weird, it’s this charged uncertain feeling that has nothing to do with Ryan’s feelings for him, and everything to do with what happens when they’re alone together again. On top of all of that, there’s this tangle of feeling about that zombie today and the fact that Ryan’s gotten hurt _again_ , and Shane _hates_ that. And now that they have parts for the car, what’s going to happen with Zack?  
  
His mind feels like a fucking rave, just noise and flashes and movement coming at him from all directions until he feels trapped inside his own head, when his own voice telling himself _Stop, please shut up_ , only adds to the cacophony of the rest. He pulls the door shut behind them both, leaving Zack alone out there again, looking forlorn enough that Shane feels bad for him, but fuck, he can’t— he just can’t deal with that, now. Maybe that makes him a jerk. Especially after everything Zack did for Ryan today. For both of them. “Think he’ll be all right out there?” Shane asks as his fingers leave the doorknob, like Zack’s a new puppy and not an adult human.  
  
~  
  
Ryan mutters a clumsy, frantic apology, then thank you, after Shane. Because he's pretty he didn't even say thanks and he's the one who would absolutely be dead. Zack's too flustered by Shane to do much more than not.

Ryan's not sure what to do when it's just he and Shane again. Aside from feeling bad about Zack. He's not sure what he can do, should do. It's not uncomfortable, but it's uncertain, unknown, because he's done this thing against all reason and he keeps reliving it. But he doesn't know what it means or what happens next. It feels like the stain of red on his bandage, this stain trying to grow outward, trying to color everything.

He sighs when Shane turns to look at him. They need to talk about this, about how they can't leave Zack. Ryan couldn't have done it before, but now...

"Yeah, hopefully he'll just go to sleep. It's not like we're not still here." He looks at Shane but it feels too intense so he looks at the wall. "You know we can't leave him..."  
  
~  
  
Shane’s quiet for a second, eyes flickering from Ryan to the floor. “I know,” he says, and then: “so then what do you want to do? Stay here or just… we all just keep going west?  
  
He knows here is safe, but he can’t help but feel like something’s pulling at him now. They’ve been going west for so long… he doesn’t know why. Maybe it’s just to see something through in this royal fucking mess.  
  
He looks at Ryan again, watching him because Ryan’s not looking at Shane. Shane wants Ryan to keep being able to be good. He doesn’t want this world to harden him. So they’ll go west, they’ll bring Zack. Whatever it takes.  
  
~  
   
Ryan lets out a breath. He didn’t necessarily think Shane might fight him, but he didn’t think he’d agree so easily either. But Zack’s been nothing but helpful, really, even aside from saving Ryan’s life. It wouldn’t be fair to just leave him. Even Shane can see that. Also they were having their secret rendezvous on the bleachers earlier—so maybe they’ve established some unbreakable bond.  
   
Okay, that’s ridiculous. Ryan just kissed this guy, and now he’s somehow still managing to be jealous that Shane agreed with something he suggested. Fuck, he just wants to kiss Shane again. He finally looks at him, and immediately regrets it, but it’s weird to have a conversation where he’s staring at something else. And he misses it—when he’s not looking at Shane, he misses it. Like there’s a hole in him.  
   
“I mean, if we left Andrew and Steven’s place, then we may as well leave here too…” He still hasn’t mentioned what he wants out west. He doesn’t know if he will. But he may as well keep trying. “It’s probably better to leave. If Zack’s okay with it.”  
  
~  
  
“Okay,” Shane says. Watches will be easier, at night, it’s always going to be easier to survive with more people against this mess, but... “I’m probably going to want to murder you both, but at least if the car breaks down, we aren’t completely fucked.”

He meets Ryan’s eyes like he’s daring him to miss the joke, Jesus, he’s all twisted up inside. Part of him is scared that they won’t kiss again, like with what happened in the department store bathroom...he doesn’t know if he can deal with that now.  
  
~  
   
They’re not talking about it. It’s extremely weird. Everything is extremely weird. He’s kissed Shane once. Maybe he should do it again. They both were clearly into it. And Shane’s just looking at him now, and Ryan can’t read what’s going on in his head. Probably because Ryan doesn’t know what’s going on in his own head.  
   
Ryan tries to ease into this. Tries not to freak out about the four hundred thousand things there are to freak out about. They could never kiss again. They’ve definitely done stuff before, never talked about it, and never done anything again. And a kiss is… probably less of a thing that a blow job. Even though, jesus, it doesn’t feel that way to Ryan.  
   
He smiles, breathes this unsteady kind of laugh. “What? You don’t wanna play football again? But you were so good.”  
  
~  
  
“Hey,” Shane says in mock offence that might be just a little bit genuine. “I did my best, all right? I’m still waiting for you to apologize for smearing your blood all over my face.”

He presses closer to this thing between them, taking a step forward, eyes flickering away and back like he can’t quite hold Ryan’s. He can’t do a lot of things. Can’t stop the fear from earlier, can’t make his mind turn off. His voice drops softer as he continues. “And for being an idiot. You should be banned from football.”  
  
~  
  
He's been looking at Shane, so wrapped up in this possibility that he's just completely forgotten the blood. He really didn't mean to get blood on Shane. He'd had every intention of not. "Right, sorry." He's mostly genuine.

He steps to him. It's an excuse to get closer, and to avoid answering the idiot jab--again. He takes it and reaches up scrubs at the already drying blood with the sleeve of his clean hand.

Jolts of electricity pop down his arm, to his chest, but he tries to ignore them. Tries to give himself the closeness without the question.

"I wasn't making fun of you. You just obviously hated it."  
  
~  
  
“You probably should have been making fun,” he laughs softly, still enough to be almost tense beneath Ryan’s touch. But they’re so close now, and Shane slides his hands up over Ryan’s hips, hands just ghosting over fabric, and then closes his fingers in his sweater as he swallows.

The noise reaches this screaming pitch, all these things he wants to say; wants to never say because that makes them even more real— it’s all caught up with losing Ryan, all the ways it could have happened, all the ways it might still happen, all the anger and fear and affection he’s got swirling like a storm at the centre of him.

He likes that Ryan told him to shut up, and he could. He liked the soft slide of Ryan’s mouth harshly against his own. Shane slides one hand up Ryan’s side and over his chest and catches his jaw in this quick, almost helpless motion. Like that moment after leaping from an outcropping of rocks into the clear water below: No stopping it now.

He tips Ryan’s head up a little more and kisses him again, more tentative than the one Ryan started outside, but only because he’s holding himself carefully back, feeling this out. Even standing too far away his breath skips, and he lingers against Ryan’s lips like he might be able to breathe his air, like Ryan might open up to Shane again the way he had outside, both of them impervious to the impending dusk, because, God, Shane thinks Ryan could illuminate them both if he just figures out how to let him.  
  
~  
   
Relief floods into him when Shane kisses him. It’s stupid, really—how hard he was thinking about it, how much he wasn’t sure if he should. How much he knew he _would_. But Shane kisses him in this gentle, soft way, and there’s this renewal of certainty. This hope. No, stronger than hope, something real.  
   
There’s still this lingering question in the kiss—the way Shane stays himself, like they’re still figuring out what it means. What’s actually between them. But this is enough—this is more than he expected. His sleeve is still pressed to Shane’s face when Shane kisses him and he doesn’t move it for a second. He lets Shane kiss him, doesn’t push.  
   
Then he slides his hand, still mostly covered by his sleeve, back until he cups Shane’s neck and pulls him to him. Just a little. Just enough that when Ryan opens his mouth it’s against Shane’s, and his breath comes slow enough that it doesn’t bounce back into him like it did outside—it just sinks into Shane.  
  
~  
  
He steps closer, too quick, like falling into it, and the movement pushes Ryan back half a step, and Shane keeps his head tipped up, fingers digging in a little.

This kiss though, somehow gentler than the one outside, doesn’t feel any less intense, and Shane tries to make himself smaller — fit against Ryan’s warmth, submit to Ryan’s tug at the back of his neck. It’s— difficult.

He breathes a laugh against Ryan’s mouth, sudden enough to almost startle himself and he has to fucking straighten his knees as he draws back a little, enough to see him. “You’re too— you’re very small,” he informs him, both hands sliding beneath Ryan’s jaw, up on either side of his ears, into that dark hair where his fingers snag a little at tangles.  
  
~  
   
Ryan scowls. The height different is definitely a thing—but if Shane’s been with girls, then this can’t be nearly as annoying as that. Ryan is average height for a guy, and guys are taller than girls and now he’s jealous of the girls that Shane has kissed. So his scowl’s probably worse. Shane’s hands are holding Ryan’s head, back in his hair. He doesn’t want Shane to let go, as much as he wants to hit him.  
   
“No, you’re just _giant_. I’m average height!” He steps towards Shane and pushes up onto his toes, trying to prove this point. But he still has to tug Shane down so their close enough again. He doesn’t kiss him, though, just holds this position where their mouths are hovering in this same, shared space. Almost nothing between them. It’s weird—annoying, really, not being the taller of the two of them. Ryan’s always dated shorter girls. And he’s never—jesus, he’s never actually kissed a guy before. This hits him hard enough that he blinks. It doesn’t really matter. It’s kissing, but—he didn’t even think about it.  
   
“I… just realized I haven’t kissed a guy… before this.” And then he kisses Shane again, fingers sliding up to his face, before either of them can think too hard about it.  
  
~  
  
Shane really wants to force Ryan back down onto his heels again, because he knows it would annoy Ryan and Shane thinks that would be funny, but then Ryan pulls him close and he forgets everything except the desperate pounding of his heart and the taste of Ryan’s mouth and how badly he wants it again. Still, he waits, just letting all this desire pulse through him, rocking him down to his very bones with every beat of his heart so they they come millimetres closer, further apart, closer again.

_I haven’t kissed a guy before this._

Shane’s halfway through a syllable but then he’s kissed again and he shuts up. That’s what he needs, he needs to shut up, inside his head and outside of it and— and it’s easier like this, and he tugs Ryan closer, hands dropping to press between his shoulder blades, and near the base of his spine, keeping him against Shane’s own chest, holding him there, balancing Ryan’s weight against his own.  
  
His thoughts still play on endlessly in the background, but they’re softer now, like static, and Shane kisses Ryan harder, wonders if, if he could just get close enough, if he could know what silence really sounds like. Not the solitary kind, not sinking so deep into his own thoughts he barely realizes he’s a human being anymore, but the peace, the safety he’s getting hints of here, in Ryan.  
  
~  
  
Ryan has to arc to keep his mouth on Shane's, but he does. He needs to. It's all these hot searing sparks up his back, across his shoulders where Shane's hands sit in the middle. He loops his arms completely around Shane's neck and curls his hands into his hair.

It's less frantic than before, quieter, but not less. Maybe more. He's frantic though, the way he kisses—all this desperation and want that's built in him, for Shane. He's mid kiss, almost, when he backs off, still close enough that is words hit Shane's mouth. "We could just lay down."

Pushing Shane, with all his four thousand feet of limbs feels dangerous. But instead of letting him answer, he kisses him again. Slides his tongue into Shane's mouth and wonders if the only time he's got this in him is when he's cutting Shane off.  
  
~  
  
Oh, God, that’s a _lot_. That’s a lot but he can’t pretend he doesn’t want it. He makes a sound against Ryan’s mouth as this rushing wave of desire rolls hotly through him, and then Ryan pushes his tongue into Shane’s mouth and then he’s halfway through pushing Ryan back towards the makeshift bed before he catches up with himself.

It’s a long way to the ground, for Shane. He’s got Ryan by the hip and the back of the neck, and he’s forgotten about practicalities like shoes and the fact that that’s probably very unhygienic to just stand on the mostly-clean blankets Zack’s given them, but whatever. Shane truly doesn’t care and in this moment that is a beautiful feeling, and he’s all caught up in this — in the way he can feel Ryan’s breath against his own lips and the way his fingers tangle in Shane’s hair and the comforting, fucking intoxicating press of Ryan’s chest against his.  
  
Shane drops to his knees on the bed and pulls Ryan down with him until they’re a little more on a  level, never breaking the kiss completely, and he hopes this is right, but then, Ryan won’t let him say anything so he just tries his best to understand with this touch alone. He thinks maybe he might be able to, but it’s strange and new, because that possibility never even existed before Ryan found him.  
  
~  
   
Ryan never fully stops. Kissing Shane, touching Shane, any of it. He knows as soon as he does he’s going to want to roll this back. He’s going to wonder why they’re not still standing and why he asked for them not to be when it could lead… far. Too far, possibly.  
   
He lets Shane pull him down, but doesn’t push further. They’re still not level. Shane’s upper leg is honestly probably the length of Ryan’s entire leg. But it doesn’t matter, because Shane’s kissing him and jesus, Ryan’s waited for Shane to kiss him like this, to open up like this, for so long that nothing else matters. Just these exchanges breaths and this damp, incendiary heat bursting between them. Everything unspoken crackles and fades beneath it like a lit fuse—it’s probably leading somewhere, but not tonight.  
   
Hopefully not tonight.  
   
He’s spent all this time hoping Shane’s going to talk, hating the silence, and now he’s not letting him say anything. He doesn’t know why. He doesn’t know why he’s afraid of Shane thinking about this, like if he does, he’ll realize this is a horrible idea. That Ryan’s yanked him into this. So Ryan keeps kissing him, fast and frantic, because he’s afraid of what comes after this. Physically. Emotionally. All of it. He’s scared.  
   
He’s scared of what it means that Zack’s coming with him, and the only way it stops—the only way he can breathe is with Shane’s breath, with his fingers still twisted up in his hair. So it kind of surprises even him when he breaks the kiss. It’s abrupt, but he doesn’t let the space linger, instead he presses his lips to Shane’s jaw and drops into the crook of his neck. Still holding on, like they’ve just been hugging this entire time.  
   
_I have no idea what I’m doing._  
  
~  
  
“Oh, okay,” Shane says, quiet, surprised. It’s a change that leaves his head spinning a little.

But he thinks he gets it, though. Maybe. Maybe he just hopes he does. ... _never kissed a guy before..._ he ducks his head down against Ryan’s, sort of trying to get a read on this, but it doesn’t take him long before he wraps his long arms around him a little tighter, a little more like a hug than the desperate clinging he’d been doing a moment ago.

Shane reaches up and runs his fingers through Ryan’s hair, down to the top of his spine and back again, tension dropping away from him by degrees.  
  
~  
  
Ryan breathes unevenly for a second, too long probably. Shane's running a hand over his back, and it's soothing like something he's lost. It's this calming energy that sinks into him and steadies his heartbeat, and eventually his breath.  
  
He pulls off Shane and grabs his face when either hands. He leans forward and kisses him in this soft, feather light touch. It lingers for a blink, then Ryan presses his forehead against Shane's. Somehow out of breath and entirely composed all at once.  
  
“Sorry.” His lips split for this harsh kind of laugh. “Too fast or too slow is apparently all I can do.”  
  
~  
  
Shane keeps his eyes shut for a moment after Ryan draws away. His hands have slipped down Ryan’s sides, and he slips his fingers beneath the hem of his shirt to brush them against the soft skin at Ryan’s waist.  
  
And he sort of wants to ask Ryan if he’s okay, but he thinks he is, and in truth, there’s a part of him that’s a little relieved, because as much as he wants this, wants Ryan, in a thousand different ways, he’s scared to be… what?  
  
Ryan’s all fire and light and this endless, unquenchable passion and energy. And fuck, if he thinks Shane’s enough, if he wants Shane like he said, then Shane is _fucking_ going to try to _be_ enough. But he still can’t convince himself he’ll succeed. He drops down and back, onto his heels, drawing away from him a little. Too much. But he doesn’t let him go. Shane takes a steadying breath and says “Don’t. Don’t be sorry. This is still pretty good, right? This—…” he doesn’t know what to call it, he just wants to know that they’re on the same page.  
  
What exactly are they, anyway?  
  
~  
  
Shane doesn’t let go, but he does pull away. Ryan follows him, as much as he can, with his body. He doesn’t know what he wants here. He’s caught in this tug, this current of back and forth, where part of him wants to lie down and let this be enough—let this end on a good note without anything further, but another part wants this whole thing. The entire fucking sun. He wants to shove it down his own throat and pray it doesn’t kill him.  
   
But it might.  
   
His hands slide over Shane’s shoulders so he gets a grip on his collar. He squeezes, tight—maybe too tight, but he doesn’t pull it, not really. That’s what he did before, outside, yanked Shane’s collar and kissed him. It’s weird… this thing between them. It’s certainly not like what Ryan did over a year ago in a bar bathroom, but it’s not… it’s not what he’s had before that either. Shane is a guy. Obviously. But Ryan wants him, like he’s wanted girls—more than that, in this certain, pounding drumbeat. He wants all of this. He wants sex, to make Shane believe him—that he’s good enough. He wants to kiss him, to fall asleep in his arms like he has a dozen times, and to wake up and know what this is.  
   
To say exactly what’s been running through his mind for, fuck—he doesn’t even know how long it’s been. But he wants all of it. He wants Shane to want all of it.  
   
He moves forward like he might kiss Shane again, but he doesn’t. He’s just close. Really fucking close. “I don’t—we don’t… just, what do you want?” Shane pulled away, maybe he wants to stop—or maybe he’s trying to read Ryan like Ryan’s trying to read him. Fuck. Ryan just wants this to be right. And what was right would probably have been coming back in here and having sex and it going mind blowingly great and  that’s clearly not happening because he’s stumbling back like Shane’s got an axe. Because it’s never meant this much. It’s never been this _scary_.  
   
He squeezes Shane’s collar tight enough that his hands won’t shake, tilting his head up so he’s looking hard into his face, with this earnest desperation that he hopes is half obvious in his eyes. This fear of unclenching his fist and losing _everything_.  
   
“Shane.”  
  
~  
  
Ryan asks him what he wants, and Shane doesn’t know how deep this question goes, and he’s already sort of panicking, realizing that he hasn’t really said _anything_ at all to Ryan since Ryan told him what he did in front of the grocery store today, and that that must look bad and he’s scrambling, eyes getting more and more anxious, and then Ryan says his name and Shane stops.  
  
He just stops, the constant clammer in his head stops and he just sees Ryan. For a second, everything is clear. “Hey,” he says, halfway between a greeting and concern. “It’s okay, why are you—” he laughs a little, but his eyes are still uncertain. “I’ve got you, we— it’s all right.” He reaches up for Ryan’s hands on his collar and works on getting his own fingers around them, pulling him off but just so he can hold onto him. He drops his eyes for a second, trying to get everything together so that it’s coherent.  
  
“I uh…” he licks his lip, bites it for a second as he fights with himself to get the words to come up, to shape them and get them between them. It’s always so _hard_ , and he doesn’t know why. It’s always been hard, but it’s harder with Ryan. And yet, he tries more, he _wants_ to try more. “I want…” he turns Ryan’s hands over in his own so his palms are up, and Shane runs his thumbs over both Ryan’s wrists, where the skin is thinner. His veins look almost green beneath it. “I want,” he tries again, shaping the words carefully like they’re a foundation for something, like their structural integrity is crucial. “To be, uh… to be more than just the first guy you’ve kissed.” Christ, this is so hard, he’s already said it wrong. “No, I mean… if you… I know this is all.” He takes a breath, and in a voice that’s more confident, more like him, he says, “Here’s the thing. This is new, for you. But I, it’s…” He lets one of his hands go to rub his face, half-hiding. “It’s new for me, too. I’m not used to… jesus. Ryan…” He looks up at him. “I’m not used to feeling this much for anyone. Or anything. I just… what I meant was that we could just sort of, you know, muddle through this whole thing together, maybe. Because I want to be… I want to be the first… uh… you know, person you… not just this stuff,” Shane tries to clarify. “All kinds of stuff. Surviving the literal apocalypse, uh… have you ever tried Spam? I could do that with you. Anything, I don’t… at this point, I would do anything. With you. That’s what I want. Fuck, does that—? No, I made it worse.”  
  
~  
   
Ryan pulls back, not with his hands, just his head. Mostly to process everything Shane just said. Because it was a hell of a lot more than Ryan expected him to say. Ryan stares at their hands and takes a breath. There’s a smile trying to push its way onto his face, because it was good things. It was Shane saying he wanted to try Spam with Ryan—to be the first person to. He just said Ryan’s the first person that’s ever made him—that he’s ever felt this much for. It’s almost an invitation for more. It’s certainly not a closed door on it.  
   
He lets himself laugh and shakes his head. “You didn’t—no, you didn’t make it worse. You’re—you’re a lot more than the first guy I’ve kissed. You’re also an _idiot_ , but it makes sense. Kinda.” He looks up at Shane again. All these words are still pressing at his mouth, sliding around his tongue like a newly polished ice rink. It’s never been easy between them. Not this part.  
   
Because there’s another side of it. This physical side that’s got Ryan worked up and scared and out of sorts. Because there halfway there, but they aren’t there. There are still so many ways he could fuck this up. But Shane wants this, as bad as Ryan does, maybe—and maybe that’s all they need right now. To somehow to get to the other side of this… stupid bullshit.  
   
“Spam sounds fucking gross, though.”  
   
And then he kisses him again, but it’s not insistent and desperate this time. It’s because he wants to. And he can.  
  
~  
  
He can see him trying to suppress all this light inside himself and Shane wishes he wouldn’t he almost says something, but then Ryan’s calling him an idiot and saying Spam is gross.  
  
“Yeah,” Shane begins, sort of aiming for the last word, maybe, but then Ryan kisses him again and Shane gasps softly against his mouth before he leans into it, presses closer. His heart is still pounding, because of everything he’s just said. It’s scary. He wonders if Ryan realizes how scared Shane is, and he doesn’t know whether or not he wants him to. In this moment thought, it doesn’t matter. In this moment they’re okay, and really, in this world, that’s all they have.  
  
He touches Ryan’s face, traces the shape of his cheekbone, the curve of his ear. He drifts a little, because he feels safe. Because the kiss isn’t consuming him completely. He tries to pull himself back to it, but this is the hard part. When he starts trying to focus too hard on what he should be doing, he gets lost completely. And then he’s thinking, all over again, that Ryan — in all his intensity — might not understand that. He breaks the kiss and shifts forward enough to press a hard, brief kiss on the side of Ryan’s temple then says, “I’m lying down. My knees.” Something pops as he unfolds his legs and he says “Someday a zombie’s going to hear my joints and I’m gonna be toast. Shane Breakfast.”  
  
~  
   
Ryan doesn’t say anything for a minute. Shane lies down, and Ryan just kind of watches him. He laughs quietly, but it’s distant. This is too much, honestly. All these puzzles pieces. Shane’s backing away from this too. Ryan can’t decide if he’s hurt or relieved, but he’s pretty sure he’s just afraid. Maybe Shane is too. And that’s what’s building between them. This wild, burning fear that there’s something one of them won’t be able to grab onto. They’re dangling on this edge, and one of them is going to fall off, and the other is going to climb back over and just… have to keep going.  
   
Ryan will do anything for that not to be the case, or at least, for Shane not to be the one that falls. Ryan’s never been the one who moves on—he’s always been the one that falls too hard or too fast, and ends up alone. But Shane is afraid of him. He said that one: _you wouldn’t hurt me, would you?_ Ryan thought he meant physically—like he did with his mother, but Shane doesn’t know that. That’s not what he meant.  
   
And that’s something Ryan can keep from happening. He can protect Shane from that, just like he can protect everyone else from this anger, this violence that he’s worried has latched onto him like an unwanted limb. He needs this not to end in Shane hurt—in Shane reaffirming the stupid fucking notion that he's not enough. That he should give something that he doesn’t have.  
   
Ryan eventually lies down next to him and stares at the ceiling. He winces at a pang in his bad leg where he rested on it too long and he thinks it’s funny, how Shane does these things—even when he doesn’t realize—but they end up being good for Ryan. Like he’s got all these instincts about Ryan that no one’s ever had, that even Ryan doesn’t have.  
   
“You’ll be fine,” he says, because he will be—he fucking will be.  
  
~  
  
Shane doesn’t mean to fall asleep before Ryan does, but he must have. When he opens his eyes again, it’s morning and Ryan’s— at first he thinks he’s gone, but no. He rolls over and almost into Ryan’s legs and awareness washes over him coldly, too quickly. “Oh, damn,” Shane says, sounding genuinely troubled. He reaches up to rub his eyes. It’s always harder to focus in the morning and in the evening, when he’s tired. He wishes his glasses weren’t gone forever. He pushes himself up a little, frowning up at Ryan sort of blearily. He’s reading. It’s Harry Potter.  
  
“Did you _not_ sleep?” he asks. “What time is it?” He’s so disoriented. He hopes he didn’t just completely pass out like an asshole, after everything they talked about, but it seems kinda like he did.  
  
~  
   
Ryan shouldn’t be surprised at how fast Shane falls asleep, but he kinda is. And that’s part of what gets him going. Shane’s asleep. He needs to be. And he’s not—and then he’s back to Jake and the zombie from today, and the way its mouth smelled like rotten meat and it’s eye rubbed against his cheek and the way its skin folded and drew back over its bones when it touched. Every creak and noise in the store has his eyes flashing open and his skin prickling and twisting until the pang in his leg is a full on burn. He doesn’t know how long he actually tries. He’s laid there for the entire night before, but there’s nothing this time. No breaks—and any almost-sleep he gets is immediately stopped by a fucking nightmare.  
   
So instead he gets up, first, he just watches Shane. It’s peaceful, soothing, now that he’s not trying to sleep. He wants to reach out and touch him, or maybe curl into him. But Shane’s asleep, and it seems… like something he needs permission for. Maybe he shouldn’t after everything, but he does. He ends up digging through one of the bags and finding the Harry Potter book from the bookstore. It’s one of the few they’ve kept after all the bag shuffling.  
   
He goes back over to the bed and reads lying down for a while, but it’s uncomfortable holding the book over his head, or under him, either way his arms or his elbows or something bothers him. So he gets up and reads. His eyes blur some, but once he gets into the groove of the story it stops mattering much. He hasn’t read in ages. It’s weird.  
   
Shane’s voice startles him. He’s close to halfway through the damn book. It’s obviously been a while. And looking up makes his eyes unfocus for a second as he finds Shane. “Oh, uh… a little, I did.” Because it sounds better than not at all. “I think it’s morning, but I’m not sure what time—you had the watch, right? I haven’t heard Zack yet.”  
  
~  
  
Shane pulls this face like he’s annoyed at himself. He pushes his fingers through his hair, then drags himself up to sit against the wall, beside Ryan. Jesus, he desperately wants to wash his hair. They need to find somewhere else with running water. He brushes his arm against Ryan’s very very gently, like an accident, looking down at the book over his shoulder. “Gotta find the next one,” he says, after a moment.  
  
Zack’s uncertain tap on the door comes a few minutes later. The day starts. Shane keeps throwing uncertain glances at Ryan because he seems a little out of it, but he’s more than willing to help Zack push the car back towards the front of the store so he can work on it without being so far away. The three of them spend the morning doing that (Zack and Ryan fight about who’s going to steer, and in the end it’s Zack) and when they get back Shane wants a shower way more than he did that morning, but they have to make due with water from the water bottles and clean(er) clothes and thinks that this zombie apocalypse thing really stinks.  
  
He and Ryan kind of hover around unhelpfully after they eat something while Zack tinkers with things beneath the hood of the car, and finally he tells them to go away so he can focus. “I feel like I’m doing an exam or something, you’re making me nervous.” There’s nothing around. They haven’t seen anything or anyone since the zombie from yesterday, so they feel safe enough to go back in. Shane hopes it fucking stays that way.  
  
The sun’s starting to beat down. It’s still winter, but fuck, it’s warm by the afternoon. Or maybe it’s just warm for Shane. The other two, literal sunshine-California boys seem perfectly fine. It’s a relief to go back into the store though, where there’s shade if nothing else. There’s not much to do though, but go back to the room where their bed is. Ryan gets the book again, but he keeps rubbing at his eyes until Shane finally snatches the book from him and starts reading it out loud in stupid voices, trying to make Ryan laugh, but eventually he just reads it. Properly. He has to hold it too close to his face to do it, but his eyes are in better shape than Ryan’s it seems.  
  
~  
   
“That’s bad for your eyes…” Ryan was holding the book close, but not that close. Shane’s essentially got it plastered to his forehead. He’s reading the book like he’s a preschool teacher, at first, with these dumb—really, horribly dumb—voices. In spite of himself, Ryan laughs a couple times between demanding Shane stop immediately.  
   
He sits for a while, but eventually lies down because Shane’s insisting on reading this stupid book. He’s glad to be off his feet, honestly. He’s used to no sleep, but he is definitely not used to pushing cars around. He props his head on his hands, and somehow that ends up being his head on his arms. Because Shane stops doing the voices and it’s just this steady stream of voice that Ryan is trying to focus on, but he keeps fading in and out, missing sentences, and then entire _paragraphs_.  
   
He doesn’t mean to fall asleep, but that’s usually how it is. He just crashes. Head still on his arm, which falls out over his head, away from the other hand curled at his chest.  
  
~  
  
It’s tiring to read without his glasses, but he keeps going. Even after he hears Ryan’s breath even out and deepen, he reads for a little while longer until he thinks stopping won’t pull him out of it.

He lowers the book and sits crosslegged for a little while, watching him. The way his fingers flutter every so often against his chest, the part of his lips. He has to fight the urge to reach out and touch him because he knows that would wake him up. After a little while Shane leans his head back against the wall and closes his eyes which are starting to itch. Until a noise startles him.

It’s Zack, he knows. The movements are too coordinated and certain to be anyone or anything else, but still, he’s rattling around out there and Shane gets up carefully, steps over Ryan’s legs and goes out to find him. He glances back once, at the doorway, but Ryan hasn’t moved.

“He’s uh, sleeping,” Shane says, and it’s sort of awkward because Zack probably doesn’t know that Ryan doesn’t. Anyway, it’s a nice way to say _shut up, Zack_ , so that’s what he does.

“Oh, sorry,” Zack says. “I was just looking for this.” He holds something up. Metal, maybe, that looks like it belongs inside a car or might fix something inside a car. Shane has no idea what it is so he just says “Oh. Great.”

There’s an awkward pause. Zack glances back out front then says, “Cool. Well I’m going to get back to it.”

Shane nods, thinking that maybe the ease that sprung up between them yesterday on the bleachers wasn’t lasting, and that’s fine, and he watches Zack go back out into the day, the sunlight somehow still gleaming off his hair even though it’s as unwashed as Shane’s is. Shane squints at him and tells himself not to be stupid.

With one last glance towards the other room, he follows Zack out. If Ryan wakes up, they’re right outside. He’ll probably be able to hear them if they’re talking, and he kind of needs to talk to Zack. He has a feeling that if he doesn’t, Zack won’t come with them, when Ryan inevitably asks him to.

He grabs the pipe and crosses the dusty pavement to the car slowly. “How’s it going?” he asks, looking into the mess of whatever’s under the hood that might as well be an overturned plate of spaghetti to Shane. Everything’s confusing. Why are cars like this? Why can’t you just turn them off and back on again?  
  
~  
  
Zack is surprised to see Shane. For any number of reasons, but he isn't going to turn away company. He's spent months on his own. Whatever Shane's reasons, he'll take it. He doesn't stop his work on the car.

"Slow, but it's going." He pauses and pulls himself out of the car long enough to ask, "Is Ryan okay?"

It's weird to sleep in the middle of the day, right? In this world, anyway.  
  
~  
  
“Yeah,” Shane says, like it’s no big deal “he just didn’t get much sleep last night.” It’s three quarters of the way out of his mouth before he realizes how it sounds. He flashes an oh-shit gaze at Zack. “Not— anyway. What are you going to do once the car’s fixed?” Shane asks. He feels like he’s veering wildly off into another topic, which is exactly what he’s doing, which probably makes him look guiltier. Whatever. He gets his expression into something that’s mostly vague curiosity and doesn’t quite meet Zack’s eyes.  
  
~  
  
Okay. That definitely sounds like sex. But Zack is pretty sure he'd have heard something. Maybe not. It's not his business. But good for them, that's a better reason than most for not sleeping during the apocalypse.

He smiles at Shane, smirks really, but lets it drop. "Oh, well, not planning on stealing it if that's what you mean."  
  
~  
  
“No, I mean… what’re you going to do here, man?” Shane asks. “There’s nothing around.” He pushes his sleeves up to his elbows just for something to do with his hands. “It’s a long trek to anywhere once you run out of food…"  
  
~  
  
Oh shit. Is this going where he thinks it's going? He would not have expected this. Especially from Shane. He tries to be relaxed. Not immediately get excited.

"Oh, uh, yeah. I mean I was making it work before, so..."  
  
~  
  
Shane’s watching him now. Fuck, he feels bad for him. That’s not any kind of life for a person like Zack, so he says “I think you should come with us. Ryan’s going to ask you. Obviously he’s going to ask, so…” Ryan is good. Zack has to know that Ryan’s not just going to leave him here.  
  
“I don’t think staying here’s a good idea and I think that we’d probably be better off with three of us anyway… what do you say?”  
  
~  
  
"Wait, really?!" Zack pulls away from the car. He's jumping, probably overly excited for this but... He was terrified of even hoping they'd let him. Shit, no more nights talking to himself , wondering if he'd forget what other people sounded like.

He's grinning. He should chill. "Y-yes! That would—that would be amazing!" He's not chill. But he doesn't have to feel bad now and worry Shane's resenting bringing him. Because, yeah, he did half expect Ryan to ask. But certainly not Shane. "Thanks, man, that's... Being out here alone has honestly sucked."  
  
~  
  
Shane has to laugh, and it’s genuine. And it’s easier than feeling sorry for him, because that’s what a big part of Shane wants to do. “All right, don’t— I mean, I’m just glad you’re not a kooky murderer or something, you know… people. People now are not great.”  
  
Shane wonders if he’s actually one of those not great people. Granted, Zack had trained that gun at his hip on both of them, but Shane had contemplated literally bashing his brains in with the the pipe he’s holding now. That’s somehow, more fucked up. “Okay. Great, good. Pretend to be this excited when Ryan asks,” Shane tells him still sort of smiling, but it’s vague and his eyes are on the ground as he pushes his hair out of his eyes.  
  
He’s still not sure about this. He’s not sure how things will change, or how it will be, with both of them, in cramped quarters. Ryan is one thing. Ryan is a whole separate universe, to Shane. He knows it’s going to be hard, though. He tries not to sigh, but he can feel the exhaustion at the edges of his mind.  
  
It’s not Zack. He likes Zack, probably, beneath this stupid, superficial jealousy that really, apparently, has no place here. He likes Zack in the way he might have liked a classmate, a neighbour. Shane knows he doesn’t want to leave him. Maybe with three of them to keep watch, with Zack to brighten things up, especially for Ryan, they’ll all be a little bit better off. Maybe Shane will be a little bit more human.  
  
He doesn’t want to have thoughts like that again. He presses the end of the pipe into the ground and thinks about Jake again. The heat here almost makes him forget how cold it was that night, in the rain.  
  
Maybe that’s why Ryan wants to go west so badly.  
  
~  
  
Zack grins. He's trying not to. He's trying to be casual. Shane doesn't look that thrilled. But he asked and honestly it's more than Zack imagined ever happening.

"I'll do my best..." And then because he's feeling bold, as he looks back at the car, he said, "maybe he could've been part of this if you hadn't kept him up all night."  
  
~  
  
Shane takes in this sharp breath and says “Okay, to clarify, that is _not_ what I meant, you’re making it so much filthier than it has to be, what are you— don’t— what’re you doing?” Shane asks, and he’s getting all tangled up in his own words. He squints up towards the sun like he’s praying for it to give him a sunburn so he doesn’t have to admit to this flushed heat creeping up in his face.  
  
~  
  
Zack doesn't know where to start on explaining everything to Shane. And it isn't like he's interested. He's embarrassed and dodging the conversation topic. Zack ought to let him off. He being so nice.

But he doesn't want to. Because he's kind of invested in this little relationship now. And he's clearly going to be experiencing a lot more of it.

"Oh, I'm sure it was very vanilla. Whatever you did." He glances over his shoulder. "Maybe you just had a very frank conversation about your feelings."  
  
~  
  
“All right,” Shane says, and he’s speaking slightly too high to be as chill as he wants to be, but there’s something behind it, something real. “Yeah. Yeah we did, maybe.” It’s a little bit of a challenge. He’s not going to play these silly boys-club games that Zack and Ryan do. “Why are _you_ so invested, man?” He smiles at him just enough that it can be taken as a joke, but there’s something curious in his eyes.  
  
~  
  
Shane gives, but there's a dare behind it. A challenge that might just be another strategy. "One, because I like you guys, and you were a mess. I was worried you might kill each other. Or me." They need each other, these two do. Even more than Zack needs them.

"Two, it's nice to hear about something good, or see it, to counteract all this shit. And, three, well... You're in love with him, aren't you? It's important to say that. Even when the world's not ending."  
  
~  
  
Shane thinks his heart stops beating. He gapes at Zack for a second, reeling, because he hasn’t let himself think it. He’s known it. He’s known, but he hasn’t let himself think it.  
  
Shane reaches out and presses his hand against the top of the car, feels its warmth beneath his fingertips, the grittiness from the dust coating it. It’s so much more real than when he was pushing it earlier today — the exact same feeling, but somehow more now. More pronounced. He feels more alive, more present.  
  
This is somehow worlds apart from ‘ _are you into him_ ’. Shane’s been into a lot of people, in one way or another. Not like this. Not in this terrifying, beautiful, chaotic mindfuck of colors and lights. And quiet... and home, that is Ryan Bergara.  
  
Shane presses his weight into his hand, totally gone for a second. He’s back against the post with Ryan’s hands on him and Ryan’s panting breath against his lips. He’s in their room in the back of the store with Ryan kissing him frantically like he doesn’t know how to stop. And even without that. There’s Ryan on his doorstep pleading with him for Jake, and his voice hoarse from fear and exhaustion, and there’s the way he laughs, and the way he twisted to press into Shane that first time and took Shane’s breath away and gave it back to him something like centuries later, yesterday, when he said ‘I _want_ you.’  
  
And it shivers in Shane, all of this. It’s been kicked up like dust and wind, knocking around in his ribs like his wild heartbeat for months.  
  
“I’m in love with him,” Shane says, almost like he’s repeating it. Inside his chest it sparks and he pulls away from the car to press his wrist against his eye, glancing at Zack, then away, out across this wasteland.  
  
“Yeah, I am.”  
  
~  
  
Zack tilts his head, watches Shane be extremely slow about the whole thing. He'd thought it was a given. He can't imagine Shane saying no he's not into Ryan then desperately correcting himself about sixty seconds if he wasn't in love with him. It's painfully obvious, but Zack doubts either of them have said it.

"Yeah.” He says, like a child has labeled an animal in a picture book correctly. “And judging way you look like you just had some kind of religious experience saying that, I'm guessing that isn't what you talked about."

These two are a mess. If it was a year ago, Zack would be a hundred feet away watching this explode before it worked itself out. But it's not a year ago. It's the apocalypse and Shane and Ryan deserve this. Without the explosion. Everyone does.  
  
~  
  
He shakes his head, wraps one long arm across his torso to hold the other near the elbow as he looks back. “Don’t say anything,” Shane says, and it feels unfair, because Zack has been so good with everything else. With Shane’s moodiness and Ryan’s insomnia and trying so hard to be kind and welcoming and understanding. Shane knows he’s not going to try and ruin this. “I just. I… want to do it right.”  
  
It surprises him a little. But no, he does. He wants to do it right, because he feels like he’s done everything else sort of wrong so far. He’s been drunk when he shouldn’t be, he’s pushed Ryan away and pulled him back because he’s a coward. He’s closed himself off until Ryan had to be the one to kiss him… And here’s Shane, talking about wanting firsts with Ryan, when he’s messed up all of them so far.  
  
~  
  
Zack scoffs. "Oh, hell no. I'm not getting that far in the middle of you guys. Trust me." He's confident Shane's going to find a way to drag this out, though. Doing things the right way seems like Shane's recipe for never doing them. Not intentionally maybe, but still.

"But I mean, if you're wanting to drag him to Disneyland and do it under the fireworks--you're probably SOL. Seems like something zombies would be into."

It's a fucking sad thought. There is no more Disneyland. No more anything like that. It's just wasteland now. That's probably why Shane wants it to be perfect. Because nothing is anymore.  
  
~  
  
“You think zombies are into doing it under the fireworks?” Shane asks, forcing himself to laugh because he needs to keep this easy. He can’t look like Zack’s basically just slapped him across the face with Shane’s own completely idiocy. “Are you a necrophiliac if you’re both dead? How would that work?”  
  
~  
  
Zack has to pause what he's doing because wow is that not what meant. He guess he did say into it, which, Jesus this guy's is weird as fuck. He laughs, shaking his head. So hard he's got to pull away from the car.

"I'm... wow. No, that's... not--also I'm pretty sure it's not necrophilia if..." It's so dumb. It's the weirdest thing he could be saying. And yet, it's funny.

Ryan pulls out of sleep way too fast. It's disorienting to the point of hurting his head, worse because there is nothing to ground him. Somewhere on the edge of a nightmare about transfiguration and zombies. And he wakes up panicked. For Shane, for Jake, for everything. A thousand realities scramble through him before he remembers which one he's in.

It's the grocery store. But he doesn't know what time it is and Shane's not here. No one's here. And he's caught in what might be  terror. Because he doesn't know where Shane is and it's weird--he hasn't woken up completely alone since this started. A brush against his hand jars him off the floor and there's a fucking bug. A roach. And that doesn't help because his heart's beating fast enough to rip open his chest.

He glances at the Harry Potter book. And okay, he remembers that. It was day time. Shane was reading. Okay... Then he hears it, the noise, definitely people noises. It's articulate, muted. Not zombies.

Not zombies.

He jumps up and walks out into the store, then to the entrance. And it's Shane and Zack, laughing about something. He tries to label this. Process it in his head. Shane left him because he was asleep. He came out to talk to Zack. That makes sense. It's not... Fuck, he's still unnerved from the roach and the dream and... This feels big. It feels like a wrench crushed against his chest.

He exhales because he needs to work this out somehow. Because it's nothing. It's not Shane needing companionship, not Ryan. It's not Zack being skilled and smart and funny and useful. In all these ways Ryan keeps failing to be.

"Oh, hey Ryan." Zack smiles at him. "That was a short power nap."

Zack's kidding and Ryan needs to make sure he doesn't snap at him for literally no reason. And it's an excuse not to look at Shane. Because he really shouldn't right now. So he smiles back. "Unintentional power nap, so yeah."  
  
~  
  
Zack says _oh hey Ryan_ , like it doesn’t affect him in the the slightest. Meanwhile, Shane’s stomach does something that feels an awful lot like plummeting down the track on a roller coaster as he looks over and it’s just this burst of warmth and excitement and definitely fear. Definitely that, too. It’s like he’s seeing him for the first time all over again, only he’s so familiar, and he looks tired, still, and sort of weird — pale, lost.  
  
“Hey,” Shane says, but it comes out so softly that he doesn’t even know if Ryan can hear it. His heart’s pounding. And fuck, he’d meant to get back before Ryan woke up. Instinctively, Shane takes a step forward, suddenly wishing hard that it was just them so that he could— something. Anything. Smooth Ryan’s hair down where it’s sticking up near the back. Or just dig his hands into it.  
  
Anyway, the car’s in the way. Mostly. Shane just folds his arms along the top of it and rests his chin against his arms, ridiculous, cartoonish, eyes on Ryan. “Come over here and be useless with me.” It shivers through him, slick. It’s so open, vulnerable. He didn’t quite mean to be so vulnerable and maybe it shows in his eyes, or maybe it doesn’t. The sun’s behind Shane, so maybe he’s mostly shadowed. Ryan’s the one illuminated.  
  
~  
  
Ryan is flustered. He wants so badly not to be. Shane said last night... Fuck, what'd he say? It definitely made Ryan feel good at the time. Firsts. Wanting to be more. Shane wouldn't have said that if Ryan was replaceable. To him. He wouldn't have.

Ryan takes a second before he looks at Shane. He can't be weird about this. Shane didn't do anything. Fuck, he's being social. It's good. He's making friends (just friends) with Zack. It's great, and Ryan wishes there wasn't this undercurrent of wanting to hide Zack under the car. Because that's not fair either.

He thinks about saying no. That he'd rather go in and read, do anything but have to pretend he isn't being an emotional idiot right now. A jealous idiot. But that's weird, and unfair, and when he looks at Shane, there's this openness in his eyes. They're bright in the shadows, like that's where they shine brightest. Anyone can shine in the sun, but Shane does it in shadow. All hunched over the car like a puppy that's grown too fast.

He half smiles because his face isn't quite with him. He's still tired. "Sure..." He walks around the car, leaning against it, next to Shane. Really, trying to sleep again would be smarter. But maybe tonight. "Even though I'm pretty sure Zack specifically asked us to go away before."

Zack laughs. He's back to working. Fuck, he's so helpful. Ryan still needs to ask if he'll come with them. Ryan still needs to do a lot of things. "Nah, I've realized you guys are too dumb to know when I'm screwing up."

Ryan laughs, still not where it should be. "That's rude. But fair."  
  
~  
  
“Hey, I’m just calling it like it is,” Zack laughs, disappearing under the hood again.  
  
Shane shifts a little so he’s facing Ryan, still leaning against the car. He’s kind of blocking Ryan from Zack with his body but at the same time, he’s also pushing Zack out of his own peripheral. He hunches down even further, trying to catch Ryan’s eyes but Ryan’s not looking at him. Something’s up. He wants to ask if he’s okay, but not with Zack here, that’s not fair.  
  
Instead he reaches out, impulsive, subtle, lets the backs of his fingers brush Ryan’s knuckles. The movement is, perhaps, too fast, before he loses his nerve. He doesn’t know quite what he’s aiming for, he just—  
  
_I’m in love with him._  
  
The touch crackles up his arms, sharp and bright — tinfoil, sparklers.  
  
~  
  
Shane has completely shifted his focus to Ryan. Ryan figures it's because he's not doing a great job at covering his weirdness. And then he's frustrated and embarrassed because he wants so badly for it not to be anything to him.

Touch ratchets through him like a thunderclap. He's so in his own head that he doesn't realize it's going to happen. It's this brush of skin, of fingers to knuckles and Ryan has this thought that he could grab Shane's hand. But the movement is so sudden and quick that he's not sure and there's Zack and he's back to that question: what do you want?

Shane said he wanted more than a first kiss. Ryan's fingers twitch like a reach. But... He just glances up, up at him, tilts his head and watches Shane's face, hard. Maybe fear or want or just the question. He stares at him like if he just looks long enough, at Shane. If he can keep his eyes here. On this safe thing. Then the rest of it will be okay.  
  
~  
  
Shane doesn’t move,  but something in him startles. It flickers in his eyes. He blinks and then takes Ryan’s fingers in his own, which are much warmer, and squeezes, once. It only lasts a second or two, and he furrows his brow in a question. He wants to take him away, talk to him, get him back to okay. He doesn’t know how. So he just says, too soft, “Do you think zombies would be necrophiliacs, if they slept together?”  
  
~  
  
Ryan licks his bottom lip as Shane grabs his hand. It's reassuring, hopeful. He's still shaking off bits of waking up alone, of the panic. Of jealousy. Shane's trying too hard. Ryan doesn't want him to have to. It's dry out here, bright, not hot but—harsh.

So the question jars him. Like, fuck. What? He has to replay it about five times before he can even accept what Shane just said. "Wh-" He starts the sentence and it gives way to this burst of air, of incredulous laughter. "Wh-wh..." He wheezes with the ridiculousness of it. "Why would you, I mean, no, I think that implies like... a non-consenting corpse so if..." He chokes on his own laugh. "Why am I answering you? How does your mind get you on these threads? Jesus."  
  
“Did he ask the necrophilia thing?” Zack asks from under the hood.  
  
Ryan wrestles away his jealousy in favor of this exaggerated surprise as he looks at Shane. “Recurring threads.” He mostly just mouths it.  
  
~  
  
Shane laughs, once, but he’s watching Ryan’s mouth because there’s an excuse to. He drags himself back on track, meets Ryan’s eyes. “I didn’t start this,” he lies. Half-lies. Oh God, he doesn’t want to go there — that conversation with Zack. Disneyland...

He tries to fix it quickly, throws his hands up in this too-uncoordinated gesture of _I don’t know, Ryan!_

“It was just a question!”  
  
~  
   
“Yes you did!” Zack is so much louder than either of them were being. Ryan doesn’t hate it. Like there’s a circle with Shane and Ryan, and then something further out, with Zack. And it doesn’t bother Zack.  
   
And Ryan is really laughing now, because Shane is clearly not happy with his secret obsession with necrophilia out in the open. But Zack’s happy to put it out there. He keeps going. “All I said was, I think zombies are into fireworks. As in, fireworks would draw zombies. And then, you start asking like, do you think that’s a universal kink of zombies—fireworks? And then _necrophilia_!”  
   
Ryan laughs harder. Because of course Shane would take it there. Of course he would. He still hasn’t looked away from Shane, like he’s extremely disappointed in him. He shakes his head a bit. But he’s still laughing so it’s not really a great act.  
   
“It’s fine,” Ryan says, trying to be helpful. “It’s a legitimate question.”  
   
“It is in _no way_ a legitimate question!”  
  
~  
  
“Look, maybe that’s— we didn’t— you have to start somewhere.” He’s being ganged up on, but he doesn’t hate it. Not with Ryan laughing like that.

And suddenly Shane wonders if Ryan... if Ryan loves him back. And if he doesn’t, will it scare him off that Shane does? Will that, finally, be the thing that’s too much for Ryan? What if he doesn’t want to take it that far?

What if...?

There are a thousand ways Shane could talk himself out if this. And he doesn’t want to, but he’s somehow even more terrified than before. He wants to kiss him to make his brain just power down for a moment or two. He takes a too-shallow breath and glances away.

“All right. I should have known it would go like this,” Shane says, playing serious. “It is a legitimate question. It’s _perfectly_ normal to be curious.”  
  
~  
   
Yikes. Ryan was afraid it would overload Shane, and it looks like it might have. Well, that, or having to listen to other people talk for too long has given Shane too long in his own head and he’s worked up about something else. He grabs Shane’s shoulders with either of his hands and squeezes. “You’re weird. It’s fine.”  
   
He’s pretty sure this is at least partially his fault for actually being the weird one who is incapable of waking up by himself, or being by himself at all. He sighs. Zack’s back bent over the car, half laughing to himself, so he slides his hands up to Shane’s face, pushes onto his toes (because he has to, which is dumb), and kisses Shane’s cheek in this soft motion, where his mouth barely moves.  
   
He’s quick, a little because he isn’t sure he should be doing it. He drops back onto his heels and raises his eyebrows in this, crooked _sorry if that was too much_ smile. But Shane was clearly freaking out, kinda.  
  
~  
  
When Ryan pulls back, Shane’s looking at him in this softly startled way, eyes too soft, lips parted. He’s tense, but not in a bad way. He’s more trying to get a grip on what his insides are doing.

He sort of twitches like he wants to look back to see if Zack’s paying attention, but he can’t take his eyes from Ryan’s. He whispers “Thank you,” which is really stupid, and he squirms slightly beneath it.  
  
~  
   
Ryan can’t tell if Shane hates him for doing it or not. Then Shane thanks him, and he’s pretty sure he made the right call. But he steps back to give him some space, and leans over to see what Zack’s doing. Just to make sure Zack isn’t looking. Which he isn’t. He’s buried in the car again. Ryan is concerned he’s just going to fall in.  
   
“So, uh… I’m not rushing you, at all, because without you the answer would be literally forever, but how long do you think… it’ll—this will take?”  
   
Zack glances up. He’s got a smudge of black on his cheek. It’s cute—Ryan hates it, kinda, he hates it. He wants Shane not to see because it’s really cute. “Oh, uh, just a couple of days, if I don’t fuck this up. Which… is possible, and then it would take… a little over a week?”  
   
“Oh, cool… well, maybe when you’re done, you could… come with us? Instead of… staying here?” He looks back at the store. “Unless you’re really attached to roaches.”  
   
Zack grins. It makes him cuter. It’s unfortunate. He is objectively attractive. There are so many objectively attractive people that are not zombies. Good for them. That is so good for them. “Really?” he asks. “You think you can handle a Kings fan indefinitely?”  
   
“Uh, I wasn’t done. There was a conditional clause about you never talking about the Kings.”  
   
Zack laughs. “I might consider it.” He glances from Ryan to Shane and back. “What about you two? I’m not gonna get in the way of you two being boyfriends or whatever?”  
   
Boyfriends. Oh jesus. Okay. That’s a word. That’s not a word he expected Zack to use. It’s not an inappropriate word, but it’s not an altogether appropriate word. What makes someone a boyfriend? Does kissing constitute that? Shit, this feels middle school.  
   
“Uh… I’m—nope. I…” Boyfriend. Jesus. It seems really inconsequential in light of how he feels. In light of what he feels. But… it’s also fucking embarrassing. “It’s fine.” He looks at Shane, wishes he didn’t because now it is hot—his face is hot. His whole self is hot enough to catch fire and looking at Shane makes it way worse.  
  
~  
  
Shane has sort of made to wander a little distance away while they fight about sports or whatever, but he freezes when Zack says boyfriend and then spins back, giving him a look that says _what the hell?_

His eyes gloss right over Zack, though, and his smudge of car oil and his too-bright hair, because Ryan’s looking at Shane like he’s just been pantsed in public or something, he’s flushed. It’s adorable. It’s really wonderful. Shane bursts out laughing to cover up the panicked flutter in his chest and he says “It doesn’t look fine, Ryan! Are you warm? Are you running a fever? Let me check,” he steps back to him in this weirdly too long step and gently smacks his hand against Ryan’s forehead.

 _Boyfriend_ , his mind screams, _super_ unhelpfully, but his eyes are crinkled with laughter, still fixed on Ryan’s as he pretends to check his temperature.  
  
~  
   
Ryan swats Shane away. It’s petulant, less gentle than it should be, but not hard. Because Shane is mocking him for being, for reacting to this. Like they’ve been calling each other boyfriend. Oh, jesus, he thinks the word again and it explodes through him—maybe he does a fever. He wishes he did. He wishes he could literally evaporate into the air like water.  
   
Shane’s laughing at him. And Zack is cackling in the background now too, and this must be how Shane felt a few seconds ago. But Shane’s not floored by this. How is he not floored by this? How has this not rattled him in some way? Are they boyfriends? Maybe Shane is just like—they’re not boyfriends so there’s no reason to get worked up. Or he thinks they are. They are boyfriends. Fuck.  
   
Ryan wipes his hands on his pants. They are sweaty. He has collected an absurd amount of sweat in the past few seconds. “You know what—I am warm. It is hot. I’m going inside.” Ryan pushes himself off the car and works his way around Shane.  
  
~  
  
“Okay,” he says, and the laughter fades as Ryan slips past him. Shane gives him a head start, doesn’t quite look at Zack as he leaves the pipe where he’s rested it against the car and follows a little behind. He picks up the pace as the door swings shut behind him and Shane catches it before it closes completely, thankful, for once, for his long limbs, because he reaches out and catches Ryan by the sleeve, pulls him back around to face him, and says, “What?”

It’s not accusatory, it’s genuinely curious, a little nervous. The door falls shut and Shane just stands there, looking down at him.  
  
~  
   
Okay. This is more serious than he expected. He wasn’t… angry, or… bothered. Or maybe he is, but he is not about to bring up, a) that he can’t handle waking up without Shane, or b) that he’s stressed enough about the word boyfriend to worry about it.  
   
He just stares back at Shane, up at him, and shakes his head. Shane’s got a grip on his sleeve, and he doesn’t seem mad. Just serious. So serious. So Ryan says the most logical thing he can. “I… touched a roach earlier. It made me want to throw up.”  
  
~  
  
“That’s disgusting,” Shane says, and then, in one breathless push, “Be my boyfriend, Ryan.”

It sounds so _demanding_. He didn’t mean it like that. He doesn’t even like the term, really, or maybe he’s just never been comfortable using it or or or... it doesn’t matter.

It’s a word. It’s something real to hold onto, when they can’t reach out to each other; when Shane can’t make him himself understood; when he sometimes has to draw away. And it’s stupid because he starts shivering all over like he’s the one with a fake fever and he lets Ryan go so he doesn’t notice, swallowing as he straightens up a little.

Shane’s the one who wants to throw up now.  
  
~  
   
The world comes to this screeching, screaming halt. And then silence. There isn’t anything, except Shane, and Ryan’s pretty sure he’s looking at Shane like the night he first slammed into his door. Wide-eyed and lost and so fucking uncertain. Because this came out of nowhere. Because this was not what he expected—but Shane never does what he expects. Less or more, but never what he expects.  
   
Ryan takes in a breath, because he hasn’t. He’s sat there in this nebula, void of sounds, filled entirely by every different color his brain can conjure. Every different though he’s ever had screaming through him and then shutting off.  
   
It’s so much. It’s like he’s inhaling bright lights and halos. Shane looks nervous, and it’s obvious because Shane is the only thing that’s still moving in this world. He looks like he might collapse. “I’m—okay.” He squints, smiles, because he is happy. He is surprised and he is fucking happy. “Still bossy, though.”  
   
And Ryan likes it. He really fucking likes it.  
  
~  
  
Shane exhales in rush, shakes his hands out and whispers “Okay. I’m, I know, I’m trying—” he doesn’t know what he’s trying to do. Or not do. Be bossy, maybe.

“Great. Really?”

Jesus, he’s freaking out, like what if this is a bit? But it’s not, _shut up, it’s not_ , he can tell by Ryan’s face.  
  
~  
  
Wow, Shane is so freaked out. Ryan can't believe how fast he's oscillated from making fun to near losing it. Shane asks him really, and it's so funny. It's so ridiculous that Shane thinks there could be another answer. Ryan's still grinning like an idiot.

"Obviously. I..." It's right there. This thing that's been circling in his brain. This giant thing. "Yes, Shane. Really." He can say the rest later.  
  
~  
  
Fuck, Jesus Christ, he is so beautiful. It's like he can't get that ridiculous smile off his face, and, Shane thinks, Ryan's teeth really are too big for his mouth, and his smile is crooked — he notices it the most when Ryan talks, the strange little lilt upwards at the corner, but it's in the best way. It's in the best possible way and so Ryan barely gets the words out before Shane catches his face in both hands and swoops down to kiss him, hard, messy. He pushes him back a step and pulls away too fast, and he's still shaking, and he wonders if Ryan can feel it where Shane's hands have migrated to his upper arms, like he's holding Ryan together and, by extension, himself.  
  
It almost seems dreamlike. Like it’s impossible that he should feel this happy. Shane can’t remember feeling this happy, clearly but he thinks it has something to do with childhood and summers and the woods near his house. But man, it’s the apocalypse. It should feel wrong and out of place, but it doesn’t. He laughs, suddenly, overwhelmed, because it doesn’t feel out of place at all.  
  
~  
  
Ryan mumbles half of an oh before Shane kisses him. It takes him by surprise just like everything else, but he kisses him until Shane pulls back. And he does. Still looking some kind of manic. Shane is shaking against his arms and it's hard to fathom.

He's sparking right now, Shane is. His hair is this disheveled mess and his pupils are making his eyes more black than brown. But they don't feel far away right now. They feel like they're on Ryan. Just Ryan.

"Hey, you alright?"  
  
~  
  
He nods, pieces of himself falling into the right places, one by one, his breath, his heartbeat, his joints ease a little.

“Yeah.” He reaches up and fixes Ryan’s hair where it was messed up earlier. “He’s going to think...” Shane begins, but doesn’t quite know how to finish.  
  
~  
  
"Let him." He really doesn't care what Zack thinks. Partially because he knows Zack would never actually make anything of it. But also because it really does not matter.

He's mostly worried Shane's going to faint so he gets his hands around Shane's and holds them. Strokes them with his thumbs. "Do you need to... Sit down or something? You definitely look like you might pass out."

Shane once said he didn't date. Ages ago. So this feels monumental. Maybe it's because of the apocalypse, but maybe it's actually Ryan.  
  
~  
  
He shakes his head, and pushes Ryan back gently into the wall, without pulling his hands away. He twists them up though to catch Ryan’s forearms as he presses against him, full bodied, but very lightly, then drops his face into Ryan’s hair, and shuts his eyes. This is what he needed, this is easier than words. This is the non-verbal equivalent to everything he’s just said, it’s what he’s been trying to impress upon Ryan for ages. He just breathes against him, he stops shaking. “I’m okay,” he says.  
  
~  
   
There are a thousand things Ryan thinks about saying. Really, his mind is just exploding with words. Questions. Comments. Concerns, maybe. But Shane needs this—Shane needs him to be quiet, so that’s what he’s going to do. This thing has been hard for him, asking Ryan this. He’s never reached out so tangibly for, something Ryan can’t talk himself out of later. (Okay maybe he can, but it’ll definitely be harder.)  
   
But Shane’s pressed up against him, and Ryan can feel all this… energy, this need, running through him—like a current from Shane to Ryan, and he doesn’t feel alone. In this giant thing that he’s got in his chest. This thing that races every time he sees Shane, every time he doesn’t see Shane. This thing that’s consumed him.  
   
Shane stops shaking, relaxes, but he’s got Ryan pinned so he just presses his head into Shane’s chest and waits.  
  
  
  
~  
  
Something shifts, after that. Shane isn’t entirely sure what it is because it is gentle and subtle but he feels it. It’s a good shift, he thinks. Strange, but good.

Or maybe the shift is because he’s realized what Ryan means to him. Specifically, in words. Words he still hasn’t been able to say yet. _I’ll get there,_ he keeps telling himself. The time just never feels right. He doesn’t know what he’s waiting for, but he keeps telling himself that this isn’t it.

Zack fixes the car completely about a week later. It actually runs quieter now, which is a relief to Shane because it used to be that every time they turned that thing on, his nerves felt shot.

They decide they’re going to head out in the next couple days and spend the morning wandering uncomfortably far from the store and siphoning gas which truly is the worst thing in the world, even when it doesn’t accidentally touch his lips. The smell is enough to make him nauseous, it feels like it sticks to his teeth, like a film he can taste when he runs his tongue over them.

Of course he is the only one who gets a headache, because he is apparently a delicate flower, and so when Zack starts talking about doing his regular perimeter check of the store to make sure the “defenses are holding up” like it’s an honest to God video game; window boards and door hinges and locks, checking that that nothing’s come loose or weakened to warrant a point of entry, Shane opts out.

Zack’s making a point of saying that it would be stupid not to check just because they’re leaving in a couple days, and then he asks Shane if he’s ever seen a horror movie, which Shane is a little incensed by because _of course he has_ , but still, he knows it’s a good idea all the same. He just doesn’t want to do it.

Shane takes refuge in the car instead where, sitting in the passenger seat with the door open, hoping the fresh air will help his head. He can’t keep taking painkillers because of this, because he’s afraid they’ll regret it later. When they actually need them.  
  
He’s being useful, still. Sort of. He’s using the car cord to charge the phones, anyway.

Ryan and Zack come out of the store, armed, finished checking inside, and Shane gives them strict, explicit direction to be _careful_ , eyes fixed on Ryan’s from the open car door. It’s a look that says _I mean it_.

He feels anxious about it, doesn’t like not being able to see Ryan, but he can hear their voices from the car. They’re okay. Anyway, there’s been nothing but that one freak zombie in the salon.

He does his own phone first. God it’s weird when the phone turns on, the logo is so familiar, but foreign at the same time. It’s almost too bright. He hasn’t looked into a screen like that for ages.

Everything is quiet save the bits of talk or laughter he catches from either Ryan or Zack. There’s a breeze, just enough to stop the heat from being too intense. It’s peaceful.

He turns Finn’s phone over and over in his hands, then turns it on. It’s still at 20-something percent. Shane takes a breath. There are no new messages.  
  
~  
   
Ryan helps Zack check his defenses. They’ve done this a couple times, and Ryan’s familiar enough to know the things to check to make this faster. Shane is probably super annoyed that they’re doing this. But he’s letting them do it. It’s nice. Things have been good between them. Or at least, nothing has gone swiftly and tragically wrong. Yet. They haven’t talked much about it—about what exactly boyfriend is supposed to mean. It’s self-explanatory, Ryan has assured himself, but his brain doesn’t think so.  
   
His brain thinks there’s this massive other part of the conversation that they’re not having. He doesn’t know why. Doesn’t know if he should be the one to bring it up since Shane said boyfriend. But it feels needy to clarify. It’s like the split second before opening a closet in a dark house, alone. He knows it’ll probably be empty, but there’s the fear. Mostly from horror movies. And well, honestly, in this world—that’s probably a legitimate fear.  
   
Ryan pulls back from another lock and twirls the hammer in his hand as Zack stands up from where he was kneeling. “I can’t believe Shane doesn’t see the benefit in checking this stuff. It’s saved my life before.”  
   
It’s funny because Shane normally is so cautious about this stuff. “I think he has a headache. The smell of gas bothers him.”  
   
Zack smirks, and Ryan knows where this is going to go before it goes there. And he almost tackles Zack out of sheer indignation. “And you would know… since you guys are a _thing_ now.”  
   
To avoid killing Zack, he tries to finish up around the back. But Zack latches onto things and doesn’t let them go. “Don’t,” Ryan says. “Don’t do that. Don’t be twelve.” Because it makes him feel twelve, because this shit should not still embarrass him—and yet it does. Mostly because Zack gets this smarmy look on his face every time he brings it up.  
   
“I’m not. I’m just happy for you. I’m allowed to express my happiness.” Zack has given up on the defenses entirely and decided to focus all of his efforts on annoying Ryan.  
   
“Remember what you said, at first, about not making it weird? Let’s go back to that.”  
   
“Fine…” Zack pulls away, drifts towards something like he’s going to check it, and then snaps his head back towards Ryan like a venus fucking flytrap. “I’m still worried it’s gonna be weird, though. Like… if we’re all three in a car, you guys can’t really…”  
   
“Dude! Stop. Stop, just…” It’s so much worse thinking about trying to find a time to—to… fuck, they haven’t really even done anything other than kiss. And the blow job. But that feels more like a one-off at this point. “It’s fine. We aren’t hormonal teenagers. We’ll live.”  
   
“You communicate like them.” Zack slides his hand over one of the sloppily boarded window seals.  
   
“ _What?_ ” Ryan whirls on him, and Zack starts laughing because this was clearly his intention the entire time. “I changed my mind. You can stay here, with your defenses, and your roaches, and your supermarket.”  
   
“I’m just saying…” Ryan is about to lunge for him. Zack steps back. “I can tell you’re still like… horrible at talking to each other. Have you told him you’re in love with him? Because I bet you have not.”  
   
Ryan’s eyes widen. He cannot believe this. He has allowed a matchmaking parasite into his life and invited it to come with him indefinitely. He hasn’t even—“Jesus Christ!” He looks away, because he’s hot again. Because he doesn’t know that he’s actively thought it—just kind of, thought around it, known it, but never officially thought the words. And now they’re here, and he has definitely not said them to Shane. And Zack just shouted them. Or, okay, he didn’t shout but he essentially shouted them.  
   
“So I’m right…”  
   
“I—that is not, you do not get to pace my relationship!” It’s weird, because he said relationship, and even though Shane said boyfriend. Wow, he is not doing well at handling this. He feels like he’s trying to balance on a surf board in a strong current. “I—we…”  
   
They both turn at this clatter of sound behind them, a thud and then this sloshing, glugging noise. It takes Ryan a moment to find it, but when he does—his heartrate climbs straight into his throat. His blood runs too thin.  
   
Not a zombie. That’s the first thing his mind processes. She’s moving right, not upright, exactly, but purposeful—intentional. Reacting to what her limbs do. She’s not dragging them. She’s a person. A fucking _person_.  
   
A girl, blonde, or something close to it. She’s covered in dirt or dust or something that makes her whole body indiscernible save the shimmery set of eyes in the center of her face. Fuck, she looks so thin. Like she hasn’t eaten in days. Her legs are barely keeping her upright. She’s wearing jeans but they’re completely shredded, and the sound is coming from a jug of water she’s dropped. It’s gushing onto the street across from them.  
   
And then she tenses, seizes like she’s going to scream, but instead she drops to her knees and starts sobbing. It’s mostly noiseless, but Ryan can hear it. Fuck. He can hear it.  
   
He glances once back to Zack, who’s got this wide-eyed, uncertain expression on his face. They don’t say anything. They both just move in her direction, this half-jog, at almost the exact same time. She’s a couple blocks away from the back of the supermarket, so she doesn’t see them—doesn’t look up until they’re almost there.  
   
Closer, it’s not just dirt that’s on her. Her face is scratched up, and her hair hangs in these stringly clumps all around her face. Her jeans are… it’s not natural shredding, it’s almost like she did it intentionally—it’s these massive chunks that don’t make sense. She’s wearing a jacket over her shirt, but her legs are partially exposed. It’s not that cold anymore, but it’s still too cold for this. And she’s got no backpack. Her legs are scraped up too, and her jeans are streaked with what could be blood around her thigh.  
   
No supplies.  
   
She could be… no, she’s okay. She seems okay. She had water. Maybe she just got hurt, somehow. “Hey.” Ryan speaks first, trying not to get to close because she’s clearly… having issues. Instead, he picks up the water jug, which is mostly empty now.  
   
She looks up immediately and gasps. Her eyes go way too wide and she slinks back away form both of them. Her mouth opens like she’s going to talk, say something, but nothing comes out. Just another sobbing gasp.  
   
“Are you okay?” Zack takes a step forward.  
   
Her mouth keeps moving like she can’t remember how to work her jaw. Her eyes flicker between them. Scared, maybe, but not aggressive. She’s not aggressive. People are aggressive when they’re bitten.  
   
“I’m…” Her voice comes out croaky and wrong. “It… I’m… don’t…”  
   
“Hey,” Zack says again. “We’re not gonna hurt you. We just… we can help you. We have supplies and stuff, are you… what’s your name?”  
   
Her eyes flicker back and forth, and she opens her mouth a few times—it’s just wheezing. Awful, dehydrated wheezing, before she says, “Kelsey.” She said her name. That’s good. That’s… she’s fine. She just needs help. They need to help her.  
   
“Okay, hi Kelsey,” Zack says. “I’m Zack. Why don’t you come with us, and we can…”  
   
Zack takes another step forward and her face twists. “No!” It’s this angry demand. She can’t make it loud, like she clearly wants to. Zack pulls back some, but then she sways and makes like she’s going to fall to the pavement.  
   
Ryan moves, but Zack’s there first. He catches her by shoulders before she falls. Ryan’s body starts to react—this churning, panicked kind of horror. That’s how… it’s just like—it’s… “Jake…”  
   
Zack turns to him, eyebrows furrowed. “What?”  
   
“Zack, I think we need to get away from…”  
   
And then there’s this guttural, awful sound as the girl turns back around and grabs Zack. He twists, shoving back at her and ends up with his back on the ground. She opens her mouth, lurching to get past the barrier he’s made with his forearm, clawing at his sweater, down his sides.    
   
Ryan moves, grabs the hammer, and swings.  
  
~  
  
Most of the pictures on Finn’s phone are so... normal. Most of them aren’t of him. Some of them are. Shane doesn’t go through all of them. He doesn’t even go into them, really, just looks at the thumbnails in the album.

There’s a couple of voicemails, the same ones he didn’t check in the barber shop, because that feels... too private somehow. Which is ridiculous because—

His own phone vibrates hard in the console as it turns completely back on and it scares the shit out of him. He grabs for it. For a second he genuinely thinks someone’s just texted him or something but that’s impossible. He hasn’t had service since the cabin. The last time he’d checked anything on the phone had been in the car before they left Schaumburg. The news. What a shit show.

And then his dad had...

Shane thinks it was the first time his dad had ever truly yelled at him. Not even just... it was screaming. Shane had just pressed himself into his door and tuned it out because he had no idea what else to do.

Giving up on the news, he’d shoved his phone into his backpack, the only thing he’d packed and taken from home. By the time he took it out again, in the cabin, it was dead.

He goes back over all of this and realizes the messages are from then. Almost a year ago.

His phone keeps vibrating in his hand, each one making his throat close up tighter. There’s mostly texts, three voicemails.

The texts are from his friends. Shane knows the words he’s going to read before he reads them.

_Quarantine zone._

And the messages...

Shane has this idea in his head that it’s not the time. It’s never going to be the right time to deal with this, but he can’t remember the last time he’s been alone. He needs to be alone to do this.

He can still hear Ryan and Zack...He takes a breath and brings the phone to his ear.

 _“Hey,”_ Finn says into his ear. _“Yeah, I can’t get through to mom or dad. Things are kinda... anyway, I’m coming home as soon as I can… hope you’re… um, just call me okay?”_

“Fuck,” Shane whispers. He could have... he could have known.

The message ends. The next one begins.  
  
~  
   
Ryan has to swing sideways so he doesn’t crush Kelsey, or, well, what used to be Kelsey—jesus, two seconds ago she was Kelsey. But the hammer knocks her off Zack. She’s up fast, though—it’s because it’s so recent. It’s always worse when they’re new. She runs at Ryan, and holy shit, it is just this blur of limbs. He tries to swing the hammer. It catches her weirdly but she doesn’t stop. He catches the back of her hair to keep her away from his face.  
   
It’s just all this forward momentum. Ryan’s doing everything he can to stay on his feet, because he always ends up on the ground in these situations and it never ends well. Her eyes are so different than they were a few seconds ago. Clouded, like she can’t see anything. Like she’s never seen anything—well, she never will again. He manages to fling her, using her own strength to the side. She doesn’t fall. She just whirls back on him.  
   
Zack gets in front of him, gun pulled, but she’s way too fast. She slams into him hard enough that the gun falls. Zack’s about to follow it, so Ryan arcs the hammer and hits Kelsey right across where her spine is.  
   
It hits, splits open, but she doesn’t fucking react. Holy hell. She whirls to find the source of what should have just shattered her spine, and the hammer’s still stuck—but Ryan hangs on so it slings his face directly onto the pavement. It hurts, stings, but mostly everything just spins like he’s hanging on to a fucking pinwheel. The hammer blurs into focus a few seconds later. Too far to reach.  
   
By the time he rights himself, Zack’s on the ground again. Reaching for the gun. Kelsey pounces from where he’s apparently knocked her down too. God, she’s so fucking fast. She lowers her mouth like she’s going to take a bite out of Zack’s shoulder.  
   
Ryan doesn’t have time to get the hammer. He grabs her ankle and yanks back. She holds onto Zack, teeth close—way too close. Zack groans, cries out, because his body slides over the pavement too. His shirt rides up, rips. But he whirls and jams his foot into the center of Kelsey’s chest. It propels her up.  
   
Ryan tries to get up too. He needs the gun, at least the hammer. But they’re both too far away from him to reach. He decides on the gun—he’s not having a ton of luck with the hammer. But as he tries to get up, to move around her, she jumps into him before he’s all the way up. It twists his leg the wrong way. His breath stops halfway through a scream and tears blur his vision.  
   
Fuck his stupid _fucking_ leg.  
   
He’s back on the ground. He lands so his hand hits the gun. He can’t quite get a grip on it. Something slams his chest too hard into the ground, way, way too much pressure. And then there’s this sick sound of flesh and bone splitting.


	18. Part 18

Shane really doesn’t want to cry. He focuses on keeping an eye out instead, squinting through the windshield at the empty parking lot. Nothing moves but dust.

 _“... going to try driving,”_ Finn’s saying. Was saying. _“But I dunno, the roads are bad... I saw someone got shot yesterday outside a gas station... someone normal.”_ Shane listens to Finn’s breath shake before he says _“I think this is something really messed up... like— Listen, once I’m out of the city I’ll... just call me... please call me.”_

The message ends. The last one starts. It’s the shortest of all of them, and Finn speaks softer like he’s afraid of being overheard.

 _“It’s me. Listen, I’m about four days outside of Illinois I think. Four or five days so. If you’re not home I’ll wait for you there. So... okay...”_ there’s a long silence and then he says. _“Okay. I gotta go so. I love you. See you soon.”_

The message ends. Shane drops it onto the driver’s seat and digs his hands into his eyes, breath escaping him in one hard exhale. 

He can’t fall apart again, now. He tries to refocus. Nothing’s around. 

No movement. No sounds.

Just silence. 

He realizes he can’t hear the other two anymore.  
  
~  
  
Zack slams the hammer into Kelsey's back. She pulls away from Ryan to lunge at him. At least their attention is pulled easily. Fuck. Ryan scrambles the rest of the way to the gun.

It's heavy in his hand. He has no idea how to use a gun. Hopefully it's just pulling the trigger. Because Kelsey is attached to Zack. Ryan can't tell what she's doing or he's doing. They're just a tangle of limbs. And in this hilarious, awful moment he thinks about Shane's necrophilia comment and... Jesus, Shane. 

Ryan aims the gun away from Zack and Kelsey. Pulls the trigger. It jars him. Fuck it's loud. It is so loud. But it does it's job. Kelsey turns, runs back towards him. Ryan aims the gun. Wills his fucking hand to stop shaking.

She's far enough away from Zack but holy fuck. Don't miss. He fires again and she crumples back, down, head exploded in fragments.Ryan barely hears Zack's, "Jesus!"  
  
~  
  
There’s a gunshot, but Shane is already halfway out of the car. He leaves the door open, like he did when he left his father, and just starts running. He doesn’t bring the pipe. He fucking forgets it beside the car as he just tries to get to where Ryan is.

Where he has to be.

The gun fires again. He flies around the corner of the store and, oh God, they’re so much further away than they should be, but it’s so still. His legs shake as he stops several feet away and he finds Ryan with his eyes, panting, then the bloodied mess of a zombie on the ground. And Zack.

It’s pretty easy to see what happened and Shane can’t even get the words out this time. He looks terrified, furious, betrayed. He hates himself and he doesn’t even know the extent of the damage yet.

“Ryan,” he finally manages, deeply unsteady, and it’s like a question, but it comes out dry and raw.  
  
~  
  
The gun is burning his hand. Maybe it’s not, maybe it’s in his own head, but he puts itdown anyway. Ryan pulls himself up, halfway, and then he hears Shane. And looks. “Shane, f…”   
  
Fucking Christ, he can’t deal with this right now. His heart’s pounding, and his leg’s pounding with it. Shane’s probably pissed. Even though they didn’t do anything. They tried to help someone. They had to try to help her.  
   
“It’s fine,” Ryan says to Shane, even though he’s not going to fucking listen. Ryan can see it in his eyes—he’s already a thousand miles away, playing fourteen thousand scenarios where they’re both dead and he was hanging out in the car that whole time.  
   
Ryan glances back to Zack. His arms are pressed over his waist where it skidded along the pavement. Fuck. Okay. It was a little their fault. Ryan knew—his instincts knew something was wrong, but he wouldn’t… he couldn’t leave her. Even now, he’s trying not to look at her body. Trying not to think that he just fucking shot a girl who was crying not five minutes ago.  
   
“Hey...” His voice goes a little shakier. “You alright?”  
   
Zack sits up, pulls his hand away, shaky and bloody. “Yeah, I just… I skinned my whole fucking side.”  
   
Ryan pulls himself up. His leg is killing him. He’s pretty sure it’s scraped up, and maybe bruised, but it’s not re-broken. He’s not going to _allow_ it to be re-broken. He hops on the leg and gets himself upright. This is going to make Shane think, again, that he’s the only one of them with any sense, and that if he walks away for thirty seconds everyone is going to spontaneously combust.  
   
When really, the odds of this were just horrifically stacked against them. _If he’d been there—he would’ve told you not to go near her_. And maybe he would have, but Ryan still would’ve wanted to help. He’s never going to not want to help. He doesn’t want to be one of those people that sees someone in pain and just… walks away because there’s risk involved. He can’t be. Risking it is the only way he can make up for everything else, for his mother, for his dad, for Jake…  
   
Ryan wipes his sleeve over his face where’s it’s scraped enough to bleed. It scratches into his skin further because it pulls gravel away with it. His shoulders drop, and he looks from Shane to Zack to Shane. And he wants to kick something. Because Shane looks like he is absolutely going to lose it. As in, he could be the next zombie and may try to bite both of their faces off in the next few seconds.  
   
“We saw a girl,” Zack tries. He’s still on the ground. Ryan needs to go help him but he’s still convincing his leg that it’s fine. “We didn’t know she was sick. We were trying to help.”  
  
~  
  
He doesn’t know if he’s angry, or if he wants to cry. He was so at the edge of crying a few minutes ago, in the car, for Finn, and suddenly there’s this flash of coming— of coming back here and having lost Ryan, too. Even Zack. Of coming around and just… there would be the zombie. The girl. Not a girl anymore.  
  
Jesus. Jesus, she’s not anything anymore.  
  
Something jars sharply through him. He kind of flinches, hitching back with it, shoulders tight. He’s not breathing right and part of him wants to be a child, go to Ryan and shout at him _What the fuck?!_ because Ryan is so affected by everything, and he would be affected by that, but Ryan would see that he wasn’t breathing right. Ryan would see whatever emotion’s in Shane’s eyes that Shane never sees when he looks in the mirror. Ryan would probably reach out to him, touch him, tell him it was okay, and god _damn_ it, that’s what Shane wants.  
  
If he’d lost Ryan, just now, while he was sulking in the fucking car, Shane would never forgive himself. If he lost Ryan he wouldn’t have anyone ever again who would look at him, understand him the way Ryan does.  
  
It’s that thought that makes Shane turns wild-dark eyes away from Ryan, makes him stop even considering freaking out, screaming, whatever he wants to do. Instead he seems to settle further into himself, more hunched and shuts his eyes for a second, two.  
  
Shane swallows. When he speaks again his voice is normal. Almost. Ryan’s face is bleeding, but it’s scrape. He can see from here it’s a scrape. “Did you hurt your leg again?” Shane asks him. He moves forward. It’s these too slow, uncertain steps. He says it to Ryan, but he goes to Zack, but he doesn’t know whether to help him up or check on him. He doesn’t know how to touch Zack. “Here—“ he says and holds out a hand so Zack can at least stand up, sort out the damage. “We should get inside.”  
  
~  
  
"No, it's fine." Ryan doesn't think it's a like. Shane means in a significant way so he's answering in that context. His leg isn't hurt anymore than his face is. It just responds more dramatically.

Shane helps Zack up, and Zack thanks him. Ryan checks Zack over with his eyes. His side is fucked up but he seems okay. But the Kelsey girl has Jake on his mind and he's replaying how Jake was when he first got bit. There was a lot of blood.

Zack's bleeding a lot buts it's from the pavement. And he's moving fine. He's fine. Her teeth never touched him. Ryan was watching. Everyone's fine. He flexes his fingers and the cut on his palm shifts under the dirty bandage.

He kneels and gets the gun, then the hammer, and walks over to extend the first to Zack. He's careful with his walk, trying to consciously work out the limp. He refuses to be favor either leg. But it does hurt. Kinda. 

Shane's obviously upset. Of course he is. Ryan is too, but it's fine. Things are fine. 

"Yeah, we should."

~  
  
They brush themselves off. Shane doesn’t know if he should help Ryan, because he’s trying hard not to favour that leg, but Shane knows what it looks like. He reaches out to him once as they walk, Zack a little bit behind, and touches his arm like he might take it, pull it around his shoulders, but he doesn’t.  
  
“I forgot the pipe,” he says softly, like an apology, or an admission of how scared he was, how much he wasn’t thinking, but Shane doesn’t know if that’s Ryan’s fault or the messages on the phone or if it’s just… one more fucked up thing. He takes a wrong kind of breath, in and out.  
  
He doesn’t ask if Ryan’s okay, but he hopes the touch does that for him. He lingers longer than he should, maybe, with Zack there, with how careless he’s been.  
  
~  
   
Shane’s definitely entered some extra layer of cocoon. He’s shell-shocked, and Ryan can’t really blame him. He wants to. He wants to shove him and tell him off for blaming himself or blaming Ryan or both. Whatever he’s doing. Ryan wishes he wouldn’t. He touches Ryan briefly, but he doesn’t ask if he’s okay. And it sucks. It really sucks, because Shane’s blaming Ryan more than he’s blaming Zack. And fine—maybe it is Ryan’s fault. Maybe he did go against his instincts. Fine, he’ll accept that.  
   
They get back in and wash off as best they can without running water. Zack’s side is by far the worst of it. It’s a mess of peeled skin and blood. Ryan helps him with it before Shane can, because he just wants something to do that isn’t feeling guilty for letting Shane down, somehow. Again. There isn’t a ton he can do, though. It’s all along his side and back. He patches it up as best he can with bandages, but it’s not much.  
   
Zack’s good about the injury. He hisses a few times. Swats at Ryan once when he gets near a particularly deep scratch. All in all, not bad. Ryan’s stuff is easier. His leg is skinned up just like his face is, and a little swollen. But mostly he’s just pissed off. They had a gun and a hammer. He has no fucking idea how they managed to fumble around so long without stopping her.  
   
 _Because you didn’t want to._  
   
It doesn’t make sense. Not wanting to kill her. He killed Finn—his fucking Mom, and he holds back against some girl he didn’t know? Fuck. Fuck. He wants to go back to that damn hotel and drink the contents of every single room’s mini bar.  
   
Zack goes off to rest, and Ryan and Shane don’t talk. Shane’s pissed off. In the distant, far-off way that means they aren’t going to shout about—he’s just going to fridge Ryan out until he throws a tire iron into his stupid face. But Ryan doesn’t. He even tries to talk to Shane, but it goes about as well as talking to the roaches (apparently, the first one had a family.) Honestly, the roaches go better.  
   
Zack does his best to bridge the awkwardness. But he’s… a little less, maybe because of Kelsey, maybe because she died. Ryan wouldn’t blame him. He thinks maybe he is too. It’s hard. God, this is just so fucking _hard_. And it’s worse—he feels submerged in a pit of tar. He cannot get his head above it. Everything feels bad. And it’s this weird, haunted kind of transition because everything was… almost good. Almost okay.  
   
But now he keeps dreaming about Jake. But it’s not the bite. It’s after. About how hard he cried, how he pressed his face into Ryan’s shoulder, and sobbed. How Ryan told him, again and again, that it was fine. That he was going to be fine. And it wasn’t. They’d fought, towards the end—about Ryan saying things were fine when they weren’t.  
   
 _You lie. All you do is lie. To yourself. To me. To everyone._  
   
And when he looks at Shane, every time he looks at Shane—it’s this blank look. This complete distrust. _You’re too careless._  
   
And he can’t even be properly irritated. He can’t be offended. He can’t start an argument, or even a conversation—because he is careless. He can’t fucking sleep at night because he was _careless_ enough to get his brother killed. But he keeps doing it—he keeps misstepping. And he doesn’t know how to stop.  
   
A couple days pass. They’re supposed to leave soon, but no one’s really talked about it. No one’s really talked about anything. Except Ryan complaining about the roaches and Zack encouraging him to expand his circle of friends.  
   
Zack walks back into the store while Ryan’s sitting on the breakroom table they’ve brought out into the middle of it. Ryan goes to say something to him, but his face is furrowed in this angry, black way Ryan hasn’t seen it.  
   
“Well,” Zack begins, and his voice sounds as gnarled as his face. “I spilled some fucking gas on my fucking…” He rears back—there’s a tool in his hand, a wrench—and he just flings it across the store so it crashes into the far wall, with this clattering, awful sound that pulls Ryan into a hunch.  
   
“Christ, dude…” Ryan looks at the wrench. “It’s fine. We have plenty of gas.”  
   
Zack glares at him, like he’s going to say something mean, but instead he just walks by the table and towards his room in the back. He kicks one of the chairs onto the ground before he goes—and then just… slams the door behind him.  
  
~  
  
He isn’t trying to avoid Ryan, but he can’t— it’s hard to look at him. There’s all this fear that builds inside his chest every time he does and he hates it. He doesn’t want to look at him like that, he doesn’t want… so much bad surrounding this. What they are. Shane knows it’s not fair. It was a mistake, he knows that. He knows he can’t fault Ryan for trying to help someone who was actually a someone before she wasn’t.   
  
He worries that this is going to make Ryan realize what he’s gotten himself into, with Shane. He worries it’s going to make him regret… a lot of things, and so when he’s in the same room with him he’s so torn between the distance he needs and this desperate impulse to reach out and touch Ryan, because he doesn’t know how to say _I’m still here_ , when he’s so far away.   
  
Shane hears the clatter and jolts up from where he’s been re-reading Harry Potter on the bed. He’d finished it before Arizona but now... well, fuck, it’s better than Goosebumps. 

He gets up fast and pushes the door all the way open (doesn’t close it because that feels like keeping Ryan out and he’s not, he’s... he doesn’t know what he’s doing. Recharging, maybe.) 

He steps out just in time for Zack to slam his own door and Shane’s shoulders jump with the sound. He looks at Ryan, questioning, then goes to him. “ _What’s_ going _on_?” he asks softly.  
  
~  
   
Ryan stares after Zack for a few seconds too long. Okay, he’s never done that before. But it’s been weird the past few days. Ryan gets it. If he had a wrench, he’d probably throw it too. He looks back at Shane once he collects himself internally. His eyes move over to the wrench, involuntarily, and then he looks back.  
   
“He, uh… he spilled gas, I think? And it pissed him off.” He looks back at Zack’s door. Pissed him off a lot apparently. He feels like he needs to add that he didn’t say anything to make it worse, but that just looks defensive. Instead, he just shrugs at Shane.  
  
~  
  
Shane meets Ryan’s eyes, then looks back at Zack’s door. Something about that really doesn’t sit right with him. He presses his fingers against the top of the table then slides into the seat opposite. “That’s odd... maybe he’s...” What, traumatized? It feels awful to say it. Especially because Shane has no idea what to do about that. 

Shane folds his hands, elbows and forearms on the table because he wants Ryan. He stares down at his own interlaced fingers and says “Maybe just give him a bit.”

So they do.

Supper is the rest of the food they probably won’t be able to make on the road. It’s tinned soup, cream of whatever. It’s gross and not super filling, but no one complains about it. In fact, no one really talks that much at all, until Zack heaves this sigh and says “Can you two get over yourselves already? Jesus, it’s _fucking_ —”

He catches Ryan’s eyes, Shane’s, and then he just overturns his food onto the table. Flips the bowl and the spoon clatters away across the floor. Good thing it’s not hot because some of it really goes flying. “This food is making me _sick_ ,” Zack bites out, as he stands and then, for good measure, sweeps Ryan’s bowl off the table as well before he storms off.   
  
“Hey— _Jesus_ , man!” Shane says, pushing himself to half standing. “Don’t go wasting—” he cuts himself off as Zack whirls on him.   
  
Something flickers in his eyes and Shane goes very still.   
  
There’s too many beats of silence. Shane can feel his heart slamming against his ribs.  
  
“Sorry,” Zack whispers, tonelessly to Ryan, then steps quietly into his own room. Doesn’t slam the door this time. Somehow it’s worse.   
  
~  
   
Ryan’s got his hands up, mostly just trying to stay out of the line of fire. Because Zack is... really angry, and when he throws Ryan’s bowl, Ryan just blinks after it. Like, _okay then_. He’s still processing when Zack whirls on Shane, and there’s something… threatening about it. Ryan jerks like he’s going to get between them, but Zack stops. It’s weird… it’s…  
   
Ryan barely hears Zack apologize to him. He watches him go back into his room. Watches the empty space where he was for a long time. It’s fine. This is fine. It’s surprising this doesn’t happen more. It’s the fucking apocalypse. Everyone has a right to have bad days—everyone has a right to be pissed off.  
   
It’s not normal because Shane doesn’t get mad like most people. He gets quiet and reclusive, but that’s all Zack’s doing. He’s just upset. Things have been tense. He’s had to fix the car by himself.  
   
“He’s probably just tired.” His voice is quiet, and he only flicks his eyes up to Shane once when he says it. He bends to grab his bowl that Zack knocked off and sets it back on the table. Like that makes it better. “It’s been a long week.”  
  
~  
  
Shane is shaking. “Right,” he says, and pushes his bowl in front of Ryan. He takes the other two away like they’re contaminated somehow. There’s really nothing to clean up with other than a rag that’s covered in dried oil from the car, so Shane uses that. They have to fucking live here, you can’t just throw food all over the place.

He touches the back of Ryan’s neck as he goes to put the rag back, now even more stained than before, and he lingers there a moment. “Eat the rest of that,” he says, making his voice as okay as he possibly can, “I’m done.”  
  
~  
   
Ryan glances back at Shane. He touched his neck, for a second, and then he stops—and Ryan immediately misses it. It’s really every shade of pathetic. “No, I don’t—I don’t want your food. He’s right. It’s really gross. I was done anyway.” Shane’s voice is uneven. Ryan’s is sort of mimicking it. And shit, he doesn’t mean to. Because he needs this to be nothing. He needs everything to be okay. Zack doesn’t seem sick at all. He’s been fine.  
   
“I’m tired.” He stands up from the table. His leg quivers, this leaf-like movement, mostly through his skin. It’s less swollen now. It still hurts, but it’s getting better. And he’s taking that to mean it isn’t broken. It’s fine—just like Zack.  
   
People get in bad moods. Ryan refuses to believe it’s anything other than that, because if it is—jesus… He shoves the bowl of food away from him. He’s worried he’s going to throw up. He feels like he’s on the edge of it. Everything is fine. Zack is fine. He’s having a bad day—people have bad days. It doesn’t mean anything is wrong.  
   
Ryan was right there.  
   
He’d know.

~  
  
“Ryan.” 

Shane resists the urge to press his face into his hands. “Okay. He shouldn’t have done that.”

Okay, so he’s pissed. At Zack this time, because he’s being an asshole, because he did something hurtful, and it’s easier than the alternative, which is... 

Shane looks at Zack’s closed door again, then moved forward, almost touches Ryan’s face. His fingers ghost past his jaw, his throat. “Come on,” he says, and moves towards their room because he’s not talking about this out here. He picks up the pipe from the wall to bring it with him.   
  
~  
   
“Okay…”  
   
Shane’s doing a lot of ghost touching. Ryan isn’t sure what it means. Maybe Shane is getting less mad. Or potentially he’s just in a whole new state of mad. It’s weird for Ryan to be thinking about Shane—about Shane wanting this to be over. About Shane convincing himself it was ever a mistake to trust Ryan enough to… open himself up like he has.  
   
But no. It’s not weird. Because everything else is okay. He’s allowed to think about that. He stills when Shane grabs the pipe. He doesn’t stop him, but his mouth twitches. He follows Shane into the room, shuts the door, and tugs his sleeves down over his hands.  
   
“What?” It’s this hollowed-out sound, like someone punched it out of him too early. Or he’s waiting for someone to. “Why’d you grab the pipe?”  
  
~  
  
Shane twists his free hand into a fist and loosens it again, then he says, “I just had a thought...”

He flexes his hand again, then reaches back and flips the deadbolt on the door. Fuck he doesn’t want to say this...

“You’re sure... you’re sure he didn’t get bitten, right?” Shane says, voice soft like he doesn’t want to be overheard, like he expects Zack to be on the other side of the door with his ear pressed against it. He meets his eyes. “Or grazed…?”  
  
~  
   
Ryan’s whole body shudders. His eyelids flutter. His mouth twitches. He looks away from Shane like he’s insulting him. Because his brain can’t quite handle this question. He knew it was there—Shane grabbed the pipe. He fucking knew. And Shane’s locked the door, and… fuck.  
   
“Yes, I’m…” It’s hoarse, and Ryan has to stumble back so he can rest against the wall. If there was a time his leg was going to give out, it would be now. He plays back everything he saw. How close the zombie was. The fingernails over Zack’s sweater. But they were just over his sweater. They didn’t break it.  
   
But what if he’s wrong? What if something is wrong with Zack? And then he’s putting Shane in danger. Then he’s being fucking careless again. He won’t look at Shane. He looks at the door, the ceiling, but will not look at Shane. “I don’t—I don’t think so. I don’t know! He’s not… I’m sure this isn’t a—it’s just emotions. He’s just mad. People get mad.” His voice quivers, breaks somewhere in there.  
  
~  
  
“I know, I know...” Shane says, giving in, reassuring. He leans the pipe against the wall and takes a step closer, “Okay, Ry. Ryan.” He doesn’t know what to do — he doesn’t mean to hurt him — he reaches out and curls his fingers in the bottom of Ryan’s sweater anyway. “Hey, okay.” He doesn’t step closer or pull him forward, he just stands too far away and holds onto that fistful of fabric.

“I just... my dad got like that,” Shane says to the floor because he has to say it. Because he’s fucking scared. “Before he changed. It wasn’t like him at all and _now_ , it... feels the same, I dunno. It feels the same.”  
  
~  
   
Ryan’s teeth grit. Because Shane isn’t wrong. He’s been flashing back to fucking Jake for days. To his mother. To everyone who he’s known that’s been infected. The aggression—it’s the first… it’s the first sign. No. It’s not happening to Zack. It can’t be happening to Zack. Because if it’s happening to Zack, then it is Ryan’s fault. It is Ryan’s fault because he was there when someone else got bitten, or scratched, or infected. He was there, and he didn’t fucking stop it.  
   
He didn’t check the fucking closet.  
   
Shane’s got a hold of his sweater, and Ryan stares at his hands like he expects Shane to put them through his stomach. Shane’s dad. Fuck—with the seatbelt. He forgot all about Shane’s dad and the seatbelt. He doesn’t know what to do or how to process or where to step so this doesn’t collapse on him.  
   
“He’s not sick.” Ryan’s voice is too high, still not put back together from where it broke. “He can’t be sick.” He still won’t look at him. Just keeps staring at his hands.  
  
~  
  
Shane stays quiet, hating this. He can’t apologize because that means the worst. He can’t agree, either.

All he can think is that it’s so unfair to Ryan, and Shane would do anything to make it true, that Zack’s not sick, but he can’t. He can’t do anything. He can’t make this better, he can’t take the apocalypse away, the only thing that will help is Zack being okay.

He can’t move closer to Ryan or further away, so he just holds onto his sweater harder, reaches up to dig his fingers into his eyes with his free hand.

“Let’s deal with it tomorrow,” he finally says, after far far too long.  
  
~  
   
Ryan doesn’t look up. He just keeps his gaze where it is. He knows what Shane’s doing—conceding to try and get out of this gently. Because he thinks it. He thinks this thing that Ryan cannot even fathom. He can’t.  
   
So Ryan just says, “Okay.”  
   
~  
   
Zack takes a breath. He’s shaking—because he has no fucking idea what that was. Jesus, both of them looked… he rubs his face in his hands. Shakes. Jesus, he doesn’t understand. He’s been so irrational today. Everything is pissing him off. It’s… it’s like when…  
   
Oh… oh god, no. Oh, no. It’s not—he didn’t. He would’ve known. No, it cannot be that. It cannot be now, when he’s finally found people… no, he won’t accept that. He didn’t get bitten. It’s not like he could miss a fucking zombie bite. He’s okay. There’s no way he isn’t. There’s no way the fucking universe would finally, after months and months, bring him people that he can talk to—can hang out with, give him this out, and then do this.  
   
His hands shake as he shoves at the waistband of his pants. It still stings, but he skinned it up. It looked like raw fucking meat, so of course it’s still hurting. He runs his hands over the scrapes on his side. No, it’s normal. It’s all totally normal—it’s just flutters of skin where it’s started to come back together, warm but fine. It’s normal.  
   
He takes a shaking breath. He’s just tired. But his fingers follow the line of his waist, back to his back, where the skinning eases a little bit. But the pain doesn’t. He blinks a few hard times, and then stops. It brushes over his fingers—cuts into him like a pick axe across the face. His breath catches in his throat as he scrambles to look.  
   
It’s hard, the angle, he’s got hit neck twisted. He pulls his skin so it starts to burn more. It’s not—he’s not bitten. There’s no way. He would’ve known right away. Ryan would’ve seen it when he was cleaning it, or Zack would’ve seen it after. He scrambles, fights with his own body until he finally gets a view of it.  
   
His heart sinks. His legs give so he lands on his makeshift mattress. He doesn’t remember dropping, but he did. He draws in a few breaths. Looks again. It’s four, dark lines. Like they’ve just happened. Not flecked with new skin like the rest of it—just marks, scratches. They’re… scratches.  
   
He can’t breathe. Heat clogs his throat, his eyes, until everything starts to get blurry. He slides his hands over the blankets, stares at them. Fuck—he’s never even… he won’t sleep in them anymore. He won’t sleep anywhere. He’ll… he’ll be over. Completely over. It’s so funny because it’s happened to people. It happened to Morgan. It happened to his parents. It’s happened to most of the fucking world.  
   
But he’s faced with this… this thing. It’s going to be him. This virus that turns people into fucking—that’s going to be him. He’s going to be like that. He takes a breath, finally, and it comes out as a noiseless sob. He cries, because he doesn’t know what the hell else to do. He doesn’t know how else to process it.  
   
There is no processing it. There is no getting around it. He’s going to die—he’s going to become a fucking monster. That’s the end of it. There’s no reconciliation. He collapses into the blanket and pulls a handful of them tighter to his face so he can bury it there.  
   
Maybe if he goes to sleep, he’ll wake up and this is a dream. Maybe he’ll wake up, and the scratches won’t be so bad. Maybe he’s wrong… and it’s going to be fine. He’s going to wake up tomorrow and laugh about how he was being such a jackass he thought he was a zombie.  
   
Or maybe he just won’t wake up.  
  
~  
  
They go to bed, and Shane pulls Ryan into his arms because he doesn't know what else to do and everything is fucking awful. He doesn't say anything else. He hasn't held onto him like this since the day the zombie, the girl, showed up and it eases something in him, though not by much.

Shane and Ryan are out earlier than Zack the next morning which is unusual, and the dread sinks itself lower in Shane’s gut. It doesn't look like he's left his room all night, and they're quiet as they find something to eat — just going through the motions. Neither of them are very hungry.

"I wonder... if we should go get him" Shane finally says, half-regretting it even as it comes out of his mouth, because he's fucking scared... scared that Zack might have... 

"Maybe he just thinks we're mad, or something."  
  
~  
   
Ryan’s having trouble moving. He’s so stiff. And it isn’t just his leg—it’s all of him. It’s this sinking feeling because Zack isn’t up yet, and Ryan doesn’t hear him moving around. Ryan can’t figure out what he wants to do. He doesn’t eat. Shane keeps looking towards Zack’s door. But there’s nothing coming out of it—no one.  
   
Ryan cannot stop conjuring horrible things. As many times as he repeats it’s fine to himself, it does nothing. In fact, he seems to be getting further and further from the idea. Shane actually held him last night, and Ryan is positive it was out of pity. But it was the only time Ryan felt okay. But now they’re out in the open again and Zack’s not here.  
   
“No, I mean… he was tired, so maybe he’s just… getting some—he’s just sleeping.”  
   
And _it’s fine, it’s fine, it’s fine_ , is slowly turning to, _your fault, your fault, your fault._  
   
Ryan needs to sit because his leg is starting to ache like hell, but he can’t. If he sits down, then he’s sure his thoughts are going to smother him. And then the door opens, and there’s Zack. Ryan brightens because it’s Zack, and he looks okay. Still tired. But he isn’t smiling. He doesn’t smile. He just looks at both of them.  
   
“Zack, hey…”  
   
Zack stares at them and opens his mouth. Nothing comes out for a second. His lips quiver, and then he says, “I’m…I…” But he doesn’t finish. He just looks at both of them. He’s got the gun strapped to his hip. He’s fine. He looks okay.  
   
“You should… why don’t you sit down? It’s fine. Yesterday was weird. It’s fine.” Ryan shoots a glance at Shane but doesn’t look long enough to read him. Because he knows. Because Zack isn’t out here, being normal. This isn’t normal.  
   
It’s not.  
   
Zack doesn’t sit. He walks across the room, paces, and he keeps fingering the gun. Jesus Christ. He keeps touching it. Ryan’s never seen him touch the gun so much—the handle, the leather that’s holding it. All of it.  
   
“I’m…” Zack tries again, with this sentence. Ryan just wants him to say sorry. He wants him to never finish. He doesn’t want to know what fucking comes after it. Then his hand slides around the handle of the gun as he pulls it free. “I-I’m sick.”  
  
~  
  
Shane’s not taking his eyes off him, and when he says it, says he’s sick, his insides flood with ice. He takes an uncertain step forward.

”Hey man,” Shane says, gentle, but he’s freaking out. He tries to meet Zack’s eyes. “It’s fine. Let’s just sit for a second. He half reaches for him, but he can’t make himself get closer than an arm’s length.  
  
~  
  
Ryan's leg almost gives. There's this blazing, then frigid sensation that rushes him. Zack's got the gun in his hand, and... Ryan tries to breathe. Tries not to break down. His body pushes past his mind, his throbbing heartbeat, as best it can. 

"You're... You don't know that. You're tired. People get frustrated when they're tired." Ryan touches Zack's arm. He jerks, but doesn't pull away. "Just sit for a second." Zack won't.

Ryan cannot lose him. Zack cannot die. He can't be sick. No one else can be sick. They can fix this. "I'm sick. I know." Zack's voice has lost all the emotion from before, when he said he was sick the first time. It's toneless now.

Ryan squeezes his arms, shakes Zack until Zack catches his eyes. "Listen to me, you're fine. You're just freaking out. I was there. It didn't bite you."

Zack grits his teeth. He's somewhere between a sob and a snarl. "It did! It fucking scratched me, you son of a bitch!"

"Let me see, maybe it..."

Zack grabs Ryan's collar in this too-quick motion. It startles Ryan out of his sentence. The gun is pointed at him and he can't tell if it's intentional. "Why did you let it scratch me?!"

That cracks something in the center of Ryan. "Just, where, where did it—?"

Zack draws the gun back and then swings it. It hits Ryan in the jaw, the mouth. Hard. It swells and bursts in this shock of red. Ryan stumbles back and actually hits his knees, grabbing at the pain and blood that spills from his lip.  
  
~  
  
“Christ!” Shane yelps, but at least he’s breathing again, because he wasn’t when the gun was pointed at Ryan. He’s beside him in an instant, not dropping down beside him like he wants to because he knows it will take him too long to get up again. He needs to be able to move. His fingers are on Ryan’s hair, his hand where he’s touching his mouth, but then he’s straightening up again, stepping half between them. “Zack,” Shane says. It’s the first time he’s called him by name to his face. He’s pleading, hands partially outstretched, suspended and shaking, “Give me the gun. Zack, let’s take a minute.”

He’s said it to Ryan before. They didn’t have a minute then, either. Maybe all of their time’s been ticking out since this mess started. Like the hourglass has been cracked and sand is spilling out the sides.  
  
~  
  
Zack pulls the gun up. Points it at Shane. Ryan almost blacks out. "No, no because if I do you'll kill me. I fixed your car. I helped you! And you'll kill me!" The gun trembles. "That's why I should kill you first." The gun flicks to Ryan briefly. "Both of you!" 

He's crazed. His eyes are glazed, face too red. He's sick. Ryan finally thinks. I let him get sick. He's near tears. He isn't crying, but is voice is glittering with them. That and maybe blood.

"Zack, please. I'm so sorry. I'm sorry, but put the gun down please. We can figure something out. It's okay."

Zack's eyes flicker between them again. Ryan keeps his arms up as he slowly gets back to his feet. Zack watches him but doesn't move. Ryan extends a hand, shaking, like Zack might give him the gun.

Then Zack meets his eyes. There's this deadness there. Like the bleach white of a zombie has already crawled into him. He says, "I'm sorry," and Ryan knows.

He runs forward, but Zack's already got the gun under his chin "Zack! NO!"

Ryan gets a hold of his wrist but the gun fires, loud and screaming in the deserted aisles of the store. It explodes through Ryan like it's his skull that's been blown open. It feels like it has.

Blood sprays his face. He doesn't feel it so much as the oozing afterwards. The gun falls and clatters, Zack too, and Ryan's still got this grip on Zack's wrist. His hands shiver with it, because it's limp. And there's this body. Zack's chin is a mess blood red blood and shattered bone. His face is... It's not a face. It's just....

He still hasn't let go. He can't.

~  
  
“No!” Shane shouts at the same time as Ryan, but it’s done already. Shane’s world pitches violently, and he wants to be sick. Something in him splits in half — before and after this moment, irreparable.

Sickness lurches up through him, but there is no time. There’s no time to be sick. The moment of stillness ends, and terror crowds it out anyway because—

“Oh— fuck. Fuck, Ryan,” Shane’s just breathing it, and he can’t even hear himself beneath the ringing in his ears from the shot or shock or panic or all three.

He’s beside him in a second but it’s too late. He’s pulling him away from Zack without looking. Shane can’t look. He has to pry Ryan’s fingers away from Zack’s wrist and he drags him back with a strength he doesn’t normally possess. “Oh Jesus, no— you’re—” he’s covered in blood, Zack’s blood, infected blood, and it’s all over his face. Christ it’s in his mouth and Shane doesn’t know if that’s from the butt of the gun or Zack...

“Fuck,” Shane’s saying, voice cracking, and he’s wiping at it desperately, getting it away from his eyes with the heels of his hands. He catches Ryan’s face in his palms and smears his thumbs over Ryan’s mouth, but the panic just keeps coming and coming and Shane—

He doesn’t know what to do. His fingers are shaking, but clean, only his palms are blooded from Ryan’s cheeks. Shane pushes his fingers past Ryan’s lips, in this desperate nonsensical way, tries to get the blood out. It’s awful, grotesque  somehow. It’s worlds always from all the other times he’s done this. “No, Jesus, Ryan, Jesus, no—”

He wipes them clean desperately on his own shirt and drags him further away, grabs one of the water bottles but his hands are slick now and he can’t open it at first. When he does, most of it spills. “Wash your mouth out— Ryan—”  
  
~

Ryan isn’t moving. His whole body, brain, everything is completely stopped. Shane’s yanking him back. Freaking out. Ryan doesn’t know why. He keeps trying to look back at Zack, like if he stares at him—stares hard enough, he can erase this. He can drag himself and Zack and everyone else back through reality and stop it. But Shane has a hold on his face and he’s unscrewing a bottle of water.

Trying to.

Ryan’s stuck. He’s playing all these moments with Zack that happened—it feels like years ago. He feels like he’s known him forever. There’s all these points of Zack, and Ryan, and Shane… and it’s… Zack is dead. Zack just… he shot himself. He shot himself to keep himself from getting sicker, but what if he wasn’t sick? What if it was something else? And now it’s nothing else. It can’t be anything else because there’s a bullet hole in his head.

Shane’s trying to give Ryan the water bottle. But he doesn’t understand, or if he does, he can’t move. Can’t tug himself out of this long enough to do what some part of him is telling him to do. Because all those memories of Zack narrow to a point, and he hears that shot, again and again, and again. And he sees his the blood, again and again and again. And the point, sharp and hot and scalding, stabs straight through his chest. So he almost gasps, but doesn't. Just makes the movement.

Emotions, movement, everything claws at Ryan’s throat but there’s this blanket over top of it. This film that’s pressing everything down. Because if it doesn’t, if he lets it up—then they’re going to kill him. All of it is going to kill him. He looks up at Shane. And he knows, on some level, a thousand miles away, what Shane wants him to do. Why he wants him to do it. But he can’t make it solid. All he can do is stare, stare into Shane’s face, and think, _What if I kill him too?_

~  
  
He turns them so Ryan’s back is to Zack which means Shane can see it, him, at the edge of his vision, but he tries not to. “Ryan, please, here— take some and spit it out. _Now!_ ”

Ryan’s just staring and staring.  “ _Ryan!_ ” Shane shouts his name, one hand gripping his shoulder. His voice cracks in desperation as he jostles him a little, because he’s fucking scaring him, like Ryan might never break out of this.  
  
~  
  
Ryan blinks. Hard, a few times. Shane's shaking him. Almost yelling. Ryan's just shivering. But he can do this. He can just... Drink. Do what Shane said. He doesn't have to do more than that.

He takes a drink, will sluggish. Still half-there. He works it around in his mouth and spits it away from Shane.

Zack's dead. Zack is dead.  
  
Jake is dead.

He wants to throw up. There's nausea, crushed against the rest of it. But he can't let go enough. He can't do anything.  
  
~  
  
The panic recedes a little which unfortunately just leaves more space for this horrible numb sickness to leech in in its stead.

He needs... he doesn’t know what to do so he takes the bottle back and rinses his hands, cleans them up and wipes them over Ryan’s lips again. There’s still blood on them, but Shane’s almost certain it’s from when Zack hit him and not—  
  
It’s okay. They’re okay.

Shane knows he’s not breathing right. His eyes keep flickering to the mess of Zack’s skull. He wants to fucking— he wants to get away from this but he can’t seem to make his feet move, and his teeth are chattering so hard it’s hard to think.  
  
“Let’s,” he manages. “Let’s move…” he doesn’t know to where, he can’t even fathom what they need… they can’t leave yet. They… there’s things left to do  
  
Zack…   
  
Oh god. Shane shuts his eyes tightly for a second and sways. He can’t dig another grave.  
  
~  
  
Ryan hears Shane say _move_ , so he does. He walks around him. Takes a few steps. He focuses on the steps. He focuses on the door, but then there's this bag Zack put in the  floor. Stuff he was trying to take. They can't leave him. They can't just walk out and leave him here. Ryan already let him--just like Jake, _just_ like Jake.

Ryan takes a breath and grabs onto the shelf before he crumples, half against it, back to his knees. It teeters with his weight, a few things fall off it and clatter, echo, and he honestly wishes it would crush  him. Fucking everyone. Everyone is gone. Dead. Zack was fine for months. And now… everyone is dead.

Shane's not dead, some part of Ryan tries to say. Shane's still here.

But for how long?  
  
~  
  
“Ryan, no—fuck,” Shane breathes the last word and moves forward to pull Ryan up and away from the shelf before he gets hurt. They need to get out of here, it’s too awful, but there is nowhere to go. There are zombies outside... and inside, there’s—what’s left of Zack. 

Shane turns his face away and swallows a mouthful of acid, fingers gripping Ryan’s arm. When he gathers himself he tugs Ryan with him into the room, theirs, and shuts the door behind them. He pushes Ryan in gently, a little further, then tugs him around to face him and takes both Ryan’s arms, steadies him, then takes his face in his hands. “Ryan, look at me.”

What comes next? After Ryan’s eyes are on his, what then? Nothing changes. Shane is still at a loss. Nothing they do in here will erase the world outside.  
  
~  
  
Ryan meets Shane's eyes after a second. And Shane looks as fucked up as he does. Ryan opens his mouth to say something, anything, to break through this vice grip around his throat to get back to Shane. But there's no sound... Just this whimper, half-keen drawn between his teeth.

 _Shane_.

Shane is the one thing still here. The one thing Ryan hasn't lost, hasn't fucked up.

A gasp, a sob, pulls out of him next. It's too much. It lets too much through. He yanks Shane's hand away from his face and slams into him. His body trembles with tears he's still fighting with, pressed into Shane, hands hooked around his back like he's a fucking life raft. And he feels like one.

"Shane..." He is crying, broken, maybe angry crying. "Please don't die. Please, please... Don't..." He can't shake breath free from his chest over the screams that keep trying to come out. "Please don't leave me."  
  
~  
  
Shane always lets Ryan pull him under.  
  
Shane has learned to hold his breath for Ryan, even when it hurts his lungs, because no one else has done it. He’s too much, he’s always been too much for everyone else, but he has never been too much for Shane.  
  
He knows that now.  
  
But this time… this time comes close. Because there is so much hurt in Ryan, and Ryan asks him for something that Shane thinks might be impossible to promise, in part because no person can decide that, can they? Their free will doesn’t extend that far, Shane doesn’t think. The rest of why he can’t promise it is because he cannot fathom Ryan dying first.  
  
It’s that thought that makes Shane take a lungful of water and then he’s crying, too, because he has to breathe somehow, and this is the only way he knows how, and it’s because Ryan has so much hurt inside him that Shane doesn’t know how to fix. And it’s because there’s a kid out there who might have become a friend, who was definitely a friend to Ryan, and he’s dead now, and the ending was so wrong. So Shane just gets his arms around Ryan, one arm around his back, gripping his opposite shoulder, vice-like, the other arm crossed over the first and buried in his hair. He presses him into his chest. He holds him too tight and says “I won’t, I won’t, I won’t.”  
  
His tears stop under the ferocity of the promise he can’t really make because all of this is so far out of his hands, but he tries to anyway. His teeth have stopped chattering. All he’s got left is the last safety in the world, right here, and he clings to him, breathing raggedly, eyes tightly shut. “I’m so sorry, Ryan. I’m so sorry.”  
  
~  
   
Shane cries. It’s terrifying. It breaks something in Ryan that he doesn’t know how to fix. He knows he’s pushing too much on Shane—knows it, distantly, that he needs to pull back. Needs to pull it together. But the pieces are so scattered, so far away and fragmented and he isn’t sure where to start.  
   
 _Zack’s dead._  
   
But he starts to. Afterwards. He tells Shane he has to bury him—him, because he sees that haunted, broken expression in Shane’s eyes when he says it. Jake still bothers him. It still kills Ryan that Shane had to do it. So Ryan does most of it with Zack. It’s just behind the store. The land’s dead enough and sparse enough that there’s plenty of room to do it.  
   
 _Zack’s dead._  
   
He hates it. How close Zack was to getting away from here, how much he obviously wanted to—and now they’re burying him. It almost breaks Ryan all over again. But it doesn’t. He doesn’t think his body can break anymore. He doesn’t think there’s enough left to break right now. Shane helps where he can, but Ryan tells him not to. Because he sees it hurt him. Because he knows he owes him this.  
   
 _Zack’s dead._  
   
Shane wants to go. Like, now. And Ryan isn’t keen to stay either. So they get their things. They leave Zack’s gun—maybe it’s not even a choice they make. It’s stupid. It is, but it crosses Ryan’s mind as this phantom, intangible. He doesn’t grab it. Shane doesn’t grab it. It makes no sense, but they don’t. They get their stuff, some extra rations, and just… leave.  
   
 _Zack is dead._  
   
The phones are in the car, charged. Finn’s phone. Shane’s phone. Fuck, did Shane—? Ryan isn’t sure. He’s still staring at them when Shane appears, and he’s holding the keys like he’s planning on driving. It’s weird. Shane never drives. Ryan doesn’t really want him to drive. But his leg is hurting, and he’s tired, and… fuck, if Shane wants to do this, he doesn’t want to take it from him. Jesus, if they’re here, then that means Shane was on them, reading through Finn’s stuff, maybe his old stuff, right before…  
   
Jesus Christ, Ryan had no fucking idea. He doesn’t want to bring it up now. Because it’s going to make it worse. There’s nothing he can say to fix it. He’s the one that killed Finn, or at least, ended Finn. He remembers those names on the wall and looks up into Shane’s face.  
   
“Do you wanna drive?” Because he needs to be sure. He needs to make sure it’s not just something else he’s pushing on him. And it makes him realizes how little they’ve said since this happened. But what can they say?  
   
Zack’s dead.  
  
~  
  
Shane nods because if he’s driving he’s doing something useful, and he hasn’t been feeling useful lately. And if he’s driving, maybe he’ll think less. He meets Ryan’s dark eyes, the dark circles under them and nods. “Yeah,” he says.  
  
He thinks their voices sound strange. They’ve been so silent and so strained for so long. He hopes that moving away from here will change things for the better, at least a little. They get into the car. The car that Zack fixed. The car they wouldn’t have if it wasn’t for Zack, and Shane wonders, all at once, what the fuck the universe was doing to bring them here, make them break down in this place, make them find Zack, only to rip him away like that. Away from Ryan. Another thing the world is taking. Shane starts the car, and it comes to life beneath them.  
  
Shane isn’t letting the world take anything else from Ryan. He lets the car sit for a second, because he doesn’t know how to say goodbye to this place or even if they should. He had no idea how to get closure from the dusty earth marking Zack’s grave, just like he had no idea how to get closure for his parents or for Finn. This world doesn’t give them any time. But it’s given him Ryan.  
  
Shane can’t hate it. But he won’t give it a chance to take Ryan from him, either.  
  
“Ready?” Shane asks, although he knows Ryan isn’t. Shane isn’t either.  
  
They go anyway.  
  
They drive through the night because neither of them is sleeping. Somewhere in the darkness between Arizona and California, Shane says. “I didn’t charge your phone.” It’s the first time either of them have spoken in hours. There’s no streetlights anymore, just the lights cutting through the darkness, never quite bright enough. “I was going to, but I thought… it’s yours.”  
  
~  
  
Ryan has had his head on the window, watching the scenery, trying so hard not to think about Zack. Before or after. Especially not after. He's trying not to think about how angry Zack was, at him. He's trying not to be angry at himself.

He's let go more than he usually does when Shane drives. He's not sleeping, but he's not paying attention. He needs to offer to take over. He's going to but he's trying to find a good time. And maybe a good time to check on Shane after... Well, after everything. But after the phones. But his jaw is wired shut, spewing all the words backwards until they coat his lungs like an acrid fucking powder.

He starts when Shane speaks. His voice pierces Ryan's thoughts like a crack through a camera lens.

"Oh..." He stares at his phone between the two of them. He hadn't even checked. There's nothing on there. There's no one left. There hadn't been for a while. The screens so chipped and cracked it almost cuts his finger when he picks it up.

"Yeah, it's cool. I doubt it would even come on, honestly." He steals a glance at Shane. "Did you, uh... did you get yours on?" He knows he did. But it gives Shane an out if he doesn't want this. It's easier.  
  
~  
  
“Yeah, I did,” Shane says, and his voice falters slightly. he follows it up with “I really thought we’d find somewhere by now...” 

He isn’t complaining, but... he doesn’t want to talk about the phones, suddenly. He just wanted to talk, maybe. Reach out. He’s uncertain about how to reach out now, after everything and that’s so stupid, but... he’s been thinking about taking Ryan’s hand for an hour according to the car clock that says the wrong time but still counts the minutes. He just hasn’t been able to do it.  
  
~  
  
Ryan looks over at him, but okay. Shane doesn't want to talk about it. Ryan can't blame him. He doesn't know what was on there. He hopes it was good, not bad. But Finn seemed like a good brother. Ryan just hopes it didn't hurt Shane. And part of him is glad that it happened, that Finn turned, so far away from Shane. It's not fair. It's probably cruel. But it's so...

Ryan rubs at his eyes. Shane seems so far away now. Ryan doesn't know how to respond to him now. Some part of him is scared to reach out, has been since Kelsey. And now after Zack, he doesn't know if it's what Shane wants. He never knows.

"Are you tired? I can drive." He looks out into the empty, endless road. He's trying to find a way to fill this silence but there's nothing inside him. "I wonder how far we are from LA. It's... You've never been to California, right? I cannot fathom a childhood without Disneyland."

He reaching hard and words scrape along the inside of his throat like metal dragging over stone. But he needs this. He's losing his grip, on something, and Shane needs him. He needs Shane. Fuck, he needs Shane.  
  
~  
  
“I’m okay,” Shane says, because he knows if he stops driving he’ll fall asleep, and Ryan will be left alone and he won’t do that to him. Not right now. 

“Yeah, I guess I always wanted to go. To Disneyland, as a kid, but it was so far and eventually I realized there would be crowds.” Shane shifts his hands on the wheel, forcing himself to push past this need for quiet and talk instead, because the need for something, some thread to connect him to Ryan is stronger.   
  
“Are you insinuating that my childhood was fucked up without Disney? Are you...” Shane glances over. “Are you like ‘Oh _that's_ what’s wrong with that guy, I _knew_ it was something.”  
  
~  
  
Ryan doesn't think Shane's fine. He seems tired. But fighting feels like more trouble than it's worth. And Ryan is fucking exhausted.

He smiles, though. They're both trying and he just wants this to be easy. He wants to be able to lean over and kiss Shane on the cheek like he did before, but it feels wrong. Like Zack's gone so this thing that happened with him... Maybe it should be gone too. Maybe Shane doesn't trust Ryan.

Maybe he's right not to.

"Oh, that's one of many things. I have a list and if I ever get access to a computer again I'm going to put it into an Excel spreadsheet. It's extensive." He leans back, and his mind drifts back to Disneyland. "I wonder if it's still there..."

He doesn't mention anything else. Just that 

~  
  
“What, Disneyland?” Shane asks, and it’s half a scoff because of course it isn’t still there, but then he thinks that Ryan wants it to be, so when Shane continues it’s all positivity. “Probably. All those structures and things probably— you know— metal. They’ll hold up pretty well...”

 _Even under an onslaught of bombings?_ Shane wonders. He doesn’t want to ask Ryan if that was one of the areas that became a strike zone.   
  
Shane says “I wanna see the ocean.”  
  
~  
  
Ryan doesn't sigh. He doesn't say anything. He hears the way Shane's voice clouds with doubt. And he's right. He's so absolutely right that Ryan can't even start to be disappointed. Or he shouldn't, but he is. 

He laughs quietly. "Have you never seen an ocean? Did you come from actual caves?" He wouldn't mind seeing the ocean either. Something this shit hasn't contaminated. "Man, can you imagine a shark zombie? That would be terrifying."  
  
~  
  
“That’s— I don’t think that could happen,” Shane says, but he’s smiling a little. “I don’t even know if I could tell the difference, honestly. They’re all pretty... bitey...”

He trails off, fingers gripping the wheel hard for a moment, before he reaches, touches the soft hair at the back of Ryan’s neck for a moment, just a second, before he draws away. He thinks _I miss you_ , but it would sound stupid out loud.

He’s right here.  
  
~  
  
Ryan cocks his head. Lucky sharks. No risk of becoming a zombie. Eating whatever they want. Ryan is kinda jealous of sharks. It's a really dumb thought.

Shane's hand brushes the back of his neck and every hair on Ryan's body stands way too straight. It chills him in this weird way, like he didn't know he was burning and Shane's doused the flame.

He touches Shane's shoulder, pushes it, but not enough to throw his concentration because Ryan has no intention of dying in a car crash. "I guess that's something you have in common."

The touch lingers but doesn't go further. He could grab Shane's hand, but there's all this awful shit about Zack and zombie girls and dead brothers. Fear. He let's his hand slide away slowly and stares at the road.

Why does everyone end up dead?  
  
~  
  
He breathes something that might be a laugh and furrows his brow a little. “Yeah...”

After a second, Shane pulls the car over, cuts the engine and hopes like he does every time they stop that the car will start again. Silence falls, and without the headlines it’s very dark, but his eyes have adjusted and he scans the road ahead, the mirrors. There’s nothing around. Just nighttime, darkness. 

After a few long, quiet seconds, there’s crickets. It’s February or something, and there’s crickets. Fucking California. They start up one by one after the engine goes quiet, save for a few clicks from the heat. It’s so safe. It feels so normal, except everything they’ve been through is vibrating its tension and fear so hard Shane’s sure it’s going to explode into pieces. It’s just a matter of when.

“I like how crickets,” Shane says, still looking ahead and not at Ryan “go quiet when something walks by. And then just... you can hear what’s around if you’re really still.” He swallows and looks over at Ryan.

“Things are gonna be fine,” he says, trying desperately to believe it. To make Ryan believe it at least. “ _We_ are.”  
  
~  
  
Ryan swallows the _you don't know that_ in his throat. He stares at Shane. And it does the opposite, trying to relax. Instead, he starts to rev up too fast. Like Shane cut the engine and somehow channeled the energy into Ryan. His hands shake so he wrings them together.

He wants to ask why Shane stopped. He wants to ask why he brought up crickets. He wants to ask why he's got this nauseous awful feeling at his core. This thing that promises nothing will be fine.

But Shane's saying it will and it's almost enough. His eyelids lower, and he says, "Okay."

He pulls his hands apart and clenches his fists. "I'm sorry I..." He isn't sure how to apologize. For the carelessness. For Zack. For Jake. For wrecking Shane’s last glimpse of Finn. Doing it after Shane has done so much. When Shane deserves so much. So he just repeats, in this voice that's almost drowned out by the crickets, "Sorry." He's looking out the window again. Because eye contact might kill him.  
  
~  
  
He shakes his head a fraction, “No— why? What?” Fuck.

Ryan isn’t looking at him and Shane doesn’t know how far he has to go back to fix things, and he is so shit at this. He just wants it to be better, but that’s not how this stuff works. “Why are you _sorry_?” He asks, because it doesn’t make sense, and really Shane should be the one... he should be sorry.  
  
~  
  
Ryan laughs but it's brittle. He needs Shane to just take this. If he thinks too long, or too hard, he's going to lose his grip again. He's going to think about Zack throwing footballs. About Zack managing to save Ryan when Ryan couldn't save him.

"With... I mean, you were right. I've been... I was careless, and it got Zack..." He can't work the words out of his throat. It billows up in him like smoke so he almost coughs on it. "I am fucking horrible at the zombie apocalypse." He half-smiles, shoots Shane a second long glance and then draws his eyes back to his own lap.  
  
~  
  
“No,” Shane says, the word solid but hollow, “Nope, it’s— I should have gone with you, I was... I should have gone with you both, and instead I was fucking... feeling sorry for myself in the car, Jesus, Ryan. It’s—”  
  
He reaches out and catches Ryan’s jaw in his hand and turns his face towards him, but he can’t make him look. And maybe he wants a fight, just somewhere to put all this desperation, this fear, this anger.

“It’s not your fault. None of that was your fault.”  
  
~  
  
Ryan resists Shane's pull on his jaw, but only briefly. He eventually looks. And there's a spark in Shane's eyes. Like he's ready to wage a war over this, and Ryan can't. He doesn't have any fight left in him. He's not sure he has anything left in him.

"You shouldn't have to babysit me." It's weak, his voice. "You deserve to feel sorry for yourself sometimes." It's all too soft.  
  
~  
  
He’s trying not to be angry because he’s not angry at Ryan. He’s just angry at everything that’s happened to them.   
  
“I’m not _babysitting_ you,” he says, and it comes out breathless. “I’m not, I’m— I should have been with you, I wanted— it was the wrong time. It’s not your fault, though. It was just a fucking— I should have noticed when I couldn’t hear you anymore, but I didn’t— I could have gotten there sooner, I should be wearing that fucking gun... I don’t know, I fucked— I think I fucked up, too.”  
  
~  
  
Ryan grabs Shane's hands and squeezes. It's easier than anything else he's doing. "I know you want to... Be there. I get that. But it's not your job. It's... You should be able to trust me not to..." He lets go.

He takes a shudder breath and turns away again, drops his head into his hands. "I knew she might... I knew she was probably infected, and I couldn't... She looked so normal." His fingers dig too hard into his own temples, and he works his sentences through gritted teeth. "Zack saved my life and I couldn't save his. Just like..." He flinches, bites down hard on the words. He can't do this right now. He can't throw this all at Shane when he doesn't even know where to start. 

He breathes, slowly, looks up. "All I'm saying, is I want to do better. Because I can't..." Everything tangles in his throat. "I can't lose you over some stupid mistake. I can't lose you at all."  
  
~  
  
“I told you you won’t,” Shane says, voice too soft. “Do better, do what you have to do, but I don’t care, just— don’t you go anywhere either.” He exhales wrong. “I hate this conversation. I need— I need you to not go anywhere. Okay?”  
  
~  
   
It’s a fair thing for Shane to say. Ryan said the same thing. He’s said it a lot, really. Mostly Ryan just hears that Shane hates this. He hates it too. He hates that feel like he’d rather tear himself open and rip everything out than… keep going sometimes. Because Shane needs him, maybe as much as Ryan needs Shane.  
   
But there’s something brewing in the center of him, that makes him think about what he’s asked of Shane—about not leaving. Because he can’t guarantee that. It could’ve been him with Kelsey. It could’ve been him instead of Jake. It wasn’t. It hasn’t been, and he’s been seeing that as a bad thing. But if it was…  
   
“Okay,” he says softly, just like he did when Shane said things would be fine. Then his voice hikes up, it’s forced, but it works. “But can I not go anywhere in a place that isn’t here? Like I’m happy for you and your cricket boner, but there is nothing here. It’s terrifying.”  
  
~  
  
Shane takes a second, watching Ryan with these intense eyes like he’s looking for something else beneath this, beneath these jokes and cricket boners and the way he thinks Ryan really might be terrified, surrounded by something beautiful like this.  
  
But okay. It’s the apocalypse. So, fair.  
  
“No,” Shane says, and his voice has slipped, somehow, into younger, it’s obnoxious-on-purpose. It says _I’m right_. “The crickets mean everything’s gone back to normal. Like— haven’t you noticed how the— like, there were still deer at the cabin... okay,” Shane takes the wheel like he’s going to drive but he hasn’t turned the car on yet just so Ryan stops looking like he’s about to have a stroke from fear. “There were deer there. The animals never… turn into anything, they’re just out there living their lives, like… I think…” Shane stops himself, staring vacantly out the windshield into the darkness. The crickets are loud.  
  
Shane doesn’t know if he should say this. If this is just his insane, one-man-is-in-fact-an-island brain thinking this. If this is actually impossible for other people. He wonders if it’s fair to say it after Zack. And all the other people they’ve lost. His eyes fall to his phone to the last place he’ll ever hear Finn’s voice.  
  
Is it fair?  
  
He touches the key but doesn’t turn it.  
  
~  
  
Ryan furrows his eyebrows at Shane. It's fair. It's a normal thing to say, but Ryan's caught between rejecting himself, these thoughts, entirely, or succumbing to this brokenness trying to tear him apart. Shane can do serious in shades. Ryan is black or white. He can't be black now. He can't.

He needs to, though. Shane needs gray. He's always needed gray and that's why Ryan fails him over and over again. Because he isn't. He can't be.

He reached over and grabs Shane's hand on the ignition, to make sure he doesn't turn it. "Let's listen to the dumb crickets."  
  
~  
  
Shane can’t ask _do you think everything will ever go back to normal?_ because he knows the answer already and he doesn’t want Ryan to have to tell him. He doesn’t want him to have to say it out loud.  
  
Just a few minutes ago, he told Ryan they were gonna be okay and god damn it, he’s going to make him _believe_ it someday.  
  
Something swoops through him. Not the touch, the words maybe, or the way Ryan’s voice sounds, or how warm his fingers are against Shane’s which are cold from holding the wheel. He lets go of the key and grabs hold of Ryan’s hand instead, holds on tight, even as he takes a deep breath and leans back against his seat, eyes checking, checking, checking, the windows, the mirrors.  
  
He runs his thumb over Ryan’s knuckles, then turns his head to look at him. There’s all this anxiety and darkness there, in among all that brown, and it’s hard to tell their proper colour in this darkness. Shane wants to kiss him, but they’re listening to crickets now. Because it’s what he wanted, and Ryan…  
  
Ryan tries so much for Shane. For everyone, probably, Shane thinks, but he… he tries so hard.  
  
Shane’s fingers go tighter on Ryan’s hand just a little, barely anything more than a shift in the touch, and he thinks about how much time he’s already wasted keeping things to himself, waiting to see how things turn out. He can’t keep doing that. It’s the end of the world.  
  
He shifts, turns a little to face him better and takes a breath to speak.  
  
~  
  
Ryan looses a breath as Shane takes hold of his hand. It's more touch than they've had, besides Ryan crying and sobbing fit after Zack, since Zack was infected. 

Shane is really into the crickets. It's very weird. Actually, it's not. Wanting that normalcy, Ryan gets it. There's something scratching under his skin, not letting him settle into it, but he understands. Understands because he can almost feel Shane's pulse through their hands and it's the only reason he's breathing.

He looks, earnestly, maybe too earnestly, at Shane. "So are... Are you still okay with the whole... kissing thing? I feel like it's weird to ask. It definitely is, I'm pretty sure, but everything has been hard and I don't just wanna assume, like if you aren't... and it's fine. But it seems better to ask. Or whatever. This is dumb. Pretend I didn't say this."  
  
It's such a shallow, unfair thing to even think after all this. Fuck.  
  
He pauses. “Wait, sorry, were you gonna say something?”  
  
~  
  
He’s trying so hard to get the words out, and he’s stuck on the stupidest — should he say his name, or not? When you tell someone how you feel, do you say their name? Is that too cliché? Do they only do that in movies? Shane’s heart has wedged itself in his throat and it’s just slamming away, and he has no idea how he’s going to get the words around it, and he thinks that he’ll just see what happens and hope he doesn’t stammer all over himself like a fucking idiot.  
  
And then Ryan starts talking about fucking kissing of all things, like he’s read Shane’s mind, like maybe Shane really is that obvious and, God, he hopes he isn’t, he can’t breathe for a moment.  
  
“Ryan,” Shane says, and it comes out tight and choked and he doesn’t know why. Part of him wants to say _shut up_ , and part of him is still trying to tell him—  
  
 _It’s the end of the world_ , Shane thinks, and Ryan’s asking him if he was going to say something.  
  
 _Yes, I fucking was_ , Shane’s mind says in this soft screaming static.  
  
Instead he laughs a little, genuine, helpless and says “No,” and leans forward to kiss him, and it’s a little too hard and wanting.  
  
 _You could_ still _say it_ , he thinks. He presses Ryan back a little, hard enough that their teeth click and a sound escapes him and maybe he should have asked if Ryan was okay with this, too, but the fact that he asked seems like the answer.  
  
~  
   
Ryan opens his mouth, because he is pretty sure Shane absolutely had something to say. He hates himself for rambling about kissing right then The silence and whatever’s eating at his insides cracked at just the wrong moment. Then Shane kisses him and a surprised moan, or squeak, or something not at all put together slips out of him.  
   
But he kisses back anyway. He’s relieved. It might be the first good thing he’s felt since Zack. Sometimes Shane feels like the only good thing left—and that’s not fair to him. Shane shouldn’t have to be that. Ryan brings a hand up to rest on Shane’s cheek and pushes into him. He can’t get any traction though, because Shane’s forcing him back.  
   
The car door feels close. It would be easier, to lean into it so he could focus on Shane. On what he wants to do with his mouth. Their teeth clack together and this noise comes out of Shane, and jesus. Ryan almost forgets that everyone is dead. It’s like the moment when he wakes up, on the good mornings, when his mother’s not dead, and Jake’s trash talking him via text, and he can still go ride Space Mountain.  
   
His hands dip to Shane’s neck, then back up, and Ryan’s just kissing him with this fever—the same one that always kindles in him when Shane touches him like this. His mouth fights for some kind of grip on Shane’s lips, half-biting, half-pulling—these bursts of hot, damp breath like he can expel some of the fire inside him. He can’t get enough momentum to push Shane back, so instead he catches he pulls him back towards Ryan’s side, towards the seat.  
  
~  
  
Shane’s breath hitches in this loud, stupid way that is very obvious and kind of embarrassing and then, immediately after, like the universe is literally trying to sabotage him, his seatbelt locks as he tries to press closer. Shane pulls away, sort of rips away from Ryan and says “Jesus,” in this soft, upset way, and struggles to get it undone and thinks about how stupid it is to just sit in a parked car with your seatbelt on, but that’s what they were doing.  
  
Shane flails free of the belt, which is intent of pinning him For Safety, and emerges rather more like he just fought off a wild animal than a basic everyday item, the collar of his shirt crooked and somewhat wild-eyed. Probably the moment is ruined anyway. Shane looks up at Ryan for a beat. “I, you’re gonna have to kiss me again or I’m just going to have to pretend none of this happened, and put my seatbelt back on, and keep driving, and then we can’t talk about this ever again.”  
  
~  
   
The seatbelt is tragic, and hilarious. Tragically hilarious, really. Ryan’s trying not to laugh because Shane looks a bit like he’s doing battle with a centaur. He gets there in the end. Ryan almost reaches over to help him, but he’s pretty sure throwing in an extra limb is just going to make things worse. He waits. Trying, failing, not to laugh.  
   
Ryan silently clicks his own seatbelt because he’s been more or less maneuvering around his own. He wants to think he’d have handled it better if it’d been his to pull the full stop, car wreck bit. But he isn’t sure. He’s flushed and his hands are a little shaky. Shane’s rambling about how embarrassing it is, which is funny, because Shane doesn’t usually ramble. He doesn’t talk.  
   
Ryan nods his head, almost patronizingly, as Shane talks—but he’s already leaning forward, humoring him. Still nodding, half-smiling, getting Shane’s face between his hands and kissing him before he really finishes his declaration about leaving. Ryan’s pretty sure that’s what he was doing—mostly he just wants to kiss him. He just needs to taste his stupid, chapped lips again. The heat. The metal ring of teeth on teeth. Ryan’s got the upper hand now. He slides a leg up onto the seat for leverage and slides past Shane’s lips with his tongue as he eases him back.  
  
~  
  
He doesn’t even have time to formulate a smug comment. Instead Shane lets his tongue slide along Ryan’s, and then whispers “Jesuschrist,” reaching for him, pulling at his shirt where he grabs the material, just below his ribs, pulling him closer.   
  
He’s pressing up against the corner of the door and the seat, twisted a little awkwardly. His elbow bumps the steering wheel and he bites down softly on Ryan’s lower lip and doesn’t let go, drags it between his teeth before kissing him again, pushing forward because there is still too much space between them.  
  
Cars are too small and there is too much space between them. That’s what he’s decided about cars. Shane’s fingers find one of the belt-loops of Ryan’s pants, and he tugs him forward sharply, other hand sliding over Ryan’s cheek, still scraped a little from the other day.   
  
It shivers through him coldly, a reminder. He kisses him harder to forget about it.  
  
~

A sound hiccups out of Ryan when his lip catches beneath Shane’s teeth. It hurts in this way that slips down his back like something gold and molten. He’s losing his mind, he thinks. He’s losing his mind and he doesn’t know how to stop it. Shane pulls him forward by the belt loop and Ryan drags his other leg onto the seat so his knees straddle one of Shane’s thighs. He’s got more room than Shane—he needs to fix it, but he doesn’t know how. His hips push, instinctively against Shane’s. All he wants is to close the space. He needs this friction like thirst needs water.

He pulls his mouth back, breathes a gasp, and kisses him again, snagging on these soft, cooler parts of Shane’s lips. He gets a hand beneath Shane’s shirt and follows the ridges of his ribcage. The skin’s cooled and thin, like Ryan could clench his hand around the bone. Part of him wants to. Part of him needs to be that close. He drops his mouth to Shane’s jaw. Tastes the bristle of salt and stress on Shane’s jawbone with his tongue. His hand slides around and up, up, up between Shane’s shoulder blades. It’s wedged between him and the car door. Pressure sings against his fingers until his eyelids flutter against it, but he doesn’t move. 

The other hand’s still clawing over top of Shane’s shirt like he can rip it off. It can’t, so he pulls it up to his neck, thumb slotting against one of the grooves. He pulls his mouth back across Shane’s cheek, this ragged, sloppy line back across his jaw until he finds his mouth again.   
  
~

Shane groans, his head falling back against the window as his body arches up into that touch. He needs to hold onto something, so he gets his fingers into Ryan’s hair and closes them into a fist. The other closes probably far too tight over Ryan’s hip before he lets go and clutches at the steering wheel instead, white-knuckled, trying to steady himself.  
  
Ryan kisses him again and Shane presses into it, tries to match the way Ryan pushes. He’s not helping himself because he’s holding Ryan to him with this too-tight grip on his hair, crushing their mouths together so hard that he doesn’t know what else to do to get him closer. His mind sort of short-circuits, he’s not thinking again.  
  
It’s probably a good thing, that he’s not thinking, or it’s the reason why, when they part for a second for breath, Shane whispers roughly, “Please.”  
  
~  
   
Ryan pants over top of him. And Shane’s asking him please, and it’s weird. Ryan doesn’t know what he’s asking. If he should stop or keep going. He thinks keep going. He’s thinking—he shouldn’t be thinking. But he always is with Shane. Maybe because Shane is. It’s probably infectious.  
   
Shane’s got this burning hold on his hip, and fuck—Ryan just wants… he doesn’t know. He wants all of it. Everything. It feels impossible, something he shouldn’t even be thinking about reaching for in this fucking car. He just buried his friend. A friend who saved his life, and here he is.  
   
He kisses Shane again, too abruptly, too hard—because he can’t deal with it. He can’t let himself get back there. To Zack screaming at him, blaming him. Because he’ll never stop it. He has to stop it because he can’t let this consume him. If it consumes him, then it might consume Shane and he can’t let it.  
   
He breaks away again, shuddering. His other hand, slips, down, hovering around Shane’s waistband. Shane’s said all these things about it, about sex, about how he doesn’t do it right. Ryan wants to push it. He just wants this—he wants to lose himself in Shane so he doesn’t lose himself in everything else.  
   
But there’s this growing, uncertain silence. There’s just their breathing. The crickets.  The fucking crickets are quiet now. Ryan goes tense. The air thickens like all the heat between them is finally settling into it—making it hard to breathe. Ryan doesn’t have time to register the same look of concern on Shane’s face, because he looks up, and when he does—it slams into the window like a fucking jump scare out of a horror movie.  
   
“Fuck!” He’s whispering. It’s this weird, frantic whisper, instead of the scream that’s trying to get out.  
   
He can’t see much of its features in the dark. But it’s a fucking zombie. Ryan jerks back. Tries to untangle himself. Because it would be exactly his luck that this thing will shatter the window and just murder them both right now.  
  
~  
  
Shane yelps, scrambling away from it. He’s too tall, the knuckles of his hand crack, hard, accidentally, into the edge of Ryan’s jaw as he tries to get as far the fuck away from the window as he can. He grabs for the key, finds it, and turns it too fast. The engine does something, something wrong and the car doesn’t start.  
  
“Christ, fuck,” Shane says as it lunges at the window again, teeth-first. The glass cracks, but not enough to break. Shane pulls in this hot lungful of hair and tries again. It works. The tires spin as he hits the gas, the cars spins against gravel and the back fish-tails slightly and the zombie throws itself against the back door anyway. Shane thinks _If we go into a ditch right now—_ but somehow he pulls them out of it, gets back onto the road. The zombie falls behind until Shane can’t see it anymore, but just then, the headlights catch another one at the edge of the road in this weird, pale light. Its eyes reflect in a way that isn’t human or animal as it turns its head in the direction of the car, but doesn’t move otherwise.  
  
They pass it, Shane can’t breathe right. “I’m sorry,” he says. His knuckles hurt. “Jesus— are you okay?”  
  
~  
   
Ryan wants to take the keys. He hates that he’s not in the right spot to drive. He’s just scared. There’s nothing in his head but this screaming, bright red fear—this clawing need to get away from here. To close his eyes and go back to when his fear of dark empty roads was mostly unwarranted.  
   
Shane clips his jaw. It throbs, stings, but mostly his adrenaline sweeps it up into the rest of the chaos. He slams against the passenger door as Shane turns the car. God, he wishes he was fucking driving. But Shane gets it worked out and they get straight on the road. And then there’s another zombie. Ryan’s breath comes out shaky and uneven. He doesn’t realize until then how hard he’s shaking. But he can’t stop it.  
   
Shane asks if he’s okay, and feeling slides back into the rest of him as the terror subsides and there is still the faint throbbing in his jaw. He doesn’t reach for it. Like he’s being too careful with movement. As if it could draw the zombie to them.  
   
“Yeah…” He does his best to keep it steady. “Yeah, that’s—are you?”  
  
~  
  
“ _No_ ,” Shane says, “Fuck…” he looks over, pale, panicked. He wants to pull over again, see what he’s done to him, what the damage is, but he also never wants to pull over again. “I mean, yeah, I’m okay. It’s okay.”  
  
He can see Ryan shaking from here. He looks away, too anxious to trust himself to not pay attention to the road. “Put your seatbelt on,” Shane says. He reaches for his but it’s still locked and he hisses something that’s mostly a curse. “Jesus… that was stupid. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to hit you.”  
  
~  
   
There are no more zombies. They are not in the car. Ryan actually glances in the backseat like he isn’t sure, but there’s nothing. Shane says to put on his seatbelt, so he just does. He’s slowly silvering back in, shakes out his shoulders. Yeah, Shane knocked the shit out of his jaw. He reaches up to rub it. It’s tender enough that he winces a little.  
   
Shane can’t get his seatbelt on. Ryan almost wants to help him with it, but he can’t because he already put his on and he’d have to reach way too far over. He closes his eyes and tries to push himself away from the pain in his jaw. Tries to calm his heart down.  
   
“You’re fine. I’m going to assume it was an accident, and either way, you are made of withered twigs so it doesn’t hurt.”  
  
~  
  
“Bullshit it doesn’t hurt,” Shane says, and it’s halfway between a joke and caring a whole fucking lot. “I’m strong. I could best you in a fight any day…” He swallows. “It was an accident,” he says, softer.  
  
Jesus he wants to stop. He’s so tired of driving. His body feels freezing cold after how warm he was a few minutes ago, filled with a new kind of tension now, and all this cold sweat from fear. It slides unpleasantly down his spine.  
  
He needs to stop somewhere. He hates these fucking reminders of this shit world they’re trying to survive in, but he guesses it’s better than the alternative.  
  
~  
   
It does hurt. Shane is absolutely right. It feels, vaguely, like his jaw might be dislodged. Or at least actively trying to become dislodged. But he scoffs and pretends it doesn’t because he just needs it to not. He needs things to not suck. They do, though. Fuck, they do. So much.  
   
“Yeah, okay, you could best me in a fight. Sure.” Shane’s probably dying from driving too much. Ryan wishes they could just find somewhere to stop, because he’s asked enough times that he’s pretty sure Shane’s not going to let him drive. Yet, still, “Are you—you are like twice the length of this car so you should really probably stop driving. I can get us to wherever, to somewhere… tonight.”  
  
~  
  
“No,” Shane says, “Because I’m not stopping this car again.”  
  
And he doesn’t. The sky is getting light when they finally reach a motel which is partially gross and partially a relief because he sort of felt like the night was going to go on forever. It says No Vacancy. Shane stares at the letters hanging crookedly on the sign and then at the motel itself. Some doors are literally hanging open, like people just fled their rooms without bothering to lock up.  
  
“What do you think, Ry?” Shane asks. “I think some of those rooms are probably vacant.”  
  
They are. They climb the steps to the second level, and Shane’s thankful they don’t have to go through that creepy, dark interior because one door is hanging off and it’s the opposite of welcoming.  
  
Most of the doors are locked. The wind blows dryly through his hair. He’s tense but he doesn’t think zombies can climb steps very well, so at least they’ll probably hear anything coming. ( _That’s what you thought about the crickets,_ his mind says, nastily).  
  
One door is unlocked and Shane clutches at the fabric at the small of Ryan’s back as he kicks it softly open all the way. Nothing jumps out. It’s just an empty room. Dark. No electricity. There are two beds, a TV., a closet with nothing inside. There’s this air that someone’s been here — someone’s gone through all these rooms before them and taken what they needed, but they didn’t leave anything except for the shell of a suitcase on the opposite side of one of the beds.  
  
“Okay,” Shane says, after they’ve checked all the corners, all the dark places. They lock themselves in.  
  
Shane tries the light in the bathroom but it doesn’t work. The water does, but it’s only cold. Still, he drops his backpack and digs out the flashlight.  
  
He steps around the bag and says “C’mere,” as he reaches out to gently tip Ryan’s face up, shining the light on the place he hit him. It’s definitely bruising, but he didn’t break the skin.  
  
~  
  
Ryan wishes Shane would let him drive. He's never letting him do this again. As much as he likes his company, Shane really shouldn't drive this long. It feels like it's bad for him. He's so fucking relieved when they get to the motel he doesn't even care that it looks like it might be invested with rats.

The stairs go on long enough that Ryan's leg starts to wobble when he sets it down. (Okay, probably not fair to the stairs. It's only two flights.) Ryan strips his bag after helping Shane make sure the room doesn't have any hidden surprises. It reminds him of Jake, two stories up, completely stripped bare.

Shane immediately starts worrying about his face again. Ryan rolls his eyes. He doesn't pull away because he's too tired, but it's ridiculous. Ryan is not going to die from a minor clip to the jaw. 

"It really doesn't hurt. Jesus, you're relentless." Sure, he's not being completely truthful, but he doesn't know what Shane's going to do with it, other than make himself feel bad about it. His brain instructs him to pull away, but his body ignores it.  
  
~  
  
“I was going to kiss you again,” Shane says, “but I changed my mind.” He flicks the flashlight off, trying to fill that hollowness in his gut with something else, but there’s not much else besides Ryan.  
  
He drags the covers back on the bed. It looks clean enough. Cleaner than his own clothes, but dusty. Shane sneezes into his arm, then starts to undress down to his underwear because it’s not like someone’s going to wash the bedding, and he feels disgusting. Earlier, he found flecks of brownish red on his jeans that he thinks might be Zack’s blood, but he didn’t say anything about it, just tried to rub it out, picked at the fabric until it was worn.  
  
He bets Ryan isn’t going to sleep, but he glances at him anyway, hoping... he doesn’t want to bring it up because he thinks Ryan feels guilty about it, about not sleeping, which is stupid, but he doesn’t want to get into the bed alone.  
  
~  
  
Ryan scowls. A little cheated. He stands back while Shane pulls the covers down the bed and crosses his arms. Shane gets through the dust (it's a lot) and tosses Ryan a look like he's waiting on him.

But Ryan is still feeling twelve and vaguely sulky about the kiss comment. He raises his eyebrows at Shane. "Oh? You want me to sleep there? You sure?" He's teasing, sulky teasing. He reminds himself of Jake, weirdly. "I just wouldn't want you to _change your mind_."

Shane's so good at calling bluffs, there's a chance Ryan will end up in the other bed solely to win this. But he's hoping not.  
  
~  
  
Shane raises his eyebrows at him as he unlaces his boots and gets them off, and then undoes his jeans. He spreads his arms, palms up. “There’s another bed right over there,” Shane says, playing along, hoping Ryan isn’t about to take this bait because he doesn’t want to have to ask for him to share this too small bed with him.  
  
He can tell it’s going to be too small already. His back hurts just looking at it.  
  
“I thought you might—” Shane cuts himself off about saying something about being scared of things that go bump in the night. That joke’s not funny if it’s lost Ryan a brother. “Uh,  I guess I can’t use the body heat excuse anymore,” he says and wonders, suddenly, if it was just an excuse in the cabin.  
  
~  
  
  
Ryan openly hates that Shane hasn't just shoved him into this bed. Sharing makes very little sense in reality, but he wants to. He doesn't know if it's great for Shane with he's sixty three foot limbs but it's what he's aiming for, maybe.

Ryan pulls off his own clothes, slowly. His leg isn't completely healed from all the scraping, so he's careful, and then he climbs into the bed because Shane's a nightmare.

"You don't need an excuse. You either want to sleep with me or you want your own bed." Ryan swipes at the dust, trying to point it away from Shane, then slides beneath the covers and turns to look up at Shane. His voice goes soft, tinted with a tired smile. "It's fine either way."

Even though it kinda isn't.  
  
~  
  
“I do want to sleep with you,” Shane says, and then sort of hitches as he moves to climb into the bed beside him. He meets his eyes and says “Uh,” and half-laughs. “Okay. I’m going to stop talking now.”  
  
He gets in beside him and carefully, carefully arranges himself because, for whatever reason, he still sometimes feels like he should act like they’re not allowed to touch. He doesn’t understand these rules yet. He also doesn’t want to hurt him, his leg. There’s always something about Ryan to be hurt. Shane folds himself down, legs bent, and they have to brush Ryan’s because the bed just isn’t big enough. “I could face the other way, I guess,” he offers.  
  
~  
  
Shane's not touching him and Ryan can't tell if it's a message that he needs space or what. It shouldn't matter. He said he wanted to share a bed with Ryan. So Ryan doesn't know why he's thinking so much about it.

Shane finally gets where he's trying to get but they are so smashed together. It's ridiculous. They should take separate beds. But Ryan likes sleeping near Shane, even when Shane doesn't want to touch him.

"You're fine. I feel like—are you comfortable? Do you need room?" He's not sure what he's offering because if he slides over he's going to be on the floor. Which would be a lovely throw back to their first night together, really.  
  
~  
  
“No, I… no, Ryan,” Shane says, like he’s annoyed, and reaches for him. He has to maneuver his whole body again. “Jesus, I hate being tall,” he says as he folds himself around him, pulls himself up so that his legs don’t have to be quite as bent which means he’s got to curl himself around Ryan to avoid hitting his head against the headboard.  
  
It’s dusty. Shane huffs a sigh into his hair, then draws away to sneeze again.  
  
“Ugh, gross. You’re an idiot,” he tells him, as he rolls back. “I’ve never wanted room.”  
  
~  
   
Ryan is managing with the dust. His eyes are watering, but all in all, he’s doing better than Shane. So it’s a win. Ryan rolls his eyes, almost says bless you, but it feels so ridiculous in their current situation that he can’t get it out.  
   
“You alright there, big guy?” It’s weird to think about. The whole fucking world is covered in dust. So few people are using it—fuck, Ryan doesn’t want to think about it, about how many people there _aren’t_. He pushes himself up on his arm so he’s so it’s easier to see Shane. “For the record, you have one _hundred_ percent needed room before. Sometimes, if I say something when I haven’t talked in over three minutes, you go into a catatonic state and stare at nothing for like a full minute because you have to readjust to the fact that other people exist.”  
  
Okay, not based entirely on fact. But it feels Shane enough to say.  
  
~  
  
“I don’t do that,” Shane say, but he says it in a way that sounds like, okay, maybe he does. “Mostly it’s because I have to make sure you’re not going to start talking about basketball or something. I need some mental defenses against how much you love… K— Cauliflower. Uh,” he stammers a little over some ‘B’ sounds, and then just gives up.  
  
His fingers have slid around to Ryan’s back and he tugs him a little closer, one too-long leg sliding between Ryan’s just so he has some space. Maybe not just that. He traces the notches of Ryan’s spine, up to his shoulder blades, spreads his palm over the shift of bone there, beneath Ryan’s skin. He’s so tired, but he’s clinging to this — Ryan’s warmth, how alive he is against Shane, also alive, and probably inhaling enough dust to be dead by morning, but it doesn’t matter. He’s trying to hold onto this so he doesn’t leave Ryan alone to this dark, empty motel room to think about whatever horrible things he thinks about. Shane wishes he would just think about Kobe fucking Bryant instead. Instead of Zack. Or Jake…  
  
~  
   
Tension is pulsing through Shane, even as he’s trying to hold Ryan. He likes the touch—the comfort, but Shane gets like this. He wants Ryan to sleep. He just doesn’t want to say that. Because Ryan will just spiral further into not being able to sleep.  
   
Ryan rests his head on the pillar and tilts up, dragging Shane’s face down with his hands to kiss him, softly, on the mouth. He hates this. He hates that he has this issue. He hates that it’s going to be worse now—after Zack. Sleep feels impossibly far away from him. Everything feels impossibly far from him. Shane will too, once he falls asleep. He has to, though. He needs to let Shane have this, or they’re both going to end up making some dumb mistake. They’re both going to end up dead.  
   
His thumb runs the length of Shane’s cheek as he keeps his grip. Keeps his eyes. “Go to sleep. It’s fine.” He’ll do what he can. It might get easier when he knows Shane isn’t waiting on him. He lets go and tucks himself into Shane’s chest. Jesus, they are just one massive tangle of bodies. He doesn’t hate it.  
  
~  
  
The tension shifts and changes in Shane when Ryan kisses him. It’s better, softer. He presses into it.

Shane holds Ryan’s eyes, searching, flickering back and forth like he’s still waiting for the catch to this whole thing. To Ryan, and then Ryan’s curled into his chest and Shane adjusts himself around him, folding, arching, until he is as close as he can make himself.

“I’ve got you,” Shane murmurs, a reminder, before he falls asleep, because it’s the best he can do right now.  
  
~  
   
Shane falls asleep. It’s this sting of lonely. Fast, hard—biting. But something about the way Shane says I’ve got you helps. He said to try and help. Of course he did. But it does what it’s supposed to. Still, every time Ryan closes his eyes there’s Zack on the ground. There’s Zack screaming at him. There’s Jake in that awful, horrible grave where Ryan left him. There’s Finn’s body on fire and Ryan’s hammer smashing his skull to fragments.  
   
He squeezes against Shane as best he can without just knocking him off the bed. Shane’s mostly pretty soundly asleep. As soundly as someone can be after everything that’s happened. But he drove all day, so he’s got to be fucking exhausted. Ryan presses his forehead into Shane’s chest and tries to soak in the warmth. His hands shake. His whole body does, and there’s occasional bursts of wind outside—or natural noises that motels probably make. But his shoulders tense every time.  
   
There’s no closets in here. No doors he hasn’t checked. But sleep tears at the corners of him, pulls him away from logic like a flame at the edge of paper. Burning it all into nonsense. So he looks over at the closet, the same one from the apartment where Jake dies—and he hears the scratching behind the door. Scratching he should have heard that first night. This long, thudding kind of knock. It drags his heartbeat into the same rhythm.  
   
A countdown. A promise of something horrible—of a dark, black bite in his brother’s side. It’s clicks like a fingernail on the wood—drawing down, so Ryan can see the splinters tug away from it, slow and gradual. Sweat makes his body slick and he grits his teeth. _It’s not happening._ Ryan pulls at Shane, despite the heat. Despite everything. Begging him to separate reality and nightmare.  
   
It works. In spurts. Ryan remembers. Sees the motel room. Thinks, oh, you’re sleeping. It’s okay. But then the closet is back. And the scratching keeps and keeps churning, until he feels the fingernail on the inside of his skull. And it’s not splinters but bits of bone tearing away and burying into his brain.  
   
He sits up, gasps and gasps until the air in his lung tastes like ash. He looks at the other bed, and there’s Jake, scrolling on his phone. He looks at Ryan. And for some reason, Ryan just says, “You need to stop. I’m pretty sure the charger’s broken.”  
   
Jake shrugs like it doesn’t matter. A flash of anger cuts through Ryan and he rolls his eyes. Jake doesn’t notice, or if he does, he pretends not to. He pretends not to notice ninety percent of what Ryan does lately. “Dude, just fucking go to sleep. It’s so pointless for both of us to be awake. I’m not five.”  
   
“I am asleep.” Because he is. He’s pretty sure he is. Jake looks at him like he’s put on a fucking dinosaur costume. “If I go to sleep, I think you’re gonna die.”  
   
Jake laughs. It tilts the air a little. Nausea presses up Ryan’s throat, but it doesn’t manifest. It lingers. “I’m pretty sure you said earlier that no one else was dying. Those were your exact words.”  
   
Ryan scrambles like if he grabs Jake, he can convince him. Because the scratching it back at the closet. And Jake is right in front of it. He just needs to get him away from the door. He can get him away from the door. He goes to sit up, but Jake’s there—directly in front of him. Ryan starts. Somehow it’s closer to the closet. Everything is closer to the closet. And the door is opening.  
   
He tries to get his hands on Jake’s arms, but they slip, from sweat—from something else. He can’t hold him. “Jake, please. Get out of the room.” Or he tries to say that, but nothing comes out of his mouth. It’s just this hoarse, clawing sensation in his throat. Half wisps of air come out, sounds, but nothing real. Nothing substantial.  
   
Jake grabs Ryan’s phone off the bed. It’s still shattered. “Did you break this?” His face softens. “I know you think I don’t give a shit, but I know I’d be dead if it wasn’t for you.” He meets Ryan’s eyes. And it’s so sincere. “I know that. I appreciate that, I just…”  
   
Ryan can’t stop staring at his phone. The whole fucking world is cracked now. Like he’s staring at the world through it. He just needs Jake to move. Because the closet’s halfway open, and there’s just this yawning black.  
   
And then there’s the silhouette of someone, but it’s not the little girl. It’s not what he was waiting for. It’s Zack, jaw caved in like after he shot himself. Ryan goes to tell Jake to run, but he isn’t there. It’s just him and Zack. And Ryan’s not moving. He doesn’t know what he’s not moving.  
   
Something grabs his arm, and he looks—and there’s Shane, looking angry, eyes black like he might tear something in half. “You need to run.”  
   
But he can’t. He can’t even say he can’t. There’s just Zack, and he’s there—and his teeth bite into Ryan’s neck. And it burns. Fuck, it burns like Ryan never thought it could burn. It’s like he’s broken his leg—on a loop, again and again and again.  
   
And then he sits up, soaked in his own sweat. Worse than before, and Shane’s there. And it’s just the motel. It’s just the motel, dredges of sunrise filter through the curtain on the far wall. No zombies and no Jake or Zack. He grabs the side of his neck where Zack bit him in the dream. It’s the same place Shane bit him forever ago. There’s nothing there.  
   
There’s nothing there, but he’s had a thousand nightmares. He’s had a million nightmares. And he’s never gotten bit.  
  
~  
  
Shane sleeps hard, which is worse the next morning because it takes him too long to pull himself fully out of it.

In the cabin, he slept lightly, but better because there was routine. He knew all the sounds, knew the way the light changed as the day went on, knew when something was wrong...

Out here, they push themselves too hard, they drive all night, they don’t eat enough, they’re always afraid, there’s no time to get used to anything before they have to move on again. He’s always on edge. He doesn’t remember not being tired or hungry or both, but he thinks it was probably the cabin.

He half feels like he’s back there, him and Ryan in that bed, and warm and safe and the light coming in from the un-boarded window upstairs...

Shane reaches for Ryan and he’s not there. Everything is silent, just like before the zombie bit Zack. He bolts upright like someone fired a gun next to his ear. “Ryan—” he gasps, and almost crashes into him on the bed.

Jesus, okay. He was just... he’s here, he’s just sitting up, that’s why Shane couldn’t find him.

Shane’s still catching up. The light shining in through the curtain gives the room a brownish light. It’s ugly. Shane grabs Ryan’s arm and catches his breath.

“Fuck I thought—” his throat is very dry, probably from inhaling all that dust.

He thought he was gone again.  
  
Shane’s eyes are wild and dark. “What’s wrong?” He reaches to pull Ryan’s hand from his neck, but there’s nothing there.  
  
~  
  
Ryan flinches when Shane gets up. He almost yanks away fast enough to fall off the bed. Shane’s got his hand so it keeps him closer. He grits his teeth. Okay, it was a dream. Just a dream.   
  
“Just…bad dream.” The dust catches in his throat until he coughs on it. There’s a soreness burning there from the night, but he takes his hand back and runs it through his hair. “I’m good.”  
  
It’s too early for Shane to be up. Too early for anything. His heart is loud enough to break him apart. “Did I wake you up?”  
  
~  
  
“No,” says Shane, still looking freaked, but he’s trying to hide it. “It was too quiet, I dunno...” he touches Ryan’s hair, frowning. It’s sweaty, damp. 

“Some dream, huh?” He says, softer. Too soft.

Fuck, he doesn’t know what to do. How to get Ryan to sleep more. He can’t take the nightmares away... or maybe he’s just not trying hard enough. If he’d let Ryan drive, he might have been tired by last night. Damn it, why hadn’t he thought of it before?   
  
~  
  
Fuck, his eyes hurt. He slept some. He had to have to dream. He sighs. It’s obvious, when he doesn’t sleep, and Shane hates it. There’s got to be a way to at least take the burden of it off Shane.  
  
He doesn’t want to think about the dream. Because there’s a fear in him getting too big to breathe around. “It’s fine. I mean, it means I slept so, it’s good.”   
  
He looks around. Shane’s afraid of the quiet. He needs it and he’s afraid of it. Ryan hates this fucking apocalypse. “Should we try and sleep more? It’s early. We could.” He wants to shove his face into Shane’s chest until it stops everything else. Like it did, in pieces, last night.   
  
“I can bang on the dresser if that’ll help.” He smiles, it’s weak and tired but genuine.  
  
~  
  
Shane’s narrowed his eyes a little, staring at the sheets between them. He glances up to smile a little at that, though. “No, I don’t think that will help,” he says. 

He wonders if Ryan has bad dreams every time he sleeps. Shane doesn’t have to ask to know what they’re about anymore. He knows.

He shifts, straightens his spine until something cracks. “You want to read something?” He asks, slouching again, because sometimes it helps, when he reads. But he also read to Ryan before Zack died — when things were better — so he doesn’t know, now.

“Or just...” he leans back against the headboard, knees slightly drawn up, looking too small for the height that he is. He wouldn’t mind just lying together for a while. It’s different when he’s not exhausted, when he can focus on it. It helps, then. He doesn’t know if it helps Ryan. Sometimes Ryan seems to go still like he’s holding all the pieces of himself together and Shane doesn’t know for certain, then, if he reaches out to Ryan because he needs it, or because Ryan does.  
  
~  
  
"We can do whatever. I'm fine with anything that isn't related to zombies." Ryan falls back onto the pillow. His heart ticks up too fast, at the idea of sleep, but it calms after a bit. Some part of him wants to go, to leave, to move so he's not seeing images of that dream. Of Zack. But it's lighter now, not as scary, and his body aches with every movement. With exhaustion.

He looks up at Shane. He seems so small against the headboard. Ryan feels awful. It's not fair. Every time they find someone who could be good, who wouldn't be such a mess, they leave them, or they lose them. And Shane is stuck with Ryan.

The dream cracks at the edge of his vision. Shane needs him, though. Maybe. Ryan can't leave him. He just needs to do better. It's what he said he'd do.

"I'm sorry I can't sleep. I'm so tired. I don't know why I can't just..." Anger crushes at his center. "It's so dumb."

He buries his head in the pillow. His hold on his emotions isn't good. It never is when he's this tired. He's liable to wind up crying again.

He stares up at Shane, tries to find a better conversation, but can't. He gets one of Shane's hands, the one nearest to him, and traces the lines between his knuckles. His eyelids flutter some, but he doesn't stop.  
  
~  
  
Shane goes quiet again, and still, but it’s not a bad sort of still. He doesn’t want the touch to stop. His eyes are on Ryan, watching his face.

He’s a little trapped, like this. He can’t move to get the book, anyway, and so for a few long moments, the silence just ticks on between them. Ryan seems more frustrated than he should be, or at least more than he normally is, but it could be anything. Exhaustion... Zack... that girl no one could save.

Finally Shane swallows, and adjusts his shoulders against the headboard, leaning his head back. He straightens his legs and finally draws his hand away to run it through the hair at Ryan’s temple, behind his ear, stroking him like he’s a cat or something.

 _Sleep_ , he thinks, _please sleep_.

It’s fucked up to want time to pass so that all of this— just so that all of it hurts less, because he also wants every moment with Ryan... he doesn’t want to waste time anymore. He doesn’t want to keep waiting.

He thinks about how he copped out last night. He thinks, _just tell him now_ , because Zack was right. You should tell people, but Shane has never been good at that. Shane’s always just tried to do small things and hope the meaning shows through.   
  
~  
  
It takes him a while to realize Shane pulled away. That Shane's touching his hair. He feels himself fading, knows he needs to, but he reaches up and tugs at Shane's arm. 

"Why are you up there? You don't need to be tall all the time." Shane can't have slept much. It was late when they laid down. So four or five hours at most. There's too much of him for that to be enough.

Okay, maybe that isn't how it works but he's tired so he’s going with it.  
  
“Be near me.”  
  
~  
  
Sometimes Ryan does something to Shane that he’s never felt before all this. Not at this level of intensity. It’s like he takes the thing inside Shane that feels something and just wrings it out, without warning, so that all this… jesus, all this affection floods through Shane like so much water, surging, it tugs at him, it makes everything in him just beg for Ryan.  
  
Ryan says ‘be near me,’ and Shane suddenly feels like he’s never wanted anything else, feels like there is nothing he can do but this. He smiles a little at the same time as he sort of shakes his head, because Ryan is ridiculous and probably insane, and so Shane just slides down onto the mattress next to him, to _be near him_ , and folds himself around him again.  
  
Shane thinks he’s never fit against anyone before, not like this. But he hasn’t tried to, either. He never wanted to try.   
  
He leans over him a little, and kisses Ryan’s temple, trails this whisper of lips over his cheek and jaw, nose sliding along the edge of it until he can kiss the place he accidentally hit him last night, and then lower, to his neck, keeping contact so he doesn’t startle him. He presses this open-mouthed kiss against the spot he bit, once — the place Ryan was covering a moment ago — like an apology. He can’t take it back, he can’t take the dreams away, either. He feels so useless.  
  
He doesn’t kiss his mouth like he wants to, because that doesn’t lend itself to sleeping. Instead he settles beside him again, tangles their bodies more, so they’re closer. It’s as close as he can get right now.  
  
~  
   
Shane lowers himself. Distantly, Ryan is pretty sure he asked for this. And he’s happy about it. He’s happy Shane’s listening to him. Shane never listens to him. Or he rarely does. Usually there’s an entire dance before Shane will cooperate, or he’ll just flat out tell Ryan no. It’s the opposite of Ryan. Ryan listens to Shane. Ever since he walked through Shane’s door, Ryan’s body has been _compelled_ to listen to Shane. To obey him.  
   
It’s trust, and maybe something else. Something sharp and black. And dangerous.  
   
So it’s nice, when Shane returns the favor. Probably the first time ever. Probably the _only_ time ever. Ryan tries to say something to this effect, but sleep tugs him away from it. He’s tired enough that his panic can’t twist him free of the sleep. Shane kisses him—Ryan thinks he’s kissing him, it feels like the bristles of a paint brush. It’s soft enough that Shane could just be _whispering_. But he isn’t. Ryan doesn’t hear anything. He’s pretty sure he’d hear if Shane was whispering.  
   
But Shane’s close, and it’s warm. There’s this far-off murmur that he should sleep, that he’s close to it, and an anxiety—somewhere behind it. Propelling him too close to awake, but then Shane puts his mouth on Ryan’s neck. The spot from his dream. Ryan knows it, immediately, he knows it. It soaks into his skin like a fucking stain remover. Like it can cleanse the nightmare from him.  
   
Ryan does hear something, then. It takes him too long to realize it’s him—this startled, sleepy sound. A moan. Something he wouldn’t do, wouldn’t _let_ himself do, if he was more awake. But he does now, because there’s Shane’s mouth—on his neck, a hitch in his breathing. And it distracts him enough that his body can’t do anything but sleep.  
  
~  
  
Shane’s heart is beating too fast for this, for the fact that Ryan, exhausted, is already mostly asleep. He tucks his forehead down against Ryan’s and closes his eyes again, but it takes him a long time to drift off.  
  
Eventually he does. He dreams, but it’s too murky to remember much by the time they both get up around mid-afternoon. He just knows that it makes him hold onto Ryan harder.  
  
The water in the motel never gets warmer, but Shane didn’t expect it to. He doesn’t care. He showers in it quickly but as thoroughly as he can, shivering as he scrubs the bar soap out of his hair, glad he can’t see how dirty the water is as it circles the drain.  
  
He waits for Ryan to shower too, repacking their bags in a patch of sunlight on the motel floor, getting rid of the wrappers and cardboard they’ve accumulated, and anything they can’t use again. He pushes it into the garbage can like someone’s ever going to take the trash out again.  
  
He lets Ryan drive, tries to keep things easy. He feels better now that he’s cleaner, and the drive is almost nice. It’s hot in the car, until finally Shane takes the risk and rolls the window down, but his fingers linger close and cautious in case he needs to close it fast.  
  
He keeps remembering the soft sound Ryan made last night. It comes out of nowhere and burns hotly through his stomach and circles his spine. Once, just for a second, Shane reaches out and wraps his fingers around Ryan’s thigh, just above his knee when he says something, brings up something funny and far away from a movie — another life. He doesn’t linger because it spikes through him, leaves him slightly breathless. He turns his face to the dry wind as his fingers slide away, and leans against the passenger door. They’re approaching the city again. He can see it in the distance, but the skyline is changed. It’s altered somehow, in a way that he can’t quite place, and he can’t exactly go back through old movies and check. He’s never seen California for real.  
  
Shane rolls the window back up long before they actually enter what used to be civilization. Like the cities before, this one is almost empty. It’s harder to drive — they weave in and around cars parked or abandoned, rubbish in the road. There’s not a soul and Shane thinks that there’s something beautiful about it, but he doesn’t bring it up.  
  
~  
   
Ryan drives. He’s glad to have something to be doing, and really, he’s just glad he’s driving again. He does trust Shane, but… he likes being in control of the car. His head hurts too. If he wasn’t driving, he’s sure he’d be focusing on that. Or the thousand other little aches his brain has decided to latch onto.  
   
He misses the bed. He misses Shane wrapped around him. It feels like forever ago. And he wants to go back to it—there’s this bizarre need to go back to it. His hands rest uneasy on the wheel. He so desperately needs things to be okay, and there’s something in him screaming that they aren’t.  
   
Shane grabs his thigh at one point. Like he hears whatever’s going on in Ryan’s head, and it pulls him out of it. Ryan’s head snaps to Shane, for just a second. This hot flare of want cuts through him, licks along his bones until he feels them like edges beneath his skin. He’s driving. He’s driving, but he’s thinking about Shane’s mouth on his neck, Shane’s hand on his neck. Fuck. Shane looks away. It leaves him gasping, reaching for something that isn’t there, but it’s enough to pull his mind out of this dark, yawning spiral that’s settling in the center of him.  
   
They can’t find any place to stay—most of these places have windows busted open or door’s off the hinges. The only thing they see is a movie theater, and it’s got so many exits. Ryan doesn’t even suggest sleeping there. Honestly, seeing it just makes him miss everything—movies, normalcy. Fuck, he misses it.  
   
This is obviously one of the cities that got hit harder—when people were still trying to grab things. When they still did something other than run. Ryan pulls the car over and they decide to sleep there. It’s easier than wandering around. Ryan’s driven so long that it’s pitch black, and nothing seems easy.  
   
Shane convinces Ryan to sleep first—to try to sleep. He’s so sure he’s not going to sleep that he almost wants to scream at Shane for suggesting it. He doesn’t. He just climbs in the back and lies down. Absolutely everything is uncomfortable. His leg, his head, his chest—it’s too hot. It’s way, way too hot. But if he doesn’t sleep, Shane’s going to get upset, so he tries to be still.  
   
He tries so hard to be still.  
   
But he doesn’t sleep.  
  
~  
  
Shane is as quiet as he can be in the front of the car, even though he knows Ryan’s not asleep. He almost wants to say something — _You’re not fooling me, you know_ , but he doesn’t. That will just make things worse. So he stays up and watches. He holds all of his limbs a little too tightly, and doesn’t get too close to the glass.  
  
His eyes keep getting drawn to the crack in the driver’s door window as Shane checks checks checks every window, every mirror, in a loop, but nothing moves in the shadows.  
  
Sleep starts pulling at him, and he feels like such an asshole, really, because it just makes sense to ask Ryan if he’ll watch. And, Shane thinks, he should have climbed into the back with him, because he slept once, all night long, the last time Shane did that.  
  
He never thinks of these things soon enough.  
  
He pulls himself up a little straighter, trying to be surreptitious about it, because he doesn’t want Ryan to notice that he’s tired. Then they’ll both be feeling bad and Shane is so goddamn tired of feeling bad.  
  
His eyes fall on the abandoned movie theatre, and he thinks of driving for hours to go see _Brick_ when it first came out. Of all the times he went with his family to this place where the dark promised something vastly different from what the dark promises now. This place that never lost its magic, somehow, even as he got older. He thinks of going to see double features on hot summer nights and the laughter of his friends and the smell of popcorn and the difference between seeing a movie alone or with someone else. He remembers what salt and butter tastes like on his fingers.  
  
Shane squints at the theatre and tries to imagine it all lit up. He tries to remember all the times he came here with his parents and Finn and does his best to imprint that as the last memory of his dad, and not the one in the car. Maybe he can sort of paste this one, more distant, softer-edged, over the one that still cuts hotly into Shane like a knife at his throat.  
  
When that doesn’t quite work and he starts lingering too long on that last car ride, Shane turns his mind to Ryan instead. He checks the windows, the mirrors, looks at Ryan in the rearview and thinks of what they would do if things were normal. What sort of life they would have. He wonders if he would have fallen so hard and so fast for Ryan if the world was still filled with things that weren’t so uncanny in their wreckage. He wonders if Ryan would make him go to sports games, and how they would fit in with one another's friends and if Ryan would come out to Denny’s after midnight and then walk home with Shane after. If he would get annoyed with Shane’s texts at four a.m., and his endless rewatches of films and how much he hates movies everyone else loves… and he wonders if Ryan would have put up with Shane’s devil-may-care way of existing which was so different, before the apocalypse.  
  
He wonders if Ryan would have liked him at all, if he knew him before he ended up paranoid and careful and too solitary and too cold. He wonders if Ryan would still like him if he knew that Shane had almost killed Zack before Zack had fucking killed himself. And that part of him still thinks he should have… and it is an _awful_ thought, but Shane can’t shake it. It would have saved Ryan the heartache.  
  
And Shane used to wonder if he would like Ryan, if they’d met before all this, but he doesn’t anymore. He would. It would take time — more time maybe — but he would. It’s like his heart’s been beating out this rhythm Shane was out of sync with his whole life, but now, with Ryan, he’s figured it out, this beat, and how to live with it.  
  
“Ryan,” Shane says softly, and reaches back to touch the only thing he can reach, his knee. “Stop pretending to sleep. I have an idea.”  
  
~  
   
He’s not asleep. But he’s trying so hard to be asleep the touch startles him. He jumps and spins like he’s about to engage someone in hand to hand combat. But then Shane’s voice filters in a few seconds later. “I wasn’t pretending to sleep!” Which doesn’t sound good, given he’s just acknowledged that he heard exactly what Shane said to him.  
   
“Is the idea you going to sleep? Because that’s a great idea. Let’s try that.”  
  
~  
  
Shane laughs softly as he fishes the pipe out from the place at his feet and reaches for the door handle. “All right. No, let’s go. Let’s uh— come on.” He pushes the car door open evidently Ryan can argue and steps out into the darkness, if he doesn’t close the door just yet.  
  
~  
   
Ryan opens the back car door. He has to fight with it because he’s frantic about Shane just getting out of the safety of the vehicle in the middle of the night. It is pitch black out. He’s awake enough to know he’s been trying (not pretending) to sleep for at least a couple hours. There is no reason to get out of the car now, unless Shane is about to tell him that they need to go their separate ways. In which case, Ryan is going to sit in the street and wait for death. Because it is not an option.  
   
Also he feels like shit right now.  
   
He gets out of the car—it’s a bit of a production—stumbles onto the pavement. “What the hell are you doing? Are you crazy? It’s like…” He realizes he has almost no concept of time anymore. “It’s really late!” He looks around like a zombie might pop out of the trunk of the car. “What are we doing?”  
  
~  
  
“We’re gonna go to the movies,” Shane says, like it’s a normal, pre-apocalypse Friday night and not the middle of a literal abandoned metropolis surrounded by the walking dead. In the middle of the night. Also there is no fucking electricity here. 

You can’t realize how loud electricity is, Shane thinks, until there is a complete absence of it. It’s quiet enough here that he isn’t worried about anyone around who might steal their shit. He thinks about the gun in his bag but he leaves it. They’ll be fine. He won’t let anything happen. And Ryan doesn’t need a reminder of guns right now.

They’re going to do this and be fine, and it’s going to be good. Shane tells himself as he pushes the car doors shut very quietly. He turns and heads for the theatre, looking back. “Come on,” he stage whispers to Ryan.  
  
~  
   
Shane’s walking away. Ryan’s pretty sure he did fall asleep and now he’s in the damn twilight zone. Because Shane is just going like he’s sure that there’s going to be movies showing—like this is just a regular Friday night and they’re going to watch a movie. But it isn’t. There’s nothing normal about this.  
   
“What—” If he doesn’t go, then Shane is going to get too far ahead. Ryan can’t let that happen since he is clearly out of his mind right now. He hurries after him, which is tough, because every stride of Shane’s is like three of Ryan’s. “You do realize that there’s not going to be movies in… are you sick? Did all that dust go to your head?”  
  
~  
  
“There’s tons of movies,” Shane says, ignoring the comment about the dust. “It’s the apocalypse, it’s whatever you want, they have everything here.” He slows down when he reaches the entrance, reaching back automatically to find Ryan, stop his forward momentum. He peers into the darkness and takes a step. The glass doors have been broken, and someone’s ripped drawers out of cash registers. There’s metal and glass and coins all over the floor. Shane bends down, brushing glass away with his boot, and picks one up, copper, shining. 

He takes Ryan’s hand and presses it into his palm, cold metal, warm fingers. “There, that’s for luck,” he tells him. He wonders what the year is, but it’s too dark to tell. 

He wanders further on, holding the pipe very tightly. Weirdly, the velvety ropes they have at these places to block off hallways and to make lines are still standing. It’s sort of eerie. Shane slips around one into an even darker, endless looking hallway. It’s so quiet. He looks back at Ryan, waiting for him to catch up.  
  
~  
   
Ryan furrows his brow at Shane after the coin. It’s the weirdest thing. And it’s endearing. He hates it, because he wants to find it completely idiotic. But he can’t. He doesn’t think he’s ever known anyone like Shane. Someone who just does things without thinking about them—no matter how weird they are. It feels like the very opposite of everything Ryan tries to be. He slides the penny into his pocket and tries not to smile.  
   
He’s drawn to it. For more reason than that, but for that too. He doesn’t say anything. He just rolls his eyes and follows Shane into this ghost of a theater. It shudders through him. Maybe he shouldn’t go to Disneyland because theaters used to be one of his favorite places. He loved movies. The idea of theaters—that was enough to put him in a good mood, but this is twisted, broken like the glass in the doors.  
   
The concession stand is barren past the kiosk that would’ve taken the tickets. The popcorn maker is even broken. He winces. Everything is gone—everything is ruined. He squeezes his eyes shut because there’s this rush of hopelessness, of anger and fear and guilt… of things that he can’t name. Black tendrils of something that loop around his ribs and clenches.  
   
He wanders towards one of the hallways anyway. Like maybe he can wander far enough into this theater to find the life, to find what it was before all of this. He’s pretty sure there’s a crimson stain of blood on the carpet beside the concession—and he just wants everything to back. He just wants everything _back_.  
   
“Kinda creepy,” he says, and it isn’t enough—it’s dwarfed next to what he feels, next to how much it hurts to see a place like this so fucked up. Nostalgia bends and breaks inside of him, shatters against his sternum so the pieces stab hard enough to rip his chest open. “Really creepy.”  
  
~  
  
It is, it’s awful, but Shane refuses. “It’s like a fun house,” he says. “Spooky spooky fun house.” He’s sort of talking just to talk, and he fights the urge to hold tight to Ryan’s arm as they make their way up the long corridor of individual theatres. 

He remembers the sound of this place, the booming surround sound, the words from the films you couldn’t quite make out beyond the walls. Theatres were so loud...

Some of the doors are opened. He’s not going on there. It’s less likely a zombie wandered into a closed room with with provocation.He stands for a moment, fingers brushing ghost-soft against the back of Ryan’s sweater as he thinks _pick a door, any door..._

“Which one?” He asks. “Door number six?” That’s the one they’re standing in front of. His fingers slide against the pipe. The tape has long since worn down, and it’s harder to grip. It doesn’t help that he’s nervous enough that his hands are sweating. It’s not a date kind of nervous. He wishes it were.  
  
~  
   
Ryan doesn’t know what he’s going to do if a zombie shows up right now. The exhaustion is worse than usual—pressing in on him so his legs don’t want to stay up straight. And he can’t leave Shane to handle it all on his own. He grips the handle of the hammer tight. His skin’s caught rough where he holds it—adapting to the blisters he’s given himself with the way he holds it.  
   
He tries to smile. Shane wants to do this, probably because he knew Ryan wasn’t sleeping. He wants to make this better. Ryan doesn’t want him to have to, but now that they’re here—he might as well let Shane think he’s helping. Because he is. It’s in such a small way, though—Ryan worries Shane will think it’s not. Shane’s whisper of a touch lingers longer than it should. Ryan almost grabs his hand, almost grabs onto him, but he doesn’t. Because he’s not sure how to.  
   
He eventually gets there, the smile. “Sure. But if you open it and there are two zombies banging it out in there, don’t accuse them of necrophilia. It’s rude.”  
  
~  
  
Shane is startled into this sudden, silent laugh, and he turns away quickly, like he can’t quite look at Ryan’s reaction, or want him to see his own. He goes to push the door and if slides open with a whisper across the floor. 

He steps inside, goes first up the slight incline to the theatre proper. He doesn’t notice at first, the shadow. When he does, his heart lurches, and he pulls himself up, taller, tighter—

It’s lurking near the middle of the seats, like it’s peering at them. But it doesn’t move. His body adjusts to the fear, it’s a dead guy. Long dead. His head lolls over his shoulder at this weird angle, and somewhere light catches in dead eyes. Not zombie eyes. 

Shane turns quickly, almost collides with Ryan. The pipe clatters against the metal head of the hammer and rings out and it jars all the way up his spine. “Occupied,” Shane says. It’s a fucking joke, somehow. A necrophilia joke exists in there somewhere.

He turns Ryan around and pushes him towards the exit, “next door,” he says, softer.He hopes Ryan didn’t see it. He hates the ugly things this world throws at them. If he could protect Ryan from all of it, he would, or at least he would protect him from the worst of it. Maybe he still can… starting now. He’ll be better.  
  
~  
   
Ryan goes fucking tense. Shane turns, and there’s just this flash in his peripheral where he sees something. Familiar, and… it’s weird, he doesn’t know when death became something he’s used to seeing. When it stopped being this far-off concept. But, at first, he’s sure it’s a zombie. He doesn’t see much of it, but Shane isn’t panicked. He’s just… uneasy. And Ryan didn’t see the silhouette move.  
   
Shane pushes him back out the door. Ryan doesn’t resist. He doesn’t have any interest in seeing anymore death. He grabs at the back of his neck, to still the tension in his temples. Headaches are supposed to be Shane’s thing. But ever since Zack, he feels like more than his leg is trying to give out on him.  
   
He looks up at Shane, tries not to let himself, his voice, anything, wobble when he meets his eyes. As he talks to him. “Okay, so maybe you should pick the next one.” His voice is soft too, maybe to mirror Shane’s. Part of him wants to yank Shane back to the car and tell him this was dumb. There is nothing good in this fucking world and there’s no sense looking for it, but he’s standing here looking at Shane—so no matter what the voice inside him is saying, he knows it’s not right.  
   
There’s at least one good thing left.  
  
~  
  
He sees it. He knows Ryan too well by now to not notice this... it’s not defeat, not yet, but he’s on a precipice and Shane’s not letting him tip over. So he grabs for him. He reaches out and takes Ryan’s hands, and gets his fingers between Ryan’s like this is just something that they do, now, and he tugs him towards the next door, door seven. 

Like the last time, it falls shut almost silently behind them, and grips the pipe hard in one hand, and Ryan’s hand softly in the other And leads the way.

This theatre looks empty. He scans it for a long moment in case it’s not.“Let’s sit in the back,” he says, and goes. It’s because he wants to check each row. See if anything’s lurking around on the floor he moves slowly up the steps, trying not to look like he’s looking. Nothing moves. And there’s a fire escape just behind them to the left. More than one exit. 

He tries not to think _more than one entrance_.

“Did you sit in the back?” He asks Ryan as they reach the last row. “Or the middle? You seem like a middle kind of guy.”  
  
~  
   
Damn. Shane is doing way too much right now. Ryan wishes he wouldn’t. He wishes Shane didn’t feel obligated to be so unaffected by all this, for Ryan. Because that’s why he’s doing it. He’s spent his whole life trying, trying to fill some void he thinks is in him, and it’s just… amplified with Ryan. It’s scary. It’s scary because he doesn’t want Shane to burn out.  
   
But he can’t bring himself to hate it. He likes the way Shane’s hands feel laced with his. It’s grounding, and it pulls the tension out of him like sieve. He can’t even bring himself to resist. He just goes along with this ridiculous plan Shane’s decided on.  
   
The theater is big, open—it’s so much more silent, darker than theaters ever were. They always felt dark, but they weren’t dark. This is dark. No lights on the stairs. No ambience. Just… silence. But still, it’s a theater. They climb the stairs to the back and Ryan looks towards the giant black screen.  
   
He smiles as he glances back at Shane. “It’s more immersive if you’re in the middle. But the back’s okay sometimes. If you’re not as interested in the movie.” He tosses another glance towards the screen. “And this one seems like it’s gonna be pretty lame.”  
  
~  
  
Shane laughs, but his eyes flicker darkly to the screen as he pulls Ryan through a row to sit somewhere towards the middle of the back row. He lets go of his hand when he sits down, laying the pipe across the seats beside him. It looks so out of place, so he tries not to look at it.

Jesus his senses are on high alert. He tries to force tension from his limbs as he looks at Ryan. “Why’d you pick it, then?” He teases. “Is that how you plan dates? You pick shitty movies and then go, ‘well, gee this sucks.’ ” He’s putting on a Ryan voice that is far more nasal and cartoonish than Ryan’s actually is. And he doesn’t stop. “ ‘Guess we _could_ just make out...’ ”  
  
~  
   
Ryan scoffs and shoves his hammer through the cup holder opposite of Shane. It balances there. It’s easier to reach than the seat, and with his luck, there is no fucking telling what’s going to come ambling up the steps.  
   
He turns back to Shane with raised eyebrows. “First off, you picked it! Second off, I do not go to the movies to make out. I am here for a cinematic experience. So if you think you’re about to get some, then…” He turns away, cocks his head in a sort of shake. “You’re about to be really disappointed.”  
   
He crosses his arms and stares at the screen like he’s watching something. He is, a black screen, but this is taking his mind off everything else. And they’re sitting, which is good. So he’s content to be a little shit—maybe it’ll convince Shane that he doesn’t have to coddle him.  
  
~  
  
Shane puts his hands up, laughing, “Okay man,” he says, then leans forward, all elbows and knees, chin in his hands like he’s twelve years old.

“What’s this movie called again? Is it like a student art film? Very pretentious. What am I supposed to be looking at here? What’s the deep meaning or whatever?”  
  
He can’t shut up because suddenly he’s scared that if he does they’re just going to be… fuck. Exactly where they are. An empty movie theatre that’s never going to play anything again. Risking their lives for something…   
  
No. It’s not stupid. And they’ll be _fine_ Shane tells himself again. It’s not stupid if he can make Ryan happy again. Genuinely. He casts around mentally, desperately, for something, eyes on the screen.   
  
~  
   
Wow, they are really doing this. Shane is just going to hammer into this until… well, Ryan doesn’t know. Until they both forget that there’s a fucking dead guy in the theater next to them. He looks away from the screen, to Shane, then back, like he can’t believe that Shane is having to ask.  
   
“You can’t talk through the whole movie. It’s not my fault you don’t understand it. It’s obviously a message on understanding yourself.” He squints because he has no idea what he’s talking about. “That’s why… there, he’s on the beach… talking to those—” He gestures with his hand like there is definitely a beach on-screen. “The crabs, because they represent the different… versions of himself through… phases of his life.” For some stupid reason, he’s struggling not to laugh. At himself. Because this is truly the least creative thing he’s ever thought. “Duh.”  
  
~  
  
“Crabs?” Shane asks like it’s the weirdest thing he’s ever heard. “What are the crabs telling you, Ryan?” he laughs. “Oh no— there’s a— there’s something in the distance.” Shane leans back, grabs Ryan’s shoulder for a second, “look, it’s a— is that a raccoon? _No_ , it’s... I think it’s a witch! Oh no.” He cups his hands around his mouth and softly yells “Look out, crabs!”  
  
~  
  
Ryan stares at Shane like he's lost his mind. Not entirely fair, given Ryan started this. But he glances back at the screen. "The crabs aren't the... They are not the main characters here. They were... They're a metaphor, and the... How did you go from raccoon to witch!? This was supposed to be a contemporary, why is there a—oh look, the guy just punched the dumb witch in the face and now the crabs are gonna eat her."

He leans back in his seat like he is overjoyed at the idea of this non-existent witch being eaten alive by crabs. Hell, it's better than zombies.  
  
~  
  
Shane lights up like a 100 watt bulb when Ryan plays along. “Oh, well I guess that’s what happens when you’re an evil witch. An evil hot dog witch,” Shane says, like this is something perfectly sane. He leans back, too. “I dunno what you were whining about, this movie is incredible.”  
  
~  
  
Ryan yanks up some in his chair. Thank God no one ever gave Shane liberty with a film because there's clearly something deeply wrong wrong with him. And yet Ryan has to fight with his face to keep it from smiling.

"A hotdog... A hotdog witch?! You didn't think that was a defining enough character trait to mention up front?" He shoves Shane's head, lightly, away from him. "At least the crabs get a good snack." He thinks about kissing Shane. Because he's running out of ideas, and damn, he wants to. But after his whole bit about his intentions with movies... He can't give Shane that leverage.

"And no, this is easily the worst movie I've ever seen."  
  
~  
  
Shane is offended, or at least he is playing it convincingly enough. “How dare you? It’s got— people _love_ it. It’s critically acclaimed. It’s the hot dog saga of the century. Oh, or do you only like lame art films? _Boring Art Film_ by Ryan Bergara. Sounds terrible.”  
  
~  
   
This is getting ridiculous. Part of him is genuinely concerned (or very jealous) that Shane’s found some really potent alcohol or something else and has done it while Ryan wasn’t looking. He is truly the weirdest person Ryan has ever met, and that is a fucking feat.  
   
“Critically acc—in what world would a saga about hotdogs be critically acclaimed? No, there’s… there’s so much wrong with what you just said I don’t even know how to keep going. Didn’t you say this _was_ a lame art film like three seconds ago? And yeah, I can appreciate art films or action films or horror films or… the only thing I can’t appreciate are _hotdog witches_. Your brain is obviously broken.”  
  
~  
  
“Yeah,” Shane says, eyes flickering to Ryan as he leans back, crosses his legs like he’s at a meeting and not and movie theatre and balances one elbow on the back of his seat. “It is. But I wasn’t always paranoid and depressing.” He laughs it, but doesn’t quite meet his eyes. Fuck. Why is he talking about this? He scans the rows of seats in front of him. “I think I was different before. I would definitely have uh… there should be a soundtrack to this movie.”  
  
He’s trying to keep this steady but it’s wavering all over the place. He wishes he could take back what he said about before. They should maybe stop talking about before. “The past is gross,” Shane heats himself say softly. “That’s what’s making us think all this is… we keep trying to go back there.”  
  
~  
  
The past isn't gross. Jake was alive during it. His mother was alive. Ryan stares ahead for too long, biting back all this foaming, crackling anger. He hates it. Hates that it's there. 

His laugh is brittle. Almost mean, but mostly broken. "Yeah, well..." He almost says this awful thing. He almost says _I was different before I crushed my mom's head with her dresser._ But he doesn't. Because it's not fair. What comes out is softer: "I think we're all a little more depressed and paranoid now." He looks at the opposite wall, away from Shane, away from the screen where he feels like he's seeing Jake and his mom and his dad all die again. "The past isn't... It's not the past's fault everything sucks now."  
  
~  
  
He winces, dragging his fingers through his own hair. _Great_ , he thinks to himself. _Stop having a crisis._   
  
“You don’t suck,” Shane says. “You... I think are the best thing that’s happened to me before or after all this. You definitely don’t suck so... I’ll forgive you for saying my movie was the worst one you’d ever seen.”  
  
~  
  
Ryan turns back to Shane. He takes too long to process the words, watches him, eyes flickering over all the shadows and silhouettes of Shane's face. Darkness works around Shane like a cloak, the way light pulls beauty into water. Dark does for Shane.

Ryan is in love with him. He's so in love with him, and that's what gets to him, how some part of him can barely miss Jake or Mom or anyone because he's so consumed with being in love with Shane. And he's scared, suddenly, that this is going to break—end. That it won't be from Shane walking away, and that's so much scarier than if he did. 

"You know, this movie is next level bad. I'm so disgusted by it that I think I'm going to break my number one theater rule."

He leans over the armrests separating them and finds Shane's mouth with his. It's not hard, but it's deep. He gets one hand on Shane's cheek.

And he wants. He wants the stupid, goofy Shane, before he was scared and worried all the time. But he wants this one too. And he kisses him like he can find them, see them: every single version or possibility in Shane. He kisses him like he can make them all hear him, understand this thing he's never even spoken.

_I love you. Every single version. In every single life. I fucking love you._


	19. Part 19

Shane has to pull in this breath of air when Ryan kisses him that is half Ryan’s, half his own, and it still isn’t enough. 

He presses into it anyway, this wild, whirlwind rush of need that’s been underneath everything else for so long now, simmering quietly, glowing in him like coals that are stoked again. It flares up and Shane reaches up and catches hold of Ryan’s forearm, clinging to it but not pulling, so Ryan can keep touching his face. 

He twists towards him, leans into it. This feels different, somehow, from the car, it feels like it means more, and Shane doesn’t understand why but he opens himself up to it anyway, mouth pliant as he can make it beneath Ryan’s, sliding his tongue softly against his.  
  
He slides his fingers up Ryan’s arm to the back of his shoulder, cupping his fingers over his shoulder blade and pulling him closer, all quiet insistence.   
  
Kissing Ryan is something that Shane doesn’t know if he’ll ever get used to, and he isn’t even sure why. He likes the way Ryan’s mouth fits against his own, overwhelms his, gives and takes with this sweetness and this… openness. Ryan is so open anyway that Shane could hardly imagine him being _more_ open but he is. He does. He opens up to Shane. He’s this endless resource of something Shane’s been starving for, without ever knowing it and now that he’s had it it’s all he wants. It burns in him, kindled in his bones.   
  
And yet there are fucking zombies everywhere, and they are never safe and still, Shane presses into Ryan’s mouth with this soft, desperate need as his heart beats out this rhythm, _don’t stop don’t stop_ , until he hopes he won’t remember how to.   
  
His whole life, Shane’s drawn back. From feeling, from people. He can’t draw back from this anymore.   
  
_Tell him_ , he thinks, but his mouth is too busy, and Shane gets something out that might be Ryan’s name, but it’s mostly lost between them.   
  
~  
   
Shane’s letting him take this, take control of this. It’s funny, because at first he thought Shane liked being alone, being in charge. But not anymore. Shane’s _tired_ of being in charge, and even if being alone didn’t wear on him like it would on Ryan—doing it all did. He’s lost Finn. And his dad. He’s lost so much. He’s lost so much and Ryan just wants to give it back. He wishes he could do it with this kiss, with these moments where Shane feels like he’s relaxing into Ryan. Because he almost never does.  
   
Ryan wants to do so much—if he could just hold all these things he feels for Shane, if he could just make it be enough, make it bring back everything he’s lost. But he can’t. He’s tired, more tired than he has been, so he’s half gasping at their air as he’s kissing Shane. He’s tasting the inside of Shane’s mouth, all this sparked, screaming color, and he’s unraveling with it. Shane’s pulled him closer, so Ryan slips his hand down to the back of Shane’s neck, digging just into the softness where his hair starts.  
   
He pushes until their teeth click. He pulls back and catches Shane’s lip as he does, tugs at it. He’s so frantic—as wild and beating as his own heartbeat. Pieces of him are breaking off, like a failing car speeding down the highway. Losing too much. He’s scared to stop.  
   
 _Oh_.  
   
He’s spent so much time feeling like too much. Overwhelming people, pushing people too far. Hell, he’s done it with Shane. But now his hand’s shaking where it’s got a grip on Shane’s sleeve, near his bicep—and the armrest pressed into his abdomen is stealing breaths. And he’s afraid it’s _not enough_. Because Shane needs him, Shane needs him as much as Ryan needs him—it’s seeping into the air around him.  Making it hard to breathe.  
   
He’s been so afraid of losing Shane, like he was of losing Jake. But now there’s this new fear. Shane could lose _him_. It hits him hard enough that he pulls back, half because he’s pretty sure Shane said something, half because he needs air.  
   
“You okay?” It’s panting and out of breath and desperate. Because he needs him to be. Shane needs to be okay because Shane’s the entire reason Ryan hasn’t fallen apart yet.  
  
~  
  
Shane draws back with his eyes lowered because he knows he won’t be able to take a second if he looks at Ryan. His gaze darts around the empty theatre instead, heart pounding.  
  
There’s nothing.  
  
And then he looks back at Ryan. “Yeah,” he says, softly and kisses him again, harder, palm against the armrest as he leans over it. Jesus they have to stop doing this where there are so many obstacles in the way.  
  
The thing with Ryan is that he’s so small. Shane knows he’s small, and it coils strangely in and out of Shane’s understanding of just how strong Ryan is. He’s all collarbone and hips beneath Shane’s hands, and shifting muscle but there’s this… he’s got fragile bones.  
  
“Okay?” Shane whispers, as he lays his hand against the side of Ryan’s neck.  
  
Ryan goes on about Shane’s delicate hands, but Ryan’s shoulder blade presses right into the curve of Shane’s palm, and his fingers catch and tug at the hollow of his right collarbone as he tugs the collar of his shirt down and jesus fuck—  
  
Shane ducks his head and presses his mouth to Ryan’s throat, trying to regain that sound he made in the motel the other night. He kisses him on the jut of collarbone, open-mouthed, and works his way up diagonally across his neck, slow, tongue sliding against the side of his adam’s apple. He has to lean over him to do it, and he lets go of Ryan’s shirt collar and lets his hand slide down towards his waist, heavy and lingering over his chest. He tries to press his fingers between Ryan’s ribs like he can link his own body with Ryan’s.  
  
~  
   
Shane looks around the theater. Shit, Ryan didn’t even think to do that. Why does he never think about this shit? He’s about to get pissed off, but then Shane kisses him again and it slides off him like drops of rain.  
   
Shane puts a hand on his neck and asks, okay? Ryan doesn’t know how to answer, doesn’t answer well—he thinks he nods in some infinitesimal way. Wide-eyed. Because he’s not sure if he’s even being asked anything. There’s just Shane’s hands, and they’re small and sharp and soft, but big against Ryan. Big enough that the silence in the theater turns palpable and bright, like an extra heartbeat in the room. He’s too aware of the whisper of skin as Shane’s fingers flutter across his collarbone. He’s too aware of Shane—like the world, the silence, is fucking framing him. Like a camera focused on him so the rest of the picture blurs.  
   
Shane leans over far enough to get his mouth on Ryan’s throat, and any focus—Shane or not, tilts to nothing. He gets a hand up in Shane’s hair, where it’d fallen, a little uncertainly, while Shane watched the theater. His fingers clench because Jesus Christ, Jesus f—there’s just heat and wet on his throat. Across all this skin, _his_ skin, humming at the touch—like nothing’s ever fucking touched it before. Ryan has to draw back as Shane comes forward. He should reach for the other armrest to steady himself, but he can’t touch anything but Shane. He fists his free hand in Shane’s shirt, not quite enough to draw him forward. He’s a little paralyzed under Shane’s mouth.  
   
He’s swallowing all these words and sounds that press against his teeth. He doesn’t know when he gritted them, but they are. Shane’s tongue is slick on these dips along his throat, like he’s found punctures in Ryan’s where he can reach inside him and change his breathing, stop it completely, like the holes in a flute.  
   
Ryan’s teeth finally break apart with the start of a grunt, or a word, he can’t tell. The tension slides further into his fingers, hot, too hot, in Shane’s hair. The rest of the sound is just breath, half-cloaked in begging.  
  
~  
  
There’s this hot pooling of want in him at that little sound and he bites Ryan’s skin softly, laps over it with his tongue. He’s glad Ryan trusts him enough, after what he did before — trying to hurt him… fuck he wishes he hadn’t ever done that.  
  
His hand slides down Ryan’s ribs to his hip, then he pulls it away, and Shane twists himself even further in his seat so that he can slide his knuckles, fingers curled loosely, up the inside of Ryan’s thigh instead. It’s slow, gentle, almost lazy. It’s the opposite of the way he’s kissing his neck, tongue and teeth, finding the beat of Ryan’s pulse beneath his jaw and pressing his lips against it.  
  
His fingers slide all the way up the inside of his thigh, and then he pulls away again, exhaling raggedly against his skin. He slides his fingers up beneath Ryan’s shirt instead, over his stomach, rucking the fabric up a little as he raises his head to kiss his mouth again.  
  
~  
   
Wow. His brain can’t keep up with this—sensations just burst through him hard enough to make him want to writhe beneath it. He doesn’t, though. He stays still. He doesn’t know if he’s doing it on purpose or if it’s just happening. But even if he wanted to move, he’s not sure how—Shane’s pulling him in a thousand directions and it’s taking everything he’s got to breathe.  
   
Ryan’s fingers twitch in Shane’s shirt, wanting desperately to stop the build in his stomach, this hot, impossible thing—that keeps growing with Shane’s loose trail along his thigh. His breath comes out in bursts, in time with his pulse, like it needs another way out since Shane’s got his teeth on it.  
   
He’s not sure when he lost control of this situation, but he has absolutely lost control of this situation. Maybe that’s what his fingers are twitching to grab, but mostly he’s just got his hands sunk into Shane’s hair, trying to tug and mostly struggling to hold through the thin layer of sweat along the inside of his fist.  
   
“F— _fuck_.”  
   
Shane lifts back up so his mouth is hovering over Ryan’s. And this quiet moan tumbles halfway out of Ryan’s lips before he pulls Shane forward like he can stop it. But it doesn’t—it just ends up pressed into Shane in this quivering vibration. Shane’s hands worked its way up his shirt, and the skin to skin contact and Ryan thrusts forward as much as he can—because he needs to be closer and this theater seating is just not lending itself to it. Shane’s already contorted himself around the seat so Ryan’s trying not to drag him down further. So he just keeps kissing him, with tongue and teeth like he can force them closer that way.  
  
~  
  
Shane can’t breathe for a second, and then it it drags out of his lungs, this bitten-off, vocalized sigh. Their teeth knock together and for a moment he sucks Ryan’s tongue, then as he kisses him properly again, he presses another shivering sound against Ryan’s lips.  
  
Fuck this armrest, Shane thinks even as he flattens his hand against Ryan’s stomach, feels his muscles flutter beneath his palm, and oh… fuck…  
  
Shane furrows his brow and little, turns his face away from the kiss a little too quickly and Ryan’s lips brush, half-open over Shane’s cheek. Shane meets his eyes, struggling with his expression. “Jesus, you’re really warm…” he tells him.  
  
He twitches slightly, like he’s not sure whether or not to do something about it. Shane’s warm too, feels like he’s burning, but not like this. Ryan’s skin feels almost hot. Wrong somehow…  
  
~  
   
Ryan just stares at him, dazed, as he tries to settle back into functioning normally. He takes another gasp of breath, between panting. Because he cannot get enough air into his lungs. It’s unnerving. Hearing Shane say it—because he _doesn’t_ feel well. Like how he felt the night after Jake, after the freezing rain.  
   
His heart does a weird flip, so it’s in his throat, then his stomach. He chews on his bottom lip and shifts upwards some. “I, yeah…” He doesn’t know if he should say he doesn’t feel well. If that’ll just freak Shane out. But maybe it’s not fair not to tell him. Not feeling well is a bigger deal now. He knows that.  
   
His breath gets a little shakier. “I don’t feel great.”  
  
~  
  
Shane’s eyes change, just in that split second as he stares into Ryan’s. He blinks, makes this reminisce movement like a flinch and then his face changes. Like a mask.  
  
“Well, yeah. It’s ‘cause you’re not sleeping.” He smiles at him. “You’re finally getting worn down. I was starting to think you were a robot. C’mon, let’s go back to the car.”  
  
He starts to draw away from him to twist away and grab the pipe.  
  
~  
   
It’s not completely unbelievable. He isn’t sleeping. He’s tired—he’s been tired. But he’s more tired now. He presses his hands over his pants, drying some of the sweat. There’s a lot—it feels like there’s a lot, more than there was before. He wants to grab Shane and kiss him again. Go back to before a few seconds ago, before not feeling well felt so loud and terrifying.  
   
But he can’t. Jesus, if it’s… then kissing Shane was a really fucking stupid thing to do. He closes his eyes and tries to get all this panic under control. It doesn’t mean anything. He wasn’t bitten, even if… but he doesn’t have a bite. There’s no reason to think it’s anything more than tiredness.  
   
He can’t ask Shane to comfort him right now. He’s not even sure how Shane reacted to it. He’s way too smart, too cautious, not to have it in the back of his mind—and if he does, then asking him to console Ryan is just going to make this harder on him. And there’s no reason to freak him out if he doesn’t. Ryan hasn’t moved by the time Shane gets the pipe and gets up. He props his elbow on his knee and presses his head into his hand. There’s this massive, sickening panic at the center of him. Enough that he’s shaking. He’s got to calm down. This doesn’t mean anything. He’s been sick _before_.  
   
But not before Zack’s broken chin, and all that blood, and…  
   
He grabs the head of the hammer and stands up, kinda abruptly, before Shane can get too disturbed by his apparent inability to move. He hasn’t slept. It’s normal to get sick if you don’t _sleep_.  
   
“Okay.”  
  
~  
  
Shane’s heart is hammering this sick rhythm through him, and it’s all wrong. He feels so sick so suddenly that it’s like he just watched someone throw up. He tries to keep himself together, tries to keep himself in check. Ryan leads the way back down the steps, both of them moving too slow and careful in the darkness. Shane lets Ryan go without him, even though he’s still close behind.  
  
Ryan’s not sick. Not like that. He hasn’t even been irritable. Still, Shane knows that that’s not exactly true either. He trails Ryan all the way back through the broken glass and bits of metal and out into the heat of the night. Once they’re outside, Shane moves back up to Ryan’s side again. He reaches past him to open the back door of the car for him like he’s a fucking chauffeur.  
  
~  
  
Ryan pauses and stares at Shane when he opens the door. It’s so unnecessary. No one’s saying anything, and Ryan doesn’t know what to do. He doesn’t know how to just let something like this go. The possibility is in his head now, and he can’t get it together. He keeps almost opening his mouth, asking Shane for something: reassurance, guidance, anything. But he doesn’t.  
   
He almost suggests Shane sleeping instead. But they just covered how Ryan might be sick because he’s not sleeping. But what if he goes to sleep and—fuck, okay. He has to get a grip. He cannot let his mind fucking collapse like this. He knows he can’t sleep now, though. His brain isn’t going to shut off.  
   
“You need to get sleep too.” It’s quiet because he knows Shane’s not going to respond well. He stares up at him, not sure how to communicate that he has no idea how to even try to sleep right now.  
  
~  
  
“I know,” Shane says. This warm breeze catches them, sends trash sliding across the ground and he looks back towards the sound quickly, jumpy, but it’s just a food wrapper or something.   
  
He looks back at Ryan and thinks _he’s fine. He looks fine._  
  
“Get in,” he says quietly, and moves around the door like he’s going to follow him into the back. “It’ll be morning soon. You sleep, then I can while you drive.”  
  
~  
   
Ryan doesn’t know how to argue. His eyes are bleary enough that he needs to at least rest them if he’s going to drive tomorrow. He sighs and climbs into the car, knee bouncing too hard against the seat in front of him.  
   
His whole body is turned up too high. Nerves explode beneath his skin like pinpricks, accelerating his heartrate way too fast. He sets the hammer down in the floorboards. He misses the way he felt before the movie theater—just this far off frustration, not this all-consuming terror. Not this cycle of thoughts, of promising himself that he’s fine. And if he isn’t, well, then he’ll know tomorrow. He’ll know soon enough not to… threaten Shane. More than he already has. Fuck, he can’t remember if it’s just blood or not…  
   
 _No, bad train of thought. Calm down._  
   
He still hasn’t even lied down.  
  
~  
  
Shane slides after him into the back and pulls the door shut as quietly as he can, locking it. He sets the pipe on the floor and then reaches immediately for Ryan, slides his hand over the back of his neck and into his hair. He takes his wrist with the other hand. “You’re okay. I used to get fevers all the time as a kid, it’s just… that’s all this is.” He searches his eyes, then kisses him again, lingers because he’s not afraid of… of anything. It’s just exhaustion or something. He wants Ryan to know that, that he’s not worried.  
  
Because he’s _not_. He’s fucking not.  
  
“All right” he says, as he draws away. “It’s only a couple hours ’til morning.”  
  
~  
   
Shane grabs him, kisses him again. Ryan’s too stunned and panicked to properly pull away. He wishes he could keep kissing him. But it’s not fair, even if Shane doesn’t think it—even if he isn’t worried. He was when the blood got all over Ryan. Shane was yanking him around, begging him to wash out his mouth. He doesn’t say that, though. Even if he can’t tell what’s worse… not warning Shane or freaking him out. Shane’s not stupid, though. He’s not going to stay ignorant of it if it’s a problem. He once told Ryan he’d kill him if it came to that. Ryan doesn’t want him to have to, but he said he _would_. That’s what matters.  
   
Ryan tries to smile, but it is all sort of cracked and bruised. “Are you—am I supposed to sleep with you back here? You take up like eighty percent of the car.”  
  
~  
  
He hates this. He hates that Ryan’s not smiling like he always does because of this stupid… this fucking world.  
  
He doesn’t know how to fix it, he can’t turn the clocks back, even if it’s just to stop what happened from happening. Still, he has to be fine. He has to be fine so Ryan can be fine.  
  
“How about you be quiet,” Shane says smiling a little, and he presses his fingers gently over Ryan’s mouth. He’s still too close. “And try to go to sleep.”  
  
His eyes move between Ryan’s as he thinks _You’ll feel better tomorrow_ , but he can’t make himself say it.  
  
~  
  
Ryan furrows his eyebrows and tries not to lose it at Shane's fingers against his mouth again. He can't lose it until he figures this out. He needs to stay in control. 

There's a flicker of concern in Shane's face but mostly he seems okay. He'd be freaking out if he thought something right. He wouldn't have kissed Ryan.

Ryan scowls at Shane and pulls his hand away. He almost says he's in the way again, but instead he pulls his feet onto the seat and pushes against Shane with his back. It's playful enough to distract him for a second.  
  
~  
  
Shane makes a cut-off sound before he hooks his arm around Ryan’s chest and tries to pull him down into his lap. It’s a bit of a struggle. He slams his knee off the back of the seat in front of him and starts to laugh as he pulls him back enough to spread his fingers against Ryan’s sternum and push, so Ryan’s shoulders fall against his thighs.  
  
“Ha,” Shane says. Actually, he kind of gasps it because he’s already a little winded and laughing isn’t helping.  
  
~  
  
Ryan squirms a little. It's not as much as could. He's not in a great position for it. Shane eventually wrestles him down so his head's on his lap. Ryan slept like this once before.

The only time he comes close to sleeping is when Shane's there. It's stupid. Maybe slightly codependent but he doesn't try to get up again.

"You just wanted an excuse to stare creepily at me all while I try to sleep." His heart is beating so so fast. So even as he says it, he grabs Shane's hand and laces their fingers together. He squeezes, closes his eyes.

~  
  
Shane squeezes back. His boot rolls the pipe along the floor and he rests his free hand over Ryan’s forehead, thumb sliding once over the bridge of his nose. “Shh,” he says. “You’re never going to sleep if you keep talking.”  
  
Fuck, he is really warm, but that’s… people are going to get sick. They’re going to get sick and then get better, like Ryan did in the cabin after all that rain. Shane’s surprised _he_ hasn’t gotten sick. This is just… normal. Normal biology. It’s fine. It’s okay. They’ll be fine.  
  
~  
   
Ryan screws his face into an unnecessary frown. He’s already got his eyes closed. He doesn’t know what Shane expects him to do. He blows air out of his mouth and tries so fucking hard not to panic. If he opens his mouth again, he’s scared he’s just going to start screaming. What are they going to do if he doesn’t feel better in the morning? What is he going to do? He can’t stay with Shane if he’s infected.  
   
 _Infected_. Jesus, he could be infected. And… okay, fuck screaming, if he opens his mouth he’s going to throw up. Shane’s quiet, probably hoping Ryan will fall asleep. He’s not completely calm, either. There’s definitely a fear. He can’t possibly believe it too strongly though—he kissed Ryan. And Shane has enough self-preservation not to be stupid about this. He’s not going to risk his fucking life to make Ryan feel better.  
   
Right?  
   
No, he wouldn’t.  
   
He wouldn’t.  
   
Ryan tries to sleep. He’s got this all-over shake that he can’t seem to get past, but he nods off a couple times. It’s funny, because he shouldn’t feel safe. He shouldn’t feel anything but horrified. Shane’s sitting here, and what if Ryan doesn’t wake up? Or, at least, not like this? What if he wakes up and tries to kill him?  
   
No, if he is infected, it hasn’t been long enough. He doesn’t have any major symptoms. It’ll be fine. He needs this to be fine… and it helps, Shane sitting here, holding him like everything is normal. Either Shane’s lost his fucking mind or, well, he’s not worried.  It’s enough, finally—even though Ryan sees the black turn to grayish purple. He does sleep, for a little while.  
  
~  
  
Shane is scared. So he sits so, so still. The thing is that he _knew_ that there was a risk for this. Or rather, he suspected it. It was why he wore the bandana until it got too dirty or they lost them somewhere. And then they were in mostly zombieless territory, and so they didn’t need them as much.  
  
He thinks that they should have been more careful, but then he doubts that either of them would have thought about it with Zack. Zack was a whole different story. And he was infected, but he hadn’t turned, yet. He hadn’t turned, his blood was still… clean when it got into Ryan’s mouth. Right?  
  
Shane can feel his heart pounding out this mad rhythm. It’s worse than any physical fear he’s ever felt, quicker somehow, more all consuming. He flexes his hand in Ryan’s grip ever so slightly, because the fear is so present that he can’t tell whose blood is pulsing through their linked fingers the fastest, but knows that the beat is both of theirs.  
  
Shane wants to fold his body over Ryan’s, duck his head down, but he can’t, because maybe there’s zombies. He wonders if covering the windows would make it worse or better. Maybe zombies wouldn’t see them then, sitting inside. But they couldn’t see out, either.  
  
He’s trying not to, but he keeps seeing Zack shoot himself over and over. And Shane thinks about the blood, but he didn’t see how much of it got into Ryan. He just remembers that it was all over his face. That it might have gotten into his eyes, that Shane’s fingers collected blood, diluted, from his mouth. He remembers the way it lingered in the tiny lines of his hands.  
  
Ryan’s shaking. His skin is still hot. It’s this persistent warmth against Shane’s legs. Shane curls the fingers of his free hand around Ryan’s shoulder and just holds on and thinks _not him, not him, please, not him_ , but he doesn’t know who he’s praying to. God maybe. It’s pretty shitty to only want to believe in God when you need something.  
  
But Shane does need something. This isn’t just a wish, he needs Ryan to be okay. He needs Ryan to be okay because…  
  
Shane squeezes his eyes shut for a minute, grits his jaw, then forces himself to relax. He checks the windows. Check check check.  
  
This fever will break.  
  
It’s getting light.  
  
~  
   
Ryan’s dreams are awful. It’s just this constant flux of Jake and Zack, if his mother chasing him, and then him slipping in her blood. Fucking drowning in it. Sometimes Shane’s there too, in this distant, far off way. But nothing stays—it’s this flurry, fast motion of panic, that clings to him even when he opens his eyes.  
   
It’s daytime. But he’s not better. It might be worse—no, it can’t be worse. It can’t be worse. He sits up and takes a few breaths. They scrape down his throat. The same way air thuds off his skin too hard. A fever. It’s still… a fever. And the panic from last night simmers in him, like his body’s trying to boil it into something more sinister.  
   
He looks back at Shane. He doesn’t want this to be real—he doesn’t want to still have fever. Sleeping was supposed to help, but it didn’t. He’s still quivery, and now achy—and the way is leg aches now is bigger, worse, than it’s been in weeks. If he’s sick, it might be the same—but he’s sick. And sick is dangerous. Really fucking dangerous. He should tell Shane to go, convince him to leave—at least until Ryan figures out what’s going on.  
   
But how would he tell him if it ended up being okay? Like that’s what he should be worried about when he could potentially… he closes his eyes, tries not to relive it. His mom, his dad… tries not to imagine himself hurting Shane like that. Mindless, and… oh, fuck. Oh god. He gets a handful of his hair. He still hasn’t said anything. Time feels slower, faster—he can’t tell. It’s distorted.  
   
“What—how long did I sleep?”  
  
~  
  
“A few hours, on and off,” Shane says, voice slightly rough. He knows Ryan didn’t sleep well, but at least he slept a little. He’s watching him with wary eyes because he doesn’t look good, he looks freaked out, but his eyes are as dark as ever and Shane has to believe he’s okay.  
  
The virus… it escalates faster. His dad had changed by now, by now, Zack was violent… it’s… this is different. Shane isn’t even remotely tired. Physically, he’s exhausted. His eyes itch, his limbs hurt, his back hurts. There’s that aura that means a headache’s coming, like a storm. He doesn’t ask Ryan how he slept. He wants to forget about this. He wants to… just… if they can just rest, Ryan can get better.  
  
“I was thinking… maybe we could find somewhere safer to lay up for a few days,” he says. “Then we could both get some sleep. Properly. Eat better. We’re— there’s just been a lot. I think it’s just finally… that’s all,” Shane says. He can’t seem to speak above this half-whisper. There’s something sharp and painful in him, and he’s holding it tight in case the dam breaks. He holds Ryan’s eyes because he knows him, he knows them. They’re the same as always. _He’s the same as always._ Shane’s not going to lose him. He’s fucking not.  
  
~  
   
Ryan nods. Shane’s watching him really hard. Maybe he thinks Ryan’s going to attack him. No—he doesn’t. He’s not looking at him like that. It’s the same look as always, but more desperate maybe. Ryan shakes out his hand where it’s quivering. He doesn’t know when he let go of Shane’s hands, but he wishes he hadn’t.  
   
“Okay, yeah…” He reaches for the door, the one opposite of Shane. “I’m sure we can find something nearby. I still wanna drive for a bit, though. This town kinda sucks.” And maybe driving will make things feel normal. Maybe driving will kill this thing growing inside him.    
  
~  
  
Shane climbs out too, and gets into the passenger seat, because he wants to stay close to him, he doesn’t want to fall asleep, even though his body needs it.  
  
He tries not to seem like he’s watching Ryan, as they drive. The day is kind of heavy, and there’s these clouds that Shane never pictured in California that make everything look kind of grey and dirty, pressing in one them from above. Shane tells himself that it’s just the weather that’s so oppressive. He keeps telling himself that that’s the reason why they’re so silent in the car.  
  
They take a roundabout way to wherever Ryan’s driving to, and he thinks that maybe Ryan doesn’t want to drive through the strike zones. That’s fine. Shane doesn’t know anything about this place. But this is where Ryan grew up. Not _here_ , here is forest and trees, but this state. Shane wonders how much of it he knows, how much he remembers. He wants to ask, but he can’t bring himself to make the words, as much as he wants to.  
  
If everything was normal he could have. Maybe.  
  
When did normal start to mean after zombies, before Zack?  
  
He thinks about reaching out to him, but doesn’t. Shane offers to drive, but Ryan says no and Shane makes no comment. If driving helps then he’ll let him do it. Or he tries to.  
  
It’s several endless hours later, and huge, sporadic drops of rain start to splatter against the windshield. Ryan looks pale and glassy-eyed when Shane looks over for the nth time. It’s been so long since either of them have spoken that his voice cracks a little. “Ryan… let’s pull over for a bit.” Because he doesn’t look good at all. This is different from lack of sleep and stress and poor nutrition. The rain sounds loud against the car, startling in its irregularity. Any second now, the sky’s just going to open up, and Shane doesn’t want Ryan to be driving in it. “...Ry?”  
  
~  
   
It’s not good. Being back in California, so close to LA. Not when he feels like this. He’s trying to avoid things he recognizes. He doesn’t want to be here—to think about being in a car with his parents and Jake. He doesn’t want to think about school or basketball or film projects. Because they’re gone and he can’t get them back. So he avoids it, things he recognizes, things he saw destroyed. He can’t see this blackened, awful hellscape where his home used to be. He can’t.  
   
But he can’t find anywhere to stay that isn’t recognizable. Isn’t familiar. So it’s just endless driving. Because fuck. They can’t find anything because nothing goes like it’s supposed to. This whole goddamn world gets off on fucking things up.  
   
It’s dark, and gray, and Ryan doesn’t feel good. At all. The steering wheel’s biting into his hand. His leg pulses every time he tries to tap the brakes. He’s still shaky, weak enough that his hands have slid from where they should on the wheel—too low. But he doesn’t want to stop, because if he does, then he’ll have to assess this on a bigger, scarier level. He doesn’t know if he even has it in him to do what he might have to do. Fuck, what he’ll probably have to do. Because the longer this day goes the more unsure he is—or maybe the more sure he is.  
   
He hasn’t let Shane drive. And Shane isn’t sleeping either. He’s just watching Ryan, and trying so hard not to watch Ryan. It makes it worse. Harder. Because everything is fucked up and wrong and Ryan can’t stop feeling like it’s his fault. It is his fault. He couldn’t save Zack. All of this is him. Every raindrop that hits the windshield feels like a hammer over his head.  
   
Shane’s voice startles him. The silence has been there so long, Ryan barely realized it wasn’t a natural part of reality. It’s usually him that’s filling it, but he’s too scared to talk today. He’s too scared to move.  He has to talk now, though.  
   
“No, I’m not just gonna pull over—we’re right beside the woods. There’s got to be something soon. It’s been fucking… forever.”  
  
~  
  
“Come on, man,” Shane says, and the stress makes his voice sound too hard. It’s so… distant somehow. He can’t remember the last time he didn’t call Ryan by name. “Just until the rain lets up… we have some light left, take a break.”  
  
He can’t say ‘you don’t look good’ because he doesn’t want to admit it. He can’t say ‘I don’t like how you’re not holding the wheel like you always do,’ because that sounds… so stupid somehow. Shane looks into the trees as they flash by. They’re pretty far apart just here. It should be safe enough. “Pull over,” Shane says again, and this time it’s even less of a request.  
  
~  
   
Ryan keeps driving. His jaw clenches until it hurts, which doesn’t take long, given the current aching his body is doing. But still, it’s clenched. His whole body is clenched. Because he’s angry. Angry at Shane’s need for this. He doesn’t know what it means. No, he does know what it means, but Shane’s not saying. He’s just telling Ryan to pull over. As if Ryan doesn’t need to pull over, grab the gun, and put it in his mouth.  
   
He works a breath out between gritted teeth. “I’ve driven in rain before. I’ve got it.” His voice is too harsh, too sharpened. He knows it. He knows it, and he hates it, but he can’t _stop_ it.  
  
~  
  
Shane’s too still for a moment, watching him, and something startled has flared up in his eyes, but it’s only brief. He looks away and says. “That’s not fair. I don’t have any boxes of Goldfish to throw at you.” He says it softly, because he’s trying to break this mood. He’s trying make Ryan laugh, but somehow he knows he won’t.  
  
“Just five minutes,” he adds, trying to sound like everything is fine. Like he can’t see how hard Ryan is biting down on his own teeth.  
  
~  
   
Fuck. He’s acting like this is fine. It makes everything so much worse. Shane must know. He must know as well as Ryan does. At every fucking turn, Shane has been the smart one, the cautious one. Why isn’t he seeing this? Why is he trying to act like its fine?  
   
Ryan unclenches his teeth and lets out this shaking, awful breath. Like he’s been holding it. He hasn’t. Maybe he has. He doesn’t know. “Why are you acting like this isn’t…?” He bites his lip, chin quivering. He’s see-sawing between rage and panic. It’s this horrible, vertigo of emotions. “What if I’m sick, Shane? Why do you want me to pull over? What am I supposed to fucking do when we pull over?”  
  
~  
  
“Ryan, jesus, you’re not _sick_ ,” he says, even as the dread he’s been trying so hard to keep back floods through him.  
  
“It’s a cold or something, you’re just making it worse by freaking out. Fuck, I was— sneezing, back at the motel, it’s just— some random influenza virus, it’s not fucking _zombies_ ,” Shane bites out. He’s holding himself so tight he’s shaking. His fingers curve around the pocket in the passenger so tightly his knuckles go white. “Just… come on.”  
  
   
~  
   
Ryan doesn’t know if he’s near tears. He can’t tell.  There’s just so much heat pent up in him, pushing at him—at his eyes and mouth and nose. It hurts just like everything else. The rain is picking up. He should pull over. Jesus, what if something happens while he’s driving? Shane is going to be so fucked.  
   
Shane.  
   
Why isn’t he fucking acknowledging this? It’s not the flu. Ryan’s had the flu. This isn’t the same—this is something else, something growing inside him like… he yanks the car over, too hard, way too hard and it jerks a few too many times before he slams the gear shift into park.  
   
“Why are you being so goddamn _stupid_?” He slams his hand into the steering wheel. He doesn’t know how to contain everything inside him. It’s worse than when he punched the mirror. He hits it again, and his fist stings. “Zack’s blood was all over me. You told me, before, that if anything happened you’d…” He tapers off before he can finish. “And now you’re not even acknowledging it?” He rakes in a breath. It hurts. “Fucking acknowledge it. I might be sick. I am _possibly infected_.”  
   
There’s all this nastiness, anger—all these awful things burning at the back of his throat. And he knows they are. He feels them. These things that Shane can’t hear. Ryan doesn’t want him to hear them, but if he could, he’d know… he’d fucking get it.  
  
~  
  
Shane tenses up, all hunched shoulders like a cat. He ducks his head down into his arm as he braces himself against the door as Ryan wrenches the car over to the side. “Jesus Christ!”  
  
He takes a minute to breathe. He’s still tense, watching Ryan from the corner his eye because he can’t look at him straight on. It’s scary, it’s so abnormal and Shane thinks _stop, just_ stop _it_ , like Ryan can quell the aggression in him with willpower alone.  
  
 _This is how it goes_ , Shane thinks. And he’s pressed against the passenger door like he can’t separate Ryan from his dad, and he’s waiting for the lunge, and maybe this time the seatbelt won’t lock up.  
  
“I told you, yeah, but that’s not what’s happening,” Shane bites out, finally looking at him directly. “You weren’t even _touched_. You weren’t bitten."  
  
But he knows… he’s known for a while… that that’s not how this works.  
  
The rain starts coming down harder. It hammers against the top of the car and Shane can’t make his fingers let go of the door.  
  
   
~  
   
Ryan laughs. It’s nasty—rigid and gnarled. Shane’s pushed away from him. Because he knows. He’s seen it. With his Dad. Shane’s seen this almost as many times as Ryan has, so Ryan knows he knows. It makes no sense that he won’t just fucking admit it. It’s the stupidest thing he’s ever seen Shane do, and Ryan hates him for it.  
   
“Oh, fuck off. You were wearing a bandana the night I met you.” He slams his hand down into the console between them when he says it. Stop, he keeps asking himself, begging himself. And he thinks maybe there’s this weird mix of tears and black out anger on his face because he’s trying so hard not to do this. Because Shane doesn’t deserve this. But god fucking damn if he isn’t being stupid.  
   
“Look at you…” He gestures, a wild motion, to Shane. “You’re fucking scared of me. You think if you say it I’m just going to lose it? I’m not… I’m…” He pulls away, squeezes his eyes shut and presses his head into the steering wheel so hard it’s almost like a slam. He pushes his fist against his mouth and bites down.  
   
He’s trying so hard, on some level, to deny this.  To believe that this is just him. That he is just sick. He doesn’t want to walk away from Shane. He doesn’t want to get out of this car and never see him again. But, even more than that he doesn’t want to hurt him. He doesn’t want to shout something at him that he’ll fall asleep thinking about.  
   
He jerks suddenly, grabs the back from the backseat and slings it between them, shoves it at Shane. “If you’re scared, get the gun out.” His voice cracks. “That’s what you keep it for, isn’t it? So fucking use it.”  
  
~  
  
“No, the fact is is that no one knows how this works,” Shane says, half-interrupting but his voice slides under Ryan’s, and he goes quiet again, and then he’s just watching in this horrible, quiet horror because the Ryan he knows is dissolving into this— this other thing that Shane doesn’t understand.  
  
Shane has to grab the pack before Ryan slams it into his chest, eyes widening over it.  
  
“No,” Shane says — is saying — as soon as Ryan tells him to get the gun out. “That’s not, no, that’s not fucking happening— jesus, _fuck_ just, _shut the fuck up_ , Ryan, let me _think_!” Shane shouts, and it feels like it wrenches his ribs apart.   
  
But what is there to think? He can’t just think this away.   
  
~  
   
The words cut into him like a scythe. Deep, until something cracks and spills out of him. Something mean. Something awful. For a second, he wants. He wants to reach across the seat and put his hands around Shane’s throat. He thinks it, so vividly, too vividly. But he doesn’t move. He just stares at him. Eyes glassy. He knows why the words hit him like this. Why he can’t stop hearing them, because it’s there, between the words. His mom. And it’s funny, because Shane’s not infected.  
   
Ryan turns back to the wheel, watches the rain hit the windshield, harder and harder and harder. He’s spent so long fearing this anger in him, but it’s never been like this. It’s funny how pointless all those fears, from before, feel now. In the face of this truth that he can’t run from, can’t even begin to deny anymore.  
   
“Okay,” is all Ryan says, and he whispers it. His eyelids flutter, and he wipes at his cheek, at this singular tear that he’s lost control of. Because he’s dying. He’s worse than dying. And there’s Shane across the, repeating the last words his mom said to him. And there’s no fixing it—there’s no rewriting this memory already drawing itself into his mind.  
   
Because there’s nothing left.  
   
There’s only one thing Ryan can do. And it’s not a conversation.  
  
~  
  
Shane is very still, watching Ryan. He’s not thinking at all, he’s just sorry, and terrified. He shoves the bag down to his feet and reaches up to press his hands over his face.  
  
There are so many things he wants to say. He wants to tell Ryan that he _can’t_ be infected. That that’s not the way that this is supposed to go. Shane doesn’t know how it was supposed to go, but not like this. Fuck, they weren’t asking for much — just for some safety… for Ryan. Shane has never asked for anything other than Ryan.  
  
It’s not fucking fair.   
  
The rain is so loud.  
  
“What if…” he starts, dropping his hands, but he can’t think of anything at all. The words hang helplessly, feel like they’re rotting there between them because there is no fucking what if, and suddenly Shane can’t breathe. He cracks the window just a little, but it only makes the rain sound louder.  
  
~  
   
Ryan doesn’t look at Shane, or his half-formed sentence. He has no idea what he plans to say. But Ryan just pushes his head against the steering wheel. “It’s fine. It’s fine, maybe you’re right.” He presses his tongue into the side of his cheek. He’s not sure if this all over weakness, or ache, or whatever it is, is getting worse by the second—or if he’s just sinking deeper into it, mentally.  
   
Or if he just can’t handle the thought of leaving Shane.  
   
“We’re both tired. Just… why don’t you try to sleep or something? I’m way too wired, and one of us needs to while we wait for this stupid rain.”  
  
~  
  
Shane doesn’t move. How the fuck is he supposed to sleep, now? The thing he wants to say sounds so vulnerable. He undoes his seatbelt with shaking fingers but doesn’t make any move to climb into the back.  
  
This can’t be happening. It’s not going to fucking happen like this. He knows he’s being stupid, Ryan’s right. But he doesn’t know how not to be… when the alternative means pulling that gun out of the bag...  
  
Shane swallows and says, “Come sit in the back with me,” and it comes out almost okay.  
  
~  
   
Jesus, Shane is stupid. Ryan isn’t sure he doesn’t want to die. He knows. Ryan sees in his eyes he knows as well as Ryan does. Ryan shouldn’t be near him, at all. But if he acts weird, weirder than he already has, then he’s got no chance of Shane actually falling asleep. He just needs him to fall asleep.  
   
 “Shane…” He stares at him, but fuck, Shane looks freaked out. It makes everything worse. Because all Ryan wants to do is be okay. Is do what Shane needs him to do and be okay, but he can’t. He missed that chance back at the gas station with Kelsey. “Are you sure that’s—are you sure?”  
  
~  
  
He can’t argue about this anymore. He can’t have this conversation either. Of course he’s not fucking sure, but he wants Ryan. He rolls the window back up and leaves the bag where it, but he takes the pipe before he climbs into the back seat.  
  
He keeps thinking _we don’t_ know _if infection works this way_ , but he can’t say it. He just resettles in the back and looks up at him, waiting. He does look bad. Shane can’t deny that. Pale like Zack was, glassy-eyed, panicked. He doesn’t want Ryan to be scared, not like Zack was… he wants to hide the gun, fuck, just chuck it into the woods or something, because he can’t survive watching Ryan do what Zack did.  
  
~  
   
Ryan doesn’t move for a second. He’s not sure if it’s Shane acknowledging that he shouldn’t get in the back with him. Or if he’s frustrated at the idea of having to tell him that he does. He watches Shane in the rearview mirror and keeps thinking, what do you want?  
   
It’s funny because he’s thought it a thousand times since he met Shane. But never like this. Never in this painful, ragged way that knows it doesn’t matter. That knows Ryan can’t give Shane what he wants because he wants Ryan to be normal again.  
   
Finally, Ryan gets out and slides into the back. He leaves space between them, but he’s in the back. He doesn’t know if there’s a way to do this if Shane doesn’t go to sleep. Shane isn’t going to let him walk away. Ryan doesn’t want to blow his own damn brains out in front of Shane like Zack did. That would probably be worse than anything he could say—but it might be his only _option_.  
   
He wipes at some of the rain on his arm where the two second jump to the backseat got him damp. It’s colder than it should be, and then sizzling hot as soon as he tries to wipe it away. Fuck, he needs to get away from Shane. He almost says, _sorry_ , but he doesn’t know how Shane would take it. If it would just work him up again.  
  
~  
  
It’s like Ryan doesn’t want to be here at all. Shane looks at him for a moment, thinks about reaching out, shifting closer… but then he thinks that if he does, maybe Ryan will push him away and he doesn’t want…  
  
What if that’s the last thing that Ryan ever…?  
  
Shane’s breath catches in his throat and he looks away, and he _hates_ that it’s getting harder and harder to deny this.  
  
What if these are their last moments though, before, and Shane can’t even reach out to touch him? He remembers Ryan’s hot skin from yesterday. What if it’s worse now? He doesn’t think he wants to know. Shane folds himself into his door, pulling the hood of his sweater up so that it’s not as cold against his scalp. He folds one leg up, small, folding himself into the corner of the seat, accordion-like.  
  
“We’ll go when the rain stops?” he asks, because he needs that. Needs a promise that means they’re going to just keep going. Like they can outrun this fucking virus.  
  
~  
  
Ryan almost lets out a sigh of relief when Shane doesn't reach for him. But the relief catches on something else, this final confirmation that maybe Shane knows. Shane can't hold him now because it's dangerous. Because he's dangerous. Pretty stupid, because it wouldn't make him less sick.

But he wanted the excuse not to go, not to give up this one person that has given him something good. Because when he gets out of this car he will be alone, for the first time, in this. And alone is so much bigger after Shane. Because Ryan loves him. Because Ryan so desperately wants Shane to pull him against his chest and tell him he's okay. Shane looks too small, helpless against the window, though.

Shane can't say Ryan's okay and mean it. Because he isn't. He meets Shane's eyes when he asks, quirks his mouth up into this hopefully sincere smile.

"Yeah, when the rain stops."

He hates this. Lying. But he's out of options.  
  
~  
  
Shane doesn’t trust easily, but he holds Ryan’s eyes and takes in that smile which is barely even half of what it normally is, and he thinks _this is real,_ because it has to be. He has to think that.  
  
And he doesn’t mean to fall asleep, but he’s been up all night. And the rain is loud, but it drowns out his thoughts a little. He doesn’t _stop_ thinking. It just slips into this horrible kind of nightmare where they’re driving, but the road is just getting darker and darker until it’s like driving through a tunnel, and Ryan just stares straight ahead and doesn’t respond when Shane says his name.  
  
~  
  
Ryan waits. Shane falls asleep, because he's normal and sleeps when he's tired. But it probably won't be an issue for Ryan again, at least. For either of them. Ryan gives Shane a little while before he moves. He almost reaches out, but he can't. Not like this. Not when this might be the only thing he can do to help Shane here, make this easier.

He breathes in, shakes with it, and then slides between the front seats and back into the driver's. He's quiet, nimble about it. He pulls his phone out of the console where he left it and plugs it in. It takes a second, but eventually it lights up. Cracked screen and all.

His hands won't stop shaking. He's trying not to cry because it won't be quiet, even now his breathing's too harsh. The logo screen fades and it's just this picture of Space Mountain lit up. He closes his eyes before he types in the passcode. Pulls up a text he's never gonna send and types:

_Shane,_

_I'm sorry. I know this sucks. But I didn't know what else to do. We both know I'm sick._

He takes a shaking breath, vision blurring as he stares at the screen. The breaks in the screen bite at his fingers, but he keeps going.

_If there was any way I thought this was something else, I wouldn't do this. I would give anything to stay with you. But I can't. I can't be the reason you get hurt. This isn't your fault. You are the best thing that's ever happened to me. Before or after the apocalypse. I'm sorry I lied. I'm sorry for all of this. But I'm not sorry I met you. Please don't try to find me. I'm not coming back. Just live through this. If anyone deserves to, it's you._

He is definitely crying, but it's silent. He has to use his shirt to wipe water off the screen. He types something else.

_I love you._

No, he can't. Not like this. It's just better if it's never fucking said. Because if he writes it here, Shane will show up. He will.

Ryan deletes it and types his name, like he needs to sign off. He sets the phone on the console between the seats, still charging. And glances back at Shane. He can't move. Because all he wants, everything he is, begs for Shane. Needs him in this cataclysmic way. Because he is never going to see him again. And it's like tearing the heart out of his chest.

Okay, he can't do this. He's going to break. Find some reason to stay here, with Shane. Find some reason to curl against his chest one last time.

Jesus, the last time... Back at the motel, he had no idea. God he never would've gone to sleep if he had.

He looks away and glances around. It's pointless, taking anything. He thinks about the gun, but he can't take that from Shane. It's Shane's. Even the hammer. And Shane needs it more than him at this point. All of this is Shane's. He reaches into the bag and grabs the Lakers hat. Shane's not going to need it, and Ryan...

He puts it on and slips out of the car, double checking the locks. He's leaving Shane exposed, a little, and he hates it, but nothing should be able to get in with the doors locked. He shuts the door as softly as he can, pulls his hood over his head, and walks through the rain into the woods. Until he's far enough away.

Then he runs.  
  
~  
  
How much later is it, when Shane wakes up? There’s still some light left, but not much. Not enough light for Shane to immediately realize Ryan’s not there. It’s still raining. “What? How long did I—?”  
  
Shane freezes, then suddenly sits up straighter, too quickly. Ryan’s not in the back. He’s not in the car at all. “Fuck,” he breathes.  
  
Shane scrambles to get the door open and half falls out into the rain without checking. Maybe he just… he’s got to be close by. It’s not too dark to see between the trees. The road is empty, ahead and behind. Ryan’s not here.  
  
Panic rises in him so hot and fast Shane doesn’t even remember how he gets into the front door. It’s a mess of rain and scraping parts of himself against metal as he reaches around the back seat to pull the lock up. The car’s too old to be automatic and he stumbles back out into the rain before he wrenches the passenger door open. Packs. Both of them. Ryan’s is still here in the backseat. Okay… That’s good right?  
  
No, it’s bad, the hammer is there in the door compartment of the driver’s seat. “Fuck,” Shane whispers, and he sees Zack shoot himself all over again. Only this time, it’s Ryan with the gun. Out there in the trees and the rain. Alone. Ryan’s alone.  
  
“No, no, no, no, fuck, Ryan, no,” Shane’s saying, low, nonsensical as he grabs the pack and hauls it onto the seat and starts dragging clothes out, the back of his sweater getting soaked, but it’s not fast enough. He wrenches the bag from the seat and turns, empties it out onto the forest floor, dropping to his knees in the mud to scramble through it. His fingers hit the cold metal of the gun and for a moment there is so much relief that Shane almost feels like he’s about to pass out. “Jesus, okay— Okay, okay.” He picks it up. He should pick up everything else, but there’s no fucking time. As he straightens, he notices that it’s Ryan’s phone on the charger. Maybe that will tell him— something, anything, about where Ryan went. He puts one knee on the seat and leans across to grab it. The first screen that comes up isn’t a lock screen. He presses the main button to see what’s open, but it’s just settings and a text… Ryan took the passcode off. He took it off so Shane could read it.  
  
Shane can’t breathe. He opens the text, but it’s hard, his fingers wet with rain and mud. It’s unsent, and reads it quickly, going back to read that one line over _Please don’t try to find me. I’m not coming back._  
  
No. That’s not how this is going to go. Shane throws the phone back onto the seat, grabs the gun again and pushes it into the waistband of his jeans. The flashlight is somewhere in Ryan’s bag and he empties it out over the back seat, grabs it, grabs the pipe. He doesn’t even bother to push the car door shut before he turns to face the forest.  
  
 _I’m not coming back._  
  
Fuck that. Shane starts to run.  
  
~  
  
Ryan can't run long. He pushes as long as his lungs and legs let him, but it's nowhere near what he ought to be able to do. But he's gotten far enough into the woods that it's probably fine. But walking brings with it this crushing loneliness--fuck, he misses Shane. He shouldn't think about him. It's going to make it worse. But he can't stop. Thinking about him. About how his silences were different from the forests. How Ryan didn't have to panic every time he looked back, because Shane was. Now everything terrifies him. It shouldn't, he's already dead. But it does.

Shane made him feel safe. Like he could breathe, and now he can't. Every breath feels like a mistake. He told Shane not to be here but all he wants is to see him. It's so obscenely selfish Ryan claws into his wrist with his nails, digs until it hurts.

Get it together.

But there's nothing but forest silence and the noises of rain, and whatever else. He's soaked through pretty fast, and it's not warm enough for him not to get cold. He crosses his arms in front of him and keeps in this same direction. Away from the car. Away from Shane.

His legs wobble too much. He keeps having to wipe rain out of his eyes. The fever seems to spike with every drop of rain but it's more than that. Food. He isn't sure when he last ate. Not today. Probably yesterday but Christ it's catching up with him. He braces himself against a tree to try and get a better handle on himself.

It doesn't work, but he tries to keep going anyway. He does, but it's not long. His leg quivers and gives in this burst of pain until he hits the muddy ground too hard.

Anger swells in him, mostly subdued by his exhaustion. But he slams a fist into the mud anyway. This is pathetic. This is so pathetic.He's going to give himself a few seconds and get up, but then there's something. A growl. Oh fuck. He can't see through the rain. He doesn't even know if it's a zombie or some other starving animal but he tries to get up. He's already infected. It shouldn't matter. But it does. 

He hears it again, and there's this awful lumbering silhouette. He tries to ease back. He's not sure how much running he's got left in him, but something snaps under him and somehow, through the rain, he sees it's head turn towards him.  
  
~  
  
Shane runs. Tree branches lash at his face. The forest stretches out now all around, in all directions, each as empty as the rest. Ryan could be anywhere, he could have gone anywhere. Hell, he could have gone into the woods on the other side of the road.  
  
Shane’s breathing like he’s crying, but he’s not. He stops, gasping, his lungs burning, and spins in place. He doesn’t fucking know what to _do_. He should never have fallen asleep.  
  
“Ryan,” Shane gasps. It’s getting darker. It’s getting dark too fast, and he needs to find Ryan before nightfall. He doesn’t know why, he just feels it. This is a death sentence, he knows it, but he doesn’t know what else to do. He cups his hands around his mouth and shouts Ryan’s name. It echoes all around him. He stands there, breathless, shuts his eyes to listen.  
  
He’s telling every zombie in these woods exactly where he is. Shane doesn’t give a fuck. He shouts again, but it’s met with the same silence. “Damn it,” he gasps, and keeps running, just keep going… he has to find him. He has to fucking find him. Ryan needs him because he’s always needed him. And Shane has— if he’s being honest— Shane has saved his life so many times. Ryan needs him, and Shane has coasted on that. But he needs Ryan, too, and maybe Ryan… maybe Ryan doesn’t know that. Maybe Shane didn’t tell him properly.  
  
There’s a snap in the undergrowth and Shane wheels around, half of him expecting to see Ryan, but wrong — Ryan’s eyes white as pearls. But there’s nothing there.  
  
~  
  
Ryan runs. He finds it in him and sprints away from the thing behind him. He doesn't know what direction anymore. Maybe the wrong one, but he's too scared to care. Shane isn't coming. He's not that stupid. 

There's so much underbrush, tearing at his face like the rain, but leaving tracks of torn skin instead of rain drops. One catches his shirt, drags across his neck so he has to try to duck sideways to free himself and his leg just gives. Again.

Man, it hurts. Ryan grabs at the gash on his neck. It's bloody, warm against the reason. He drags himself back as this white eyed thing advances, still running where it was chasing. "Please, please." He holds out his hands like he can reason with it, but it keeps coming.

His chest breaks on every breath so his whole body seizes with it. He closes his eyes because he doesn't know what else to do.

And then...

The zombie stops, distracted. _Oh my god, no. No, fuck you_. It's Shane and if the zombie wasn't turning towards it Ryan would be sure this was a hallucination produced by the fever. Why would he be yelling?

Ryan grabs the zombies ankle as it turns and uses this final burst of strength to smash his foot into it's skull. But he doesn't know what to do. He can't go back. He needs to hide. But he's putting himself in so much fucking danger with the screaming.

"Sha..." He starts and doesn't finish. He can't leave him twice. He could barely do it once. He falls back to his knees. Barely a foot from the recently dead zombie. That's going to be him. Fucking Christ.

 _Don't scream again. Just go back to the car. Please._  
  
~  
  
There’s nothing there, there’s nothing anywhere, and if Ryan really doesn’t want to be with him when he… goes under. When he turns, then Shane should… he should respect that but he fucking can’t. “Fuck!” Shane shouts into the trees. “Fuck!” He bends over his knees, his long legs and screams it.  
  
And he is crying now, but it’s so… it doesn’t matter. There’s tears or blood or rain on his face… something’s dripping there. It doesn’t fucking matter, nothing matters. Fuck what Ryan wants, Shane needs to be with him. He promised him he’d… he can’t let him turn into one of those things. He can’t let one of those things get him.  
  
“Ryan! Jesus Christ! Ryan!” Shane turns and turns. It’s just trees on all sides. He doesn’t even know what direction he was going in anymore. He takes a couple uncertain steps, wipes at his eyes with the sides of his hands. “Fuck, please,” he whispers, “please, please,”  
  
Maybe if he fires the gun, Ryan will hear it… but if he does that…  
  
Shane’s not doing this without Ryan. He’s just not. He needs these two bullets. He made a promise…  
  
Jesus…  
  
Jesus, God, help.  
  
He turns, lost. Which direction is the car? Which direction was he running?  
  
The rain pours mercilessly down. It pounds into the ground, into his shoulders like an assault. Shane picks a direction and takes it. The burn in his lungs keeps Ryan alive.  
  
It’s crazy. He’s crazy to think it, but he has to. He runs harder, faster. He has to fucking find him.  
  
~  
  
Oh god, oh god, Ryan hears him. Some of it. He's so close. Close enough for Ryan to go over there, but he doesn't know what to do. If Shane's this frenzied, how is he going to get through this? How is he even going to get back?

Ryan tries to get up. He needs to either go to him or run, sitting here is useless. Sitting here is awful. He gets halfway up but his leg won't do it anymore. He tries to grab onto a tree, but the limb he grabs snaps and his fingernails skid over wet bark.

It's loud enough Shane might hear. But maybe that's okay. Maybe Shane can just kill him or give him the gun and it'll be easier. Shane is looking for him. 

_It has nothing to do with him. You want him to find you, you selfish piece of shit._

He does.Jesus, he does but he's trying so hard not to. Because he can't. It isn't fair.  
  
~  
  
Shane turns sharply. It’s getting dark. He’s breathing too fast to be able to hold his breath, and he stumbles slightly as he listens, there’s just his ragged breathing. Was that a sound or was he imagining things?  
  
His eyes flicker over the trees, but he can’t find anything. If he turns the light on, will they find him or not? Are they attracted to light? He still doesn’t know. With shaking hands he flicks the light on. holds it up at eye level so he can see, but there’s nothing there in the trees, in the distance. Something moves in the corner of his eyes and he turns, but it’s just a crow. It flies silently from one tree to another. Shane flicks the light off and presses his hands into his eyes again. He takes the gun out of his waistband, takes the safety off.  
  
Breathing fast he slides his thumb over it, then raises the barrel to the sky. Should he do it or not? Ryan would come, wouldn’t he? If he thought Shane was in trouble. He holds the trigger, but doesn’t squeeze. If Ryan comes, the zombies will, too… he’ll be bringing them all into the same area… fuck, he doesn’t know what to do.  
  
~  
  
Ryan reaches up again to get a grip on his hair. His hood is down. And... The hat. The hat isn't there either. It hits him harder than he expects it to. He takes this wheezing, painful breath that breaks into a sob.

It's dumb. It's a hat. He'll be dead in a day anyway. But it feels like he's lost this last tether to Shane, even when Ryan hears him not too far away. It feels like everything. He doesn't even know where he lost it, running probably. Ryan tries to get up again.

This time, he pulls himself to the tree so his back is against it. _I don't wanna die. Please, please don't make me die._  
  
~  
  
Shane squeezes his eyes shut, but he can’t make himself fire the gun. Finally he lowers it. He’s wasting time here. He puts the safety back on, puts it back into his jeans. The sound he heard… could be a zombie or an animal or it could be Ryan. Maybe he’s hurt. Shane heads in that direction. He fumbles with the flashlight, but then decides against it. If Ryan doesn’t want to be found, Shane doesn’t fucking doubt his stubbornness.  
  
It’s getting dark. Too dark to be in the woods. Too dark to be outside at all. Shane clings to the pipe as he moves through the trees, holding it in the middle as he starts to run again.  
  
It’s the yellow that catches his eyes. That bright gold circle — like the fucking snitch in Harry Potter, blink and you’ll miss it — Shane looks and there’s… it’s the Lakers hat. Ryan’s. It has to be Ryan’s. Shane snatches it up, half-covered in mud. He smears it over the rim, trying to wipe it off. It’s soaking wet. Shane clings to it, presses it into his chest, as he gets the pipe into a better position, trying to calm his rapidfire heartbeat.  
  
He doesn’t know anything about tracking. The ground’s too wet anyway, maybe. But he was here. Shane’s going the right way. Ryan wasn’t wearing the hat today. He took it. He took it from the car on purpose, which means that he... part of him still has to want Shane.  
  
Shane fought a zombie for this fucking hat before. He’ll fight a hundred more if it means seeing Ryan again. Okay. Okay.  
  
Shane heads in that direction. His legs are shaking too much to run. He hasn’t eaten enough or slept enough. His throat is raw, but he calls his name again, hoarser this time, softer, more desperate. _Please_ , Ryan, please.  
  
~  
   
No. Okay, no. Shane calls Ryan’s name again. Ryan’s not going to let him do this. He’s not going to—Jesus, Shane’s going to get himself killed. The odds of there being only one zombie in these fucking woods… but if Ryan goes back there, then he’s going to end up going back with Shane. He fucking _knows_ it. He’s not going to walk away. Not when half the time he was running away he was wanting him. Hoping on some awful level that he’d see him. That Shane would do exactly what he’s doing, and now he has and Ryan hates him. Hates him and loves him and… _goddamn it_.  
   
Hopefully, Shane’s got his weapon. Because Ryan can’t go back. Shane’s fought zombies before—but the way he was with Ryan. The fact that he’s out here, in the rain, at nightfall… Shane can’t do what he needs to. He’s already _failed_. It’s getting darker, colder. Ryan shivers through the other tremors. He tries, again to pull himself up by the tree behind him, legs still shaking, and wipes at the sting on his neck. He can’t tell if it’s still bleeding, but it’s just something else. Another reason he can’t be near Shane.  
   
The rain’s making it hard to tell exactly what direction Shane’s voice is coming from. Hopefully whatever else is in these woods is having the same problem.  Something snaps behind him and he turns, eyes wide, to find it.  
   
Apparently he’s the only one having problems.  
   
It’s another one. “Shit!” Of course it’s another one. Shane’s fucking begging them to come out. It takes a swaying step in the rain, like it hasn’t quite figured out where Ryan is yet—like it’s waiting on Shane to scream again. But then it settles on him. Doesn’t really look, but sees him anyway. Part of him begs, _bite me, kill me so this can be over and he can fuck off._  
   
But that part loses out because as the zombie takes a step towards him, Ryan shoves himself, unsteady, off the tree and runs in the opposite direction. There’s so much burn. His breath is clawing and shredding at his throat like it can tear it open. And his leg, holy fuck—he doesn’t know what it’s going to do when he stops, if he ever stops. Maybe he’ll run until he dies.  
   
Night makes it even harder to see. There’s still bits of tree and brush that snatch at his face. He tries to see in front of him, but can’t—doesn’t, until there’s another silhouette. And fucking Christ, fucking Christ, why is he so good at finding these things? He tries to stop but slips, stops too fast and has to slide into the mud to keep anything worse from happening. He scrambles back. The one behind him is still there, too close.  
   
He looks around, trying to find something, anything, he can use to defend himself. Or better yet, kill himself. He should’ve been doing that this entire fucking time. But there’s nothing, just mud and trees and mud. He tries to get back up, one more time, but he can’t. His feet are sliding. His head hurts hard and loud enough that he’s seeing spots.  
   
The thing is _right there_. Ryan brings up a hand like he can keep it back, but it’s shaking. He can barely keep it in the fucking air. He’s already dying. This shouldn’t matter. But it does. Terror grips his spine and squeezes, squeezes until Ryan feels it crack. He thinks about Jake, how hard Ryan tried to get him to run at the end. How much pain he must have been in. Pain Ryan _caused_.  
   
Maybe the universe has been trying to make him pay for this, through more than guilt and shame and insomnia. And the only reason it hasn’t until now is because of Shane. It’s such a stupid, ridiculous thought. But he thinks it anyway, trying to stare at this zombie through rain or tears or both.  
  
~  
  
Something makes this terrible sound. It’s a zombie, there’s no mistaking that — Shane will know that sound anywhere until the day he dies — but this one truly sounds like it’s out of a nightmare. It’s whooping, almost like it’s laughing in this awful, hysterical, wild way as it runs through the trees. Shane sees it, and Christ, it’s so fast. It’s so fast. He takes a step back to hide, run, anything, but then he realizes it’s not running at him. Not quite. There’s this angle and zombies don’t run unless they’re giving chase and—  
  
Shane surges forward. There’s a dark shape on the ground, small, huddled. He can’t quite make it out, but there’s not that many options, really. He can’t even tell if it’s moving, or alive, or human. He can’t tell if he’s human anymore, but it doesn’t fucking— Shane just runs. He somehow catches his breath and runs. He drops the flashlight somewhere to grip the pipe two-handed. It doesn’t matter. He can’t fucking miss this time, jesus, it’s too close— it’s _way_ too close.  
  
“Hey!” Shane shouts, so loud it rips at his throat, and it hitches, looks blindly in his direction, just reacting. It’s enough. It’s _just_ enough time. Shane practically slams into it. He hits it with the pipe with such force that he falls back with it, and its hands grab and pull at his sweater as they both go down. He can’t breathe. He broke the lower half of its jaw off of its fucking face so it hangs in this horrible, grotesque open-mouth, and it’s white eyes are locked on him as it lurches up like it might still bite him anyway. Shane makes a strained sound of terror. It’s fingers are like twigs, but there’s this horrible strength to them, but it’s pulling him forward, not scratching, just drawing him in. His arms shake with the effort of holding himself back, away from the upper teeth, that wide-open mouth — too wide. Somehow he gets enough leverage, slipping out and back from it’s arms, close enough that his forehead, his nose brushes its face. It makes this gross gulping, gurgling sound like it realizes how close it is to eating him — if it only had a jaw that still worked. Shane gets the pipe and staggers up fast, adrenaline pounding through him. He brings it down on its face two times, three, too many times, then just throws the pipe down on top of it’s body — its face no longer recognizable as a face, and turns back to Ryan.  
  
He’s drawing in these awful, rasping breaths as he takes a wavering, uncertain step towards him. All of his limbs are shaking. “Why—?” he starts, but he can’t finish, too winded to speak.   
  
~  
   
Ryan’s barely processing anything. For a second, it’s just this flurry of motion so loud and abrupt that Ryan’s shoulders hunch and his eyelids flutter. They’re both on the ground before Ryan realizes—fuck, he realizes, and… oh Christ. Oh Christ, this is bad. He tries to move, to do something to help him, but his limbs are fucking lead.  
   
“Shane!” he says like that’s going to do anything. Fortunately, it gets lost in the noise. Shane’s got the thing’s jaw ripped off, but it’s close to him. It’s close enough to do damage even without a jaw.  
   
Ryan feels this sheer, blinding terror—this thing that dwarves anything he’s felt before this, about dying, about turning. It consumes him in this awful way, because he isn’t sure Shane is going to survive. He’s going to have to sit here and watch this thing kill him. And he can’t do anything. His body can’t move enough to be fucking useful.  
   
Shane gets the upper hand, though—he gets up and beats the thing, again and again, with the pipe. Ryan’s eyes stay fixed on him, checking for damage—anything. But fuck if he knows how to do that. He never saw Zack’s injuries. He helped him heal and never saw. Zack was in pain, though, Shane just seems exhausted.  
   
Ryan’s eyes slip down to Shane’s waist. To the gun. He thinks, maybe. Maybe Shane did come out here to kill him. That twists something in him. He doesn’t know if it’s good or bad, all he knows is he’s imagining Shane put a bullet in him and it makes him sick. Ryan bites his lip, tries to come to terms with this. With dying. Because he has to. It’s got to be better than the alternative.  
   
Shane whirls on him, eyes as wild as Ryan’s ever seen them. He ought to be prepared. He heard him screaming. Ryan’s still panting, taking these serrated, painful breaths. Using what little strength his arm has left to hold him up, but it shakes. Just like the rest of him.  
   
He doesn’t say, _did you come out here to kill me?_ He thinks about it, but he doesn’t. It’s possible, though. Shane did say he’d do it. Maybe Ryan underestimated him. But Jesus, would it be worth chasing him out here like this? He can’t catch his breath enough, catch anything enough to speak for a second, but then he works it out. This ragged, broken half-yell.  
   
“Because I can’t be around you! I am going to turn into one of those things and kill you!” Ryan’s eyes drop back to the gun and up again, potentially wilder than Shane’s. “I told you not to come out here. I—what are you _doing_?”  
   
And it’s there, whether Shane gets it or not: _Are you going to kill me or not?_  
  
~  
  
“You fucking _left_!” Shane gets out, and it’s half a shout, but his voice is too hoarse, too soft, and it breaks in the middle of the last word. He takes this shuddering breath like he might be crying, but he can’t fucking tell anymore. “You left without saying anything—“  
  
He’s _so_ angry. So relieved. He goes to him without thinking of anything, drops the coil of rope from where it’s slipped and tangled down around his arm when he fought with the zombie, and reaches down for Ryan to check if he’s okay, to pull him up, just to touch him, anything. His eyes are still so dark and so familiar that Shane _can’t_ believe he’s ever going to be anything but this. “Jesus— I…”  
  
~  
   
Yeah, he’s not. He’s definitely not going to use that gun. He doesn’t even seem to know he has it. Jesus, Ryan’s heart aches. For Shane. Because of Shane. Because he has to leave him, again. He has to hurt him, again. But Shane’s not here. He’s not thinking straight, and Ryan has to protect him.  
   
Ryan pushes his hand away. It stabs into him too. Pushing away this thing, this touch, that he’s needed so much. That he still needs so much. But he can’t do this right now. He can’t let Shane think—fuck, he doesn’t know what Shane’s thinking.  
   
“Shane, don’t—just… stop.” His mouth sets into a hard, not-quite-angry line. But he is. He’s angry, and he’s desperate, and he’s… tired. He’s so tired. “Get away from me.” His voice shatters like the rain on his skin. Too hot, too cold. “You _have_ to get away from me.”  
  
~  
  
“ _No_ ,” Shane says harshly, grabbing hold of him harder and trying to pull him up, pull him closer. “You fuck— You can’t just leave, this is my thing too! We’re in this together. You said—” he drops his voice to almost a whisper, barely audible over the rain. “That’s what you told me, and you’re just going to— what the fuck are you _doing_ out here, man?”   
  
Ryan is looking at him in a way Shane doesn’t know. He shakes him, furious, desperate, terrified. He just wants something right, something familiar, because this Ryan is different from what he knows. He just wants him _back_.  
  
~  
  
Ryan grunts, a strained, tense sound, as Shane pulls at him. Ryan pulls back, fights him. "I'm trying to save your stupid ass because you've clearly forgotten how to! This isn't my choice! I'm dying! I'm already dead! I don't want to hurt you. I told you I wouldn't hurt you, and if we stay together, I am _going_ to hurt you! I'm going to kill you!"

 _Grab the gun_ , his mind whispers. But he needs a better angle. Jesus, is he going to do this? This was the last thing he wanted. Shane's already had it watch Zack do it. But he has to... Shane's forcing his hand.

"I'm not getting anyone else killed. Especially you."

He yanks back, throws them both off balance. He needs Shane disoriented. He needs five seconds. He pitches him sideways, and uses the momentum to grab the gun.

He yanks it free of Shane's waistband. Undoes the safety and cocks it, slams it against his temple.

_Pull the trigger, Ryan._

_Pull it._

He gets his finger on it, closes his eyes, grits his teeth.

Doesn't breathe.  
  
 _I'm so sorry, Shane._  
  
~  
  
“You’re not fucking dead!” Shane cries. He’s not sure exactly how it happens, but between Ryan pulling him — so sudden, so surprising, and the muddy ground and Shane’s exhaustion, he falls. For a moment, he’s against Ryan — so fucking close that he’s shocked by his heat, and then he’s shoved to the ground.  
  
The mud and rain soaks through his sweater and into his back and it is so cold. It freezes him there too long, and then Ryan has the gun. Shane can’t fucking breathe. Everything in the world stops. His mind is screaming. He can’t pull himself off the ground fast enough.  
  
“No! _No_!” He forgets about zombies, forgets about how loud they’re being. The words are just wrenched out of him. He feels like he has to drag himself through so much dense air, through so much fear — he’s never been this incapable of movement, and there’s nothing he can do, because Ryan’s finger is already on the trigger.  
  
It doesn’t go off. _Thank God, oh Jesus_ , it doesn’t go off. Shane gets up to his knees and half falls over Ryan as he grabs his wrist and wrenches it forward as hard as he can, away from Ryan’s temple, but Ryan’s stronger. And Shane can’t do this. He _can’t_ do this.  
  
He holds Ryan’s wrists with both hands, and the gun is half pointed at his own chest now, his own shoulder, but he’s so exhausted his arms are already shaking.  
  
~  
   
Ryan isn’t looking when Shane grabs the gun. He has to open his eyes, past the swell of anger, at himself. He had a second. He could’ve pulled it. Why didn’t he pull the trigger. Because now the gun’s pointed half at Shane, and he can’t pull it. His whole body is riddled with these cramping, angry pulses. He can barely keep his fingers around the gun, but somehow he fights against Shane taking it.  
   
“Let go. Let me do this. Why are you— _fuck_!” He’s crying. He doesn’t know when he started, but he feels the tears over the rain now—hears them in his voice. “I’m not going with you anywhere, so either give me the gun or _fuck off_!” He pulls, still shaking. It shoots up into his head. He winces. If he can just get the gun, it won’t matter anymore.  
   
He keeps going, muscles straining with the effort. Muscles that don’t have anything left to give, that feel more like tattered rags than what they are.  
  
~  
  
This is happening. This is really happening, this moment, right now. Ryan’s going to kill himself and then Shane’s going to lose him. Forever.  
  
Shane’s going to have to watch.  
  
He can’t hold onto him anymore. It’s pathetic, they’re both so tired, and the struggle shakes desperately through them both, but they’re barely moving — it’s just Ryan’s willpower against Shane’s own. The rain makes his fingers slippery. Ryan’s wrist slips from his fingers and Shane loses his grasp altogether, gasping in fear.  
  
Ryan snaps the gun right back to his temple like it’s drawn there by a magnet and Shane does the only thing he can think to do which is push Ryan himself back, scramble over him so his knees are on either side of Ryan’s legs, because maybe he can hold him _down_. The gun wavers between them for a second. Shane presses down over him, but he’s afraid to touch the gun in case—  
  
“Fuck, let go!” Shane manages through gritted teeth as he grips Ryan’s shoulder with one hand, presses his forearm — the one with the gun — into the ground “ _Ryan_ , stop! Fuck, look at me!”  
  
Shane will make Ryan fucking— he has to know what this will do to him. He has to know that this will fucking destroy Shane, too. If he can just meet his eyes, just— if he can just— say the words he needs—  
  
Why did he wait so long? Why didn’t he tell him before? It can’t end like this, it’s not fair. It can’t.  
  
~  
   
He almost squeezes the trigger this time, when he gets the gun back to his temple. But Shane knocks him over. And he’s so nervous, nervous he’s going to fire the gun and somehow hit Shane. His back slams into the ground, too hard, harder than it ought to feel. Every fucking touch feels magnified. Too bright.  
   
Except Shane’s. He can barely feel Shane’s.  
   
Shane pins his arm, on top of him. Like he’s helping. How can he not understand this? Ryan slams his head sideways because he doesn’t want to look at Shane. He doesn’t want to have to face this. He gets it, then. Why Zack did it so fast. Now he’s having to think about it—about ceasing to be a person anymore. About leaving Shane alone in his hellscape. He wrenches at his arm, tries to focus on fighting. On getting out of Shane’s hold.  
   
His body doesn’t much left. What little it does is from adrenaline and willpower, and his adrenaline is starting to flag. Hell, so is his will power. “Why?! You fucking—” He cuts himself off, because he doesn’t want to do this. God, he doesn’t want to hurt him more than this is going to. He finally forces his eyes up to Shane, sees the panic, fear that probably rivals his own.  
   
Shane is so heavy on top of him. Not his weight, he’s not really pressing on Ryan, save his arm. But the dread, the anguish, soaking through him is impossible to think around. It’s Shane. This person that’s made everything okay, and now Ryan is ruining it. Ruining everything. Because there is no other option.  
   
“This is why I left!” He tries to free his arm, but there’s not enough strength left in him. There’s not enough anything. Nothing but pain and fear and guilt. And rage. Everything he’s been running from since his mom died. He holds Shane’s eyes, chin quivering, teeth still half-gritted, trying to push words out through his gasps, through his tears. “Whether I use the gun or not, I’m dead. Whether I stay with you or not, I’m dead. Do you want to watch me _die_? Is that what you want? That’s what you’re asking me for!”  
  
~  
  
“You don’t _know that_!” Shane shouts, and then he just breaks apart. He starts sobbing, because no. He does know. This is it.  
  
This is the end… and Ryan is going to turn into one of those things, that’s why Shane doesn’t know him now, only he does. He doesn’t know this anger, this desperation, but he knows Ryan. He knows the way Ryan feels beneath him and the sound of his voice and the taste of his mouth. He knows the way he laughs, the way he won’t laugh ever again.  
  
Shane can’t. He can’t keep struggling. He can’t let Ryan turn into one of those monsters, but he can’t watch him die either. He’s paralyzed here, in this moment, and the rain pours down around him, and Shane—  
  
“I don’t want you to die,” he manages, and his breath keeps coming in in these harsh, sharp gasps. This isn’t Finn. This isn’t his mother who he didn’t see die, or his father who turned while Shane slept. Who Shane didn’t even know anymore, before the end. This isn’t Too Late or Stupid Mistake or Has To Be Done. This is Ryan.  
  
This is Ryan, and Shane loves him, and he’d been thinking that the apocalypse gave him this… it gave him silence and solitude, and then it gave him Ryan, and now it’s going to rip Ryan away from him and, with him, everything Shane used to be.  
  
Shane can’t be alone anymore. He can’t listen to silence and feel right. Shane is _worth_ something right now. Or he was. He was enough. He was enough for Ryan, all this time, except now he’s not.  
  
“I’m sorry,” Shane gasps, and his arms shake. He drops down over him, over his chest. It’s not hard, but it’s giving up. It’s giving in. Okay. He tucks his head down against Ryan’s so that if Ryan shoots himself he’ll shoot Shane, too. The forest floor is cold. Old wet leaves cling to them. It smells like living things and Shane has run out of ideas. He uses all his strength to keep Ryan’s hand pinned to the earth and the sobs just break out of him, crash through his chest until he’s half choking. His chest shudders against Ryan’s.  
  
He thinks _Please don’t_ , because he’s scared. He’s scared of everything, he always has been, but he’s scared to lose Ryan more than everything else. Even if Shane dies, too, he doesn’t know what happens after. If there’s nothing or if he won’t be able to find Ryan again in whatever happens once neurons stop firing, once his heart stops. If there is a place, afterwards, not finding Ryan again…  
  
Shane clings to his shoulder, to his forearm and thinks _I’m not letting go._  
  
~  
   
For a second, Ryan thinks Shane’s going to let him do it. He says he’s sorry—and he thinks, maybe, he’s going to give in. To get this. To know that there isn’t anything Ryan can do, that Shane can do. He’s going to die. God, he’s going to die.  
   
But then Shane crumples against him, so his head is too close to Ryan’s and… “Jesus Christ.” He’s still holding Ryan’s arm. Ryan fights as hard as he can. Because if he stops fighting, then he’s going to have to feel this. He’s going to have to let this take over him completely, even before the virus does. This thing it’s brought into him… this terror or, fuck he doesn’t know. Whatever it is. It’s too much.  
   
He’s going to kill himself. That’s what he wants—he doesn’t want to live through this.  
   
“Shane, please…” Ryan doesn’t know what he’s asking for. He just knows that Shane’s too close to him, and the closer he gets, the longer it goes—the more Ryan can feel him. The more he bleeds into Ryan and breaks apart this resolve he’s trying so hard to have. He’s supposed to be brave here. He’s supposed to die, like Zack did. He’s supposed to fix this for Shane, but here they are—nothing is fixed. Everything is fucking broken, ruined. “ _Please_.”  
   
He’s never been able to fix anything for Shane. Not a single fucking time. So why would this be any different? Jesus, why didn’t he take the gun before he left the car? Shane could do this. If he would just, let go—he could live through this. If Ryan had killed himself before, if he’d made Shane move past it. He would’ve. He would’ve been okay, eventually. But now he’s so far from it, Ryan doesn’t know if he’ll ever be. He’s going to die and leave Shane this broken, awful mess. And he doesn’t want to. God, he told Shane he wouldn’t go anywhere. He doesn’t want to go anywhere. He doesn’t want to go.  
   
He keeps pushing at Shane’s grip, but he can’t. He can’t fight through what this is going to do to Shane, through this sickness. There’s so much weakness in him, until finally, he breaks. His arm goes limp and the gun drops into the mud. He’s so cold. Just like the night Jake died—it’s nowhere near as cold as it was, then, but it feels it. It feels colder. Because Shane’s crying, and it’s Ryan’s fault. For being careless, for not doing what needed to be done. For giving up. Again.  
   
He presses his head further into the mud, tips it back, because he can’t stop crying. He can’t breathe around all this crying, and Shane’s… and the rain. Everything is tearing at him. And he’s going to die. He’s going to just… stop being. The world is going to wake up, and Ryan’s not going to. He’s like one of those people in the quarantine camps. He’s dying… he’s just waiting, waiting to stop being Ryan and start being… something else.  
   
Nothing.  
  
~  
  
Shane breathes a little when he feels Ryan go limp. And he half expects him to rise up at any moment and sink teeth into Shane’s flesh. Fuck, let him. Shane holds on.  
  
He holds on and he fucking cries until something else sinks in… that nothing is happening. That Ryan isn’t fighting anymore beneath him, but he is still breathing as unevenly as Shane is, but he is still so alive.  
  
They still have time. There’s time left. There’s time and Shane’s going to hang onto it for as long as he can. He wants every moment, every second Ryan has left.  
  
It’s the most selfish thing he’s ever done. He knows that, somewhere inside himself, but there’s a chance — a moment now. And he takes it.  
  
It’s fast. Shane takes a breath that shudders to the very centre of him. He pushes himself up, sees the way Ryan’s fingers have loosened around the handle of the gun. His index rests against the trigger but so, so lightly. Barely a touch. Shane shoves the gun up and away from them both, and then he grabs it. He throws himself sideways before Ryan can reach for him and rolls unsteadily to his feet. He’s holding the gun by the bottom of the handle, not properly at all, and he messes with it, trying to get it in his hand properly. It’s so cold, it’s so fucking heavy. How has he carried this around for this long?  
  
Shane looks up and meets Ryan’s eyes as he gets his finger on the trigger.  
  
~  
   
Ryan doesn’t fight when Shane takes the gun. He’s so out of it, so tired and disoriented and broken that he just lets Shane take it. He shouldn’t. Fuck, he knows he shouldn’t. But he does. Shane gets the gun. Ryan closes his eyes, tries to get enough energy in his body to fight again. He can barely push his head up after Shane’s rolled off him. But he reaches, weakly, to try and keep him there. He can’t.  
   
Shane gets away from him. Ryan struggles to push himself off the ground. Everything is so slick and cold. Then Shane points the gun, but he doesn’t point it at Ryan. He points it up. Away from both of them. From everything. He looks at Ryan with this iron fucking resolve. And Ryan knows exactly what he’s doing.  
   
“No, no _don’t_!” He gets off the ground, but he sways. He can’t keep his feet. He can’t even keep on his knees. He reaches for Shane, nowhere close enough to grab him. “It won’t change anything! _Stop_!”  
  
~  
  
Shane takes a step back and fires once. He winces as it goes off, but doesn’t take his eyes off Ryan’s. He squeezes the trigger again and the shot rings out once more. He fires a final time but the gun just clicks. There were only two bullets anyway. He throws it down onto the ground, panting, then reaches up to wipe his cheeks.  
  
Ryan is going to hate him. Shane half regrets it because now… now what? When Ryan turns, now what? What is Shane going to do? Now they’ve both broken a promise.  
  
It doesn’t matter right now. Right now, everything in these woods is going to know where they are. He moves towards Ryan again. “We gotta go,” he tells him, his voice still broken. He reaches for him.  
  
~  
   
Shane fires. Once, twice. It’s so loud. But Ryan doesn’t look away. He screams, but it’s drowned out by the blast of the bullet. He’s staring at Ryan when he does it. Like he’s fucking glad he’s taking Ryan’s once fucking chance of not… turning into what his mother was, not putting Shane in danger. He’s fucking stealing it from him and he’s looking into his eyes like he’s happy about it. Ryan grits his teeth.  
   
He’s got nothing now. Nothing but waiting, and Shane. Shane who is going to get himself fucking killed by staying here, by following him into these woods. By firing those bullets. Shane comes towards him and Ryan reaches up and grabs him by the collar. “You fucking idiot! You selfish—” He needs to hit him. He needs to scream at him, but there’s all this nastiness bubbling in his throat—the accusation, that Shane did this on purpose, that Shane wants him to go through this, wants him to get sicker and sicker until he can’t feel anything but pain and then changes into the fucking human incarnate of it, of pain, suffering. A goddamn monster.  
   
He opens his mouth to say it, to scream them at him, but his eyes widen, and there’s his mom again.  
   
 _Don’t do this to him. Don’t make it worse._  
   
He can’t let go. Shane can’t lose someone else. He’s lost everyone. He believes it, knows Ryan’s dying, but he can’t… he can’t let go. Ryan gets it. He probably wouldn’t be able to either, if this was reversed.  
   
Ryan lets out this keening kind of sob and slams his fist into Shane’s chest. It’s not full strength, but it isn’t soft either. It’s everything he’s got left. He lets go of Shane’s collar and just collapses, down, against him. They do need to go. Shane needs to go, because he’s alerted fucking everything. And Shane’s not going to leave without Ryan.  
   
Another angry sound squeezes between his teeth, high-pitched, not quite a word. He had one thing. The one thing he knew, he believed, was that he could fucking hold onto Shane and it would be okay. But this fucking virus has taken that from him. Because leaning on him like this, even now, is one second closer to killing him.  
   
“I can’t…” He croaks. “I can’t, I can’t, I can’t, I can’t…” It gets softer, less comprehensible every time. Until it fades into these broken, awful sobs.  
  
~  
  
 _You did this_ , Shane thinks. Fuck, his heart _aches_ , but he doesn’t regret not killing Ryan. Just the promise. Just the inevitable… after.  
  
He folds himself over him, gives him that handful of seconds. It’s not enough. It’s never fucking going to be enough. “You can, you can,” he says. And it’s like the first night. So much of this is like the first night. He gets Ryan’s arm over his shoulders, but it’s not enough. He can barely get Ryan to his feet. He needs… okay. He needs the pipe. He leaves the gun where it lies and gently extracts himself from Ryan, mouth brushing his temple, “Shh, Ry.”  
  
Every time he gets close to him something in his body tells him that it’s dangerous. Shane can’t listen to it. He pulls away just long enough to get back to the zombie, gather the pipe up. In a split second decision, he grabs the rope too, because it’s close. He loops it around his neck and under his arm like the strap of a messenger bag, and then gets his shoulder beneath Ryan’s arm again. It’s a struggle to get him to his feet. Shane almost has to lift him bodily over his shoulder, but Ryan is too heavy and Shane is too exhausted to hold him that way. Ryan falls against his chest and Shane stoops to catch him. The pipe is awkward and unwieldy between. “Okay,” Shane says, fear spiking in him again because it’s too dark to see far into the trees now. He pulls Ryan’s arm over his shoulders and takes a step. Which way was the car? He has no idea.  
  
He doesn’t know what to do, but they have to move. He makes his best guess and starts off, too slow. The woods feel like they’re closing in around them.


	20. Part 20

Ryan can’t catch his breath. He can’t stop crying. The idea of moving feels so far off to him. It’s so pointless. His body is too heavy for how little it’s got left. What a waste of fucking… everything. Shane’s moving. Ryan only vaguely knows what he’s doing. If he had any sense, he’d run off. Try to get away from him. But it’s way too late for that. He can barely keep his head up, let alone outrun Shane. Because he’s going to have to.  
   
Shane starts trying to walk. Eventually. It takes a while. But they need to get away from here, Shane does. Ryan doesn’t need anything. But Shane needs Ryan, so he needs to get up and walk. He couldn’t kill himself, so now he has to… do something. He gets his head up and tries to push some weight onto his feet. It’s hard. He’s leaning on Shane. He falls against him once. It’s bad. This is bad. Shane was so fucking stupid to fire the gun, so fucking stupid to come out here. Shane is so stupid.  
   
But Ryan doesn’t say that. Even if he wanted to, talking would be a waste of energy right now. Ryan brings some of his weight off Shane and focuses on walking. His leg’s not broken this time—he should be able to do this. “You’re lost,” Ryan says, and barely recognizes his voice. It’s so hoarse, from crying, from sickness. He keeps walking, anyway. Shane doesn’t know where they’re going, but away from the loud gunshot spot is good enough.  
   
They walk a little longer, and Ryan finally says what’s been caught in his throat: “Sorry.” He doesn’t know why, maybe for not killing himself, or hitting him—maybe for leaving, for being infected in the first place. Maybe because he’s dragged Shane to this ledge, just like he did the night Jake died.  
  
And he’s going to leave him here.  
  
~  
  
He shakes his head. “Don’t. Don’t be sorry.”  
  
But he is lost. He is. All he can do is keep going. It’s the wrong way. He knows that. He can tell, now, that it’s the wrong way, but the trees start to clear out and Shane stops to readjust them both, to catch his breath.  
  
It’s so fucking cold. It’s cold but Ryan’s hand is like a brand against his neck and Shane reaches up to grab hold of it, has to press the pipe a little too hard against Ryan’s knuckles, but he hoists him a little higher. “There’s something… do you see that?”  
  
It’s a house or something. It’s eerie as fuck all the way out here. There’s no lights though, no fire. It doesn’t look like anyone’s living there. He hopes.  
  
Shane starts towards it. There’s an incline and “Ah— fuck,” he slips and goes down. He slams the pipe into the ground to keep his feet, but half loses Ryan. Ryan slips down, Shane loses his footing. They slide a few feet and the pipe slides after them. Shane catches it. “Christ,” he whispers. “Come on, Ryan, just— we’re almost… almost there.”  
  
He doesn’t know where there is. He should have brought the gun, even for a prop against whoever might be inside, but he never wants to see that fucking thing again.  
  
~  
   
Fuck. He’s on the ground, and he’s only half clear how he got here. He hopes it’s lack of sleep catching up to him and he’s not about to turn and bite Shane’s head off. God, that’s the terrifying thing. He doesn’t know. Shane’s risking so much here, with Ryan. Ryan could change into just another zombie any second. He doesn’t know how long he’s got. It shakes through him.  
   
He looks ahead at the house, the… whatever it is. Ryan jams his knee into the earth to try and get up again. He lurches, sways some. It’s more than lack of sleep. He’s getting sicker. Fuck—fuck he wants to tell Shane to leave him, but he knows he won’t.  
   
“Where?” he asks. “To the Blair Witch house?” It’s a joke, he thinks. He’s hopeless, but there’s no anger in how he says it. He pulls himself back up, knees wobbling and looks at Shane like he wants to help him up too. But he doesn’t. Can’t.  
  
~  
  
Shane laughs at that, and it immediately breaks his heart all over again.  
  
This is the person he’s losing. He’s losing him right now as they speak.  
  
Halfway through the laugh he’s crying and he looks away before he really looks down into Ryan’s face. He just tries to hold him up better. His boots slide a little but he keeps them standing. They make it to the bottom of the incline and Shane’s trying, fuck he’s trying so hard, but he wants to scream.  
  
At the house, cabin, whatever, he turns the handle, and of course, it’s locked. “ _Fuck_ , just— okay,” Shane says and pushes Ryan against the door, holds him there, presses full against him to keep him up. With his free hand he gets the pipe horizontal and slams it into the narrow glass window beside the door. The glass shatters, hardly audible over the rain. It’s too small for anything human-sized to get in, but Shane’s arm fits, and he reaches in and unbolts the door. Glass clings to his sweater sleeve as he pulls it out again and he shakes it slightly. “Okay, come on,” he says, pulling Ryan against his chest. He turns the handle again and the door swings open.   
  
~  
  
Shane is trying so hard. Ryan hates it. He hates that he’s doing all this. When Ryan’s got hours, probably, left to live. Jesus. Hours. He stares, blankly, back into the woods as he thinks it, feels it. He’s dying—he’s not going to be here anymore. He ought to be used to it, after everything. But he’s not. It’s never faced him so dead-on before.  
   
Shane gets the door unlocked and pulls them into the house, place, whatever it is. Ryan wouldn’t be surprised if the Blair Witch appeared. That’s their luck. He hardly takes in anything, even that it’s dry. It reminds him of stepping into the cabin for the first time, but without the hope. Without the promise of anything but death.  
   
His vision blurs. But he looks at Shane. He’s not looking at the house, checking for people. Because it doesn’t matter. The only thing that matters in this scenario is Shane.  
  
~  
  
Shane’s not looking either, he’s looking down at Ryan. His eyes are strange, Shane thinks, but it’s too dark to see why. He just— they just need a place to sit— He drops the pipe to the floor and kicks the door shut.  
  
It’s dark in here, but quiet now that they’re out of the rain. Nothing movies. Shane squints into the darkness, panting. Okay... This isn’t a house, but there’s a… it’s a bench. Like a waiting room or something, just across the room.  
  
He slams his shin off of something as he pulls Ryan to it. They stumble a little, but he gets him down onto it, half falls over him. It’s very hard. Not ideal. He catches Ryan’s face in both his hands. “Ryan, _Ryan_ , look at me. Hey. Stay with me, okay? Look at me.”  
  
He needs to find some light. A lantern, candles, anything. There’s got to be something, this is California. They have earthquakes here, right? Surely there’s emergency candles or something.  
  
~  
   
Ryan’s teeth are still chattering. The cold feels so much bigger than it should be. It was starting to be spring. He’s never going to see spring again. That sucks. That really sucks. He takes a gasping breath, like he’s going to cry all over again over a fucking season. He never even cared about spring. But now it’s all he wants.  
   
Shane is panicking. Trying to keep Ryan in the moment. A smart thing, probably. Since Ryan feels himself slipping out of it. But he doesn’t want to, slip into this darkness, because he doesn’t think he’s coming back from it. So he closes his eyes and then reopens them, finding Shane.  
   
He reaches to get a hand around the rope. He doesn’t know why Shane brought this, but it’s good. It’s a good thing. “I think you need to…” Fuck, he can’t think straight. He can’t make the rest of the sentence. “This, just…” He tugs at the rope. Shane’s looking for something else. Ryan doesn’t know what. “Tie me to something… with this.” He ducks his head, whimpers softly. “So I can’t…” but he doesn’t finish, isn’t sure how to.  
  
~  
  
Shane grits his teeth as he holds his eyes and then he presses forward, drops his head to Ryan’s shoulder. “Don’t do this,” he whispers, brokenly. Like Ryan has _any_ control over it. “Please just don’t.”  
  
His breath shakes like he’s going to start crying again. No… he’s got to just… If he finds some light, then he can see him. He can— can stop him from shivering if he gets him dry again. “Okay,” Shane says, drawing away. His voice shakes wildly, and he wipes his eyes with his fingers. They sting. He pulls away from him and moves towards the counter or whatever it is. He runs into the same thing he did the first time. A low table. “Christ!” Shane bites out, and kicks it. It skids, metal over wood. Some magazines slide to the floor. He moves past them and goes around the counter. Computer, chair. This is an office. Okay… He opens and closes drawers. One of them needs a key and he can’t get it open. Matches, a lighter, anything. He knocks over a cup of pencils. There’s a letter opener that he pockets instinctively. Ryan needs a weapon…  
  
 _Ryan needs you to kill him before he turns into one of those things._  
  
Shane slams his fist onto the desk to drown out the thought. He turns and opens the drawers on a filing cabinet. Candles. Thick ones. Good, they stand up on their own. He grabs a couple. There’s matches, unopened. He grabs everything and drops it onto the desk, struggles with the plastic around the matchbox and sets about lighting them. “Ryan,” Shane calls out unsteadily, just to hear his voice again. His hands are shaking hard.  
  
~  
  
Panic runs through him. He needs Shane to give him this. He needs him to at least try to save himself. Pretend he's going to, but Ryan's can't make the words. He can barely make anything.Shane runs into something and it startles him. He wants to ask if he's okay, but his mouth can't sort out the words. He is still fighting with it when Shane says his name. He needs to answer. He needs to stay present until he can get Shane to subdues him. Shane's making light. Ryan doesn't quite know how but he doesn't question it. "I'm scared... Come back." It's too vulnerable, and it's not what he should say. Shane can't be near him. "Please... do the... tie me! You have to!"  
  
He can't stop shivering. It makes him harder to understand, even more than his broken speech. The aches and the headache all converge  into this weakness. It hurts, like his body is angry he's sitting up. That he's still alive.  
  
He's dying. Jesus… he's dying.   
  
“Shane…” he whimpers it, like it'll stop it.  
  
~  
  
He makes this soft sound and goes back to him immediately, catches Ryan’s face in his hands. He kneels down on the floor in front of him. “Don’t be scared.” He says it against Ryan’s hairline, soaked. He’s shivering so hard and his skin is still so, so hot. He wishes he could tell him that there is nothing to be scared of, but it’s a lie.  
  
He doesn’t want to tie him up. Not like Finn. No, that was too fucking awful. “We just… you need dry clothes. We have to get you warm,” Shane says. He’s losing his fucking mind, that’s what it feels like. But how can he do anything else? Ryan’s already talking like Shane’s alone.  
  
 _You’re lost_ , he’d told him, out in the woods.  
  
And yeah. Yeah, he is.  
  
He will be.   
  
~  
  
"No." Ryan rasps. Even as he leans into Shane's whisper against him. For the first time, he knows exactly what Shane wants, needs but he can't give it to him. "No..." He tugs on the rope like he can get it off Shane's neck. "The..." _God, make a fucking sentence._ "You have to tie me up or I'll hurt you." Tears come too hot and fast back to his eyes. "Don't let me hurt you."

He misses kissing him. He misses him like he's already dead. He misses the basketball court and the cabin and the Vienna sausages. He misses joking with Shane. He misses being able to have him.

He gets a tighter grip on the rope and narrows his eyes into Shane's. "You took the..." He swallows, loses the words. "You gotta give me... this one thing. One last thing. I know... I know it's..." He can't talk. This is taking his ability to do anything. He hates it. He grits his teeth and screams through them. There is so much pain. Every time he reaches. That's all there is. "I'm sorry. It sucks, but you need to try. You need to... to live. I'm begging you."  
  
~  
  
Shane’s crying again. It just takes over so fast. His fingers are fisted in Ryan’s sweater so hard that rainwater leaks out between them. But Ryan’s right… fuck— he can’t let him… he can’t let him die thinking he might hurt Shane.  
  
Shane knows he’s not. He’s not living this life this anymore without Ryan, but _he_ doesn’t have to know that.  
  
“Okay,” Shane says. “Okay, let me just… I’ll find somewhere to— I’ll find somewhere.” He draws away, turns, searches blindly because his eyes are so blurred. The candlelight flares in his vision and he presses his sleeve against his eyes, gasping softly. There’s nothing down here… it’s all smooth wood panelling and the desk won’t hold… won’t hold a zombie.  
  
“Jesus Christ, Ryan,” Shane says, turning back to him, helpless, as the weight of this crashes in on him again and again, relentlessly. He lets out his horrible, broken noise, then turns away again. He has to do this one thing. He already wasted the bullets.  
  
He grabs one of the candles and comes back to touch Ryan’s hair. “I’ll be right back. I’m not leaving you, I’ll be right back okay?”  
  
He pulls away.  
  
Time’s ticking.  
  
There’s a hallway — a storage closet, a bathroom. Up a narrow flight of stairs there is a kind of staffroom. A couch and— and railings. Wooden ones, built from the floor up. Those will hold. Shane sets the candle down on the floor like he’s about to do some kind of ritual and does a quick search of the room. There’s no clothes here, nothing dry, but there are wool blankets, first aid kits, flares.  
  
He throws a few blankets down onto the floor, drops the rope on top of them, and then clatters back down the steps to Ryan. He gathers him up, pulling him into his chest like he’s not afraid of him. “Okay,” he says against his ear, “okay, buddy, come on. Let’s go upstairs."  
  
~  
  
He's alone for long enough that he almost forgets Shane's coming back. But  that's okay. It's good. Shane should leave. So why does Ryan's chin start to quiver?

Shane come back. He grabs Ryan and it's silly but Ryan feels better. Like there is any reason at all to feel remotely better. Then Shane speaks and...

Oh Jesus, stairs. Some part of him wants to make some kind of joke, make it bearable. But instead he just lets out this broken choke. He clings to Shane. He's a good cool, Ryan's shivering but Shane is a good kind of cold. Against how hot his insides are. That's what Shane's always been. Good, even when it makes no sense.

Shane helps him up them. He tries so hard, but he stumbles, over and over. So Shane has to go slow, keeps having to catch him. His leg fucking hurts. They get to the top, when he says, 

"You... I kissed you." He gasps. He's not sure if he's crying or reacting to some pain in his chest. "You don't... what if I... what if I made you sick?"  
  
~  
  
Panic flares up in him. “You didn’t make me sick,” he says, softly, pressing the words into Ryan’s soaked hair. He gets him to the blanket he’s thrown messily onto the floor and lowers him down to sitting carefully, carefully. “It doesn’t work like that.”  
  
He has no idea if it works like that or not.  
  
He draws away from him just a little, but doesn’t let go. He’s clinging to the fabric over Ryan’s shoulder. “Look at me,” he says again, because he wants to remember his eyes. Before they turn white, he wants to remember his eyes. He wipes Ryan’s cheeks with his thumbs. “It’s okay. Shh, shh.”  
  
~  
  
Ryan is relieved. Like Shane is all knowing. But he just takes it, because Shane said it. And he loves Shane. Trusts him. Ryan listens when Shane asks him to look. Teeth still chattering. It's so much like every other time. Except not. Except he's dying. Except instead of calm or exasperation or a thousand galaxies—there's just fear reflected back from Shane's gaze. Hurt.  
  
Ryan feels blindly around the blanket and grabs the rope, holds it between them."I..." Love you, he thinks, should say, but they get lost like all the other words. "I'm sorry." Because he remembers Finn. He knows how much this is going to suck for Shane. He would give anything to stop it. But he's got nothing just to give. His hands shake where he holds the rope.~  
  
“Don’t be sorry,” Shane says again, and he drops his eyes and takes the rope because if he doesn’t he’s going to start crying again, and it shudders through his chest as he breathes. “Let me just… here,” Shane says, and takes the hem of Ryan’s sweater and pulls it over his head because maybe at least the shirt beneath it is a little dryer. He sets it aside and takes both Ryan’s hands in his own, running his thumbs over his knuckles. “I… I’m sorry I couldn’t protect you.” The words shudder out.  
  
“I was going to kill him when— when he first had the gun on you.” Shane’s breath escapes him in these two sharp gasps. “I was just going to kill him with the pipe, I— I should have fucking— I’m so sorry, Ryan.” He has to do this right. He ducks his head and wipes his face against his raised knee. He’s still got both Ryan’s wrists. He can’t do this, but he has to do it.  
  
He shifts to kneel behind him, pulls Ryan’s hands together behind his back and wraps the rope around them, twists it so that they’re tied together, but he’s holding the ends. “Fuck,” Shane whispers, presses into him softly. It’s almost an embrace. “I can’t— I need you. I can’t do this, Ry.”  
  
~  
  
Shane's behind him. Fuck. Ryan keeps losing track, and Shane needs him right now. Needs everything he's got left. His voice tilts and shudders. "You can't just... hit people with pipes for no reason. C'mon. You're supposed to have evolved past pipe-guy." Wow, it takes so much of him to stay on task. To say the words, but he needs Shane to tie the rope and get away from him.

"He deserved... the chance, he was... good." He clenches his teeth. "You're good. You're so much better than good. You did protect me. You... you can do this. I..." Oh, fuck, this is hard. Every emotion clobbers him until he's disoriented. And there's too many. He's staring at this empty room in front of him and keeps having to remember Shane's behind him.

"You should go to... Disneyland." His sentences are getting choppier. "Jake... said he... hear-heard it... on the... the... that..." Damn it. "The loud thing, I'm..." He doesn't know if he'll be able to talk again if he stops. "You don't need me. You were fine. Before me. You were... safe. You'll be fine."

~  
  
Shane ties his wrists to the railings and pulls back, kneels down in front of him, frowning. “The loud thing, the radio?” he asks. “The radio told you to go to Disneyland?” he wants to laugh. He almost does, but it’s all fragments. He reaches out and tips Ryan’s face up to his again.  
  
 _Biting distance_ , his mind says.  
  
Shane holds his eyes as he takes a deep breath. “Ryan… okay. Yeah, I’ll go to Disneyland,” he lies. “I’ll be… yeah, I’ll be fine.” He’s crying— he thinks maybe he hasn’t stopped for a while now, the tears just slide down his face. He pulls away just enough to get the other blanket, the one Ryan’s not sitting on, and he pulls it around Ryan’s shoulders, wraps him up in it like he’s a little kid.  He holds the blanket close at Ryan’s collarbones and leans close to press his lips to Ryan’s cheek. “You know I…” presses his forehead against his temple. “I love you so much,” Shane whispers.  
  
~  
  
Ryan poured everything into that. It worked, maybe. At least Shane finished with the rope. It's ridiculous because he thinks it and immediately goes to touch him. But he can't. His wrists. He knows that. He knows. 

He tries to keep his gaze focused on Shane, but it keeps glazing. Staring at points. He adjusts against the rope. He doesn't like it. Everything is touching now so the pain, the burn, is louder. The rope dogs in with every breath. 

He probably didn't even tie it tight. Ryan thinks it, but he's not entirely sure who he is. He finds Shane again. He's talking. Ryan catches bits of it. Feels Shane's lips on his cheek. Wow, Shane is freezing. He whispers something. Something important, but Ryan can't make sense if it. He tries to grab onto him, but he can't. He can't move his hands. He panics, for a second, and fights with the rope until it bite into him.

S _top it. Stop, you have to be tied up right now._

Forever, actually. Forever as long as he understands it.

He's losing his mind. Holy shit. He's literally feeling himself lose it. He takes these gasping, awful breaths. 

He wants Shane so much. It's all he can think. That he wants Shane. But Shane has to get away from him. Ryan has to be alone. 

~  
  
“Ryan, don’t pull,” Shane says, running his hand down Ryan’s arm through the blanket. “Okay?” He pulls back to search his face, the panic in him expanding, faster, stronger.  
  
Where’s the pipe? Fuck, he left it downstairs. But what could he even do with it anyway? He can’t kill Ryan. He can’t kill the thing Ryan becomes. “Ryan…” The way he’s breathing fucking scares him.  
  
Ryan’s not seeing him and all Shane can think is _no, no, no._ He touches Ryan’s face, every muscle in his body screaming at him to get away. But everything that is _Shane_ just wants to get closer. “Are you— are you warmer?” Shane asks, his voice rough. Every time he lets go of the blanket, it falls open. Shane tries to fix it again.  
  
But he knows. This fever’s not going to break, and Ryan is going to go out soaked and sick and shivering, knowing he’s leaving Shane, and Shane thinks he would give anything to change it.  
  
~  
  
Ryan doesn't know if his eyes are open. Ryan doesn't know anything. He keeps having these flashes of uncertainty, where the fog breaks. But mostly he doesn't do anything but whimper, or work out these other, not quite inhuman sounds.

His hands twitch against the ropes a couple more times. He's shaking hard enough to pull. It's this weak slice of awareness pulling through him. So he pulls.

Eventually, finally, his eyes, something, falls on Shane. And he's there. And Ryan knows him. Maybe because of the way the blanket clings to the sweat on his should. Shane shouldn't be there. Ryan wants to push him back because he's pissed. Because he's scared. He yanks hard on the restraints, it hurts over the rest of the noise in him. Almost districts him.

"Go away." He bites it out. He tries to find his feet to maybe kick Shane away, but they're somewhere out in front of him and he doesn't know where. Instead he manages to knock himself back against the railing. Slamming against his arms.

Distance, he needs distance.

The movement, the way it cuts into his arm, jars him. His head dips, his whole body goes kind of limp, for a second. But only for a second. He pulls back awake, clinging to something, anything.

He needs to stay here. Stay until Shane is gone.

But he feels like he's drowning, only it's not water in his lungs. It's blood.  
  
 _I don't want to die._  
  
~  
  
That cuts into him, those words. It’s like Ryan’s reached out and struck him. But it’s _not_ Ryan, he tells himself, just like it wasn’t really his dad screaming at him in the car.

It doesn’t help.

 _It’s not Ryan_ , Shane thinks and he wants to scream, but then Ryan slams himself back into the railings and Shane gasps and reaches out. “Ry— don’t, don’t do that, you’ll hurt yourself.”

He doesn’t even know if Ryan can hear him, but he doesn’t think he can. Shane wipes the sides of his hands across his cheeks which feel raw by now, and reaches out to him again. Ryan jolts and Shane jerks back instinctively but he’s still... 

Human.

“Look at me,” Shane pleads for what feels like the hundredth time.

How the fuck is he supposed to lose those eyes? How is he supposed to just walk out of here after they go white?  
  
~  
  
Shane, Shane, Shane. Shane's still there. Why won't he go? Ryan screams through his teeth again. He needs him to go. He needs to tell him but he can't make words. He can't make anything. He can't breathe. He screams enough that he chokes, fights the rope until he feels blood on his hands.

Blood. Fuck. Shane. 

He looks at him, sees him clearly for one second. Ryan's whole face breaks into a sob. Because he doesn't know what to do. He doesn't know how to die.

There's too much in his head. It hurts. It's so hot. It's so hot. He has to stop this. It's just heat, just hurt. He stays it, as long as he can. Maybe minutes, an hour. He has no idea. But it eventually snaps. Rips. And he whispers, "Shane," like a plea. Like a warning.

And then it's just white.

His eyes roll back before his body slumps. For longer than before, and it wakes up harder too. But Ryan doesn't. 

His whole body seizes. It's unnatural. His head bent almost too far back against the bars. Arms sporadic in the ropes. His legs even spasm. 

His teeth cut deep into his tongue so blood seeps out the side of his mouth. Slow, then smeared as he keeps seizing.  
  
~  
  
The screaming is the worst. It tears Shane apart and he’s gasping, “Stop, stop,” but he doesn’t know where to touch him to make it better.  
  
Ryan says his name and fuck, it chills him, and Shane moves closer, but then something goes wrong. It’s the movement first. Sharp and unnatural. It’s wrong, like how the zombies are wrong and Shane flinches, pulls sharply backwards crying out in fear. He tumbles over himself, can’t quite stand before he’s falling back. He catches himself with his hands and pushes himself back, away from that movement purely on instinct, across the floor.  
  
He’s not looking at Ryan’s eyes now. He’s watching the way his body jerks in these awful unrhythmic spasms. The candle flickers as Shane freezes, wide-eyed.  
  
Ryan’s eyes are white. Shane should have kept his promise, but how? How could he kill Ryan?  
  
 _How could you leave him to turn into this?_  
  
Shane can’t take his eyes off him, frozen in terror, guilt flooding through him, anguish. Something hurts — jesus it hurts. He feels like _he’s_ the one dying.  
  
It goes on. It goes on and on and he realizes that this isn’t… this isn’t death. This is something else.  
  
“Oh no,” Shane breathes, barely words as he scrambles close again, “Jesus, no,” He catches hold of him. This is a seizure, and Ryan’s bleeding, there’s so much— there’s blood in his mouth again and Shane doesn’t know if he’s vomiting it up or if he’s hurt himself. Without thinking he grabs Ryan’s shoulders, and his hands slide up his neck to his cheeks, trying to still him, keep him from slamming his head back against the railings but he won’t go still, and Shane is saying his name over and over, like breathing, like this rhythm in his heart. He touches his mouth without thinking, and Ryan’s teeth slide over his fingertips, but it’s not sharp — it’s just the slick slide of bone against Shane’s skin.  
  
~  
  
Ryan doesn't stop. His body jerks, his neck, everything. Even in Shane's grip he moves until Shane's straining to hold him. It goes for too long. Until Ryan's manages to hit head on the railing, it's softer because Shane steadies him, but he does. He scrapes his tongue again, but it looks the same as before. Blood. A lot of it.

He chokes on it, or maybe it's just his lungs. But he chokes, and the blood is mixed with saliva and it comes out of his mouth slower for it. 

Eventually, it stops. He stops. His body goes still and limp like before he started. But he doesn't move again, doesn't breathe for a second, and when he does it's ragged like its a screw stripping up his throat.  
  
~  
  
Shane’s breathing hard and panicked enough that it might as well be for both of them. He’s wiping the blood — infected blood — away from Ryan’s mouth with his own fingers before he thinks to grab Ryan’s sweater and clear it away.  
  
His skin is still burning hot and Shane wants to just press close to him, get him to fucking sweat it out, get him something warm, dry, better than just a couple blankets on the floor.  
  
He lifts Ryan’s face up, but his head lolls, and Shane makes this soft, keening sound. “Ryan— come on.” It’s something he’s said a thousand times before. _Come on._  
  
Like either of them have any control of it now. He pulls him against his chest. Fuck it. If he turns against Shane that’s what happens. If he turns while Shane’s arms are around him, fucking— fine. The world can’t take anything that hurts worse than this. Shane presses close, one leg folded between them, the other up, bracing Ryan against his chest and his raised knee his boot planted on the floor. The blanket is messed up and wrinkled beneath them, and the other one has fallen from Ryan’s shoulders. Shane wraps himself around him, pulls the blanket back up over Ryan again and wraps his arms around his back.  
  
They slept like this, once. In the treehouse. The treehouse where Finn was before he got bit. Before he got home. Everything’s circling back in on itself. The rain pounds down on the roof of this forsaken place like it did on Shane’s cabin the first night they met.  
  
He wonders if he’s going to have to dig a grave like Jake’s and then realizes that if he’s bitten, if Ryan bites him, he won’t be doing much of anything.  
  
If Ryan… if Ryan bites him…  
  
Zombies take everything. They make you lose all autonomy. Shane won’t even know he’s missing Ryan then, and there’s something so… sickeningly, horribly _wrong_ about that.  
  
He holds him tighter and his eyes fall to the rope binding Ryan’s wrists to the railings.  
  
Fuck, he’s hurt himself. He’s pulled too hard and the rope’s tightened around his wrists. There’s bruises there, skin rubbed raw.  
  
~  
  
Ryan dreams, then. It's all incomprehensible. There's Shane with his pipe, swinging the pipe so it hits Ryan in the temple. Explodes through him. Then, there's Zack with the gun, shooting himself, then it's Jake. Jake's face blown to pieces. And, then, the worst one... it's him, but he doesn't shoot himself. He shoots Shane. And there's just fire, just so much of it, like his body is burning. Like he'll wake up with scorched skin. 

He jerks a few times against Shane. Because there's still pain, even unconscious—his body is fucking hurting. He is hurting. He's wandering through the woods again, but its ash falling around him. Not rain. And the zombie chasing him is his mother. And she keeps saying, "Shut the fuck up." Again and again and again. It's in her voice, then it's in Shane's, and he drops to grab his head.

_I'm not saying anything. I'm not talking. Please._

But it's just this awful, fevered shout. The harder he tries to block it out, the louder it gets. It's like it's inside his skull. 

He doesn't move much, against Shane, back where his body is still his own. He mutters. Words too soft to hear. Words without any meaning, without any discernible meaning. He just stays, unmoving, against Shane. Breathing tapering off until it's too shallow, so weak it's barely breathing at all. Heartbeat fading it near nothing.  
  
~  
  
Every time Ryan moves against him, Shane’s heart leaps into his throat. The candle drowns itself and they are left in darkness. And he doesn’t know what to do.  
  
He does the only thing that makes sense which, coincidentally, is the only thing that doesn’t. He reaches around him to untie his wrists from the railings, pulls back only enough to get Ryan’s arms between them. His hands are so fucking cold, circulation gone, and Shane braces Ryan as best he can, head tucked down against his as he rubs bloodflow back into his skin, being so so careful around the bruises, the damaged skin. But it takes too long. It takes forever, and he realizes how sluggishly Ryan’s heart is beating.  
  
And there is literally nothing Shane can do.  
  
The rope hangs between them. This fucking useless thing he’s carried with them all the way from Illinois, tangling and untangling, just to end here. Shane remembers pulling it tight against Ryan’s wrists once, in the cabin, before they started sharing a bed, and the way Ryan had looked at him them.  
  
And Shane thinks about how Ryan’s never going to look at him again. He re-wraps the rope around Ryan’s wrist, the right one, careful, gentler. He does it in the dark, blinking tears out of his eyes because they sting, but he’s too exhausted to keep crying. The tears just come.  
  
Shane pulls the rope free from Ryan’s left hand and wraps it around and around his own, effectively binding them together. Autonomy or not, there’s this. He feels like it beats the virus in some small way, but he knows it doesn’t really. This virus has beaten them again and again until finally it’s left them with this — violence and wreckage and he is too late.  
  
He’s too late this time.  
  
Shane takes a shaking breath, dropping his hands finally. His arms are so heavy, and he was holding up the weight of Ryan’s. He presses closer, wiping this mess of crying off his face, sniffling into his forearm. He gets his fingers between Ryan’s, but Ryan’s hands are limp and still cold.  
  
He starts whispering, telling him stories, anything he can remember from before all this. He speaks in this endless string of consciousness against his ear, just trying to hold him here as long as he can.  
  
He apologizes. He apologizes for _so_ many things. Jake. Zack. For throwing the Goldfish at him, for telling him to shut up, for falling asleep in the car. For all the times he’s slept and left Ryan alone. For this moment. For every heartache he couldn’t fix.  
  
Ryan’s Lakers hat is in the front pocket of Shane’s sweater. He can feel the bill of it pressing into his stomach, but he doesn’t pull away to remove it. Shane wants it that way. It keeps him awake. He won’t leave Ryan on this last night. He won’t. He won’t fall asleep… maybe Ryan will make it to morning.   
  
~

The dreams don't stop. Slowly, steadily. They fade. More transparent. More alone. It's bits of light, like holes in a cell wall. Bits of hope where Shane is there, bits of conversation he almost hears. But he clings to it, anyway. He doesn't think Shane's still there. He's pretty sure he wouldn't talk this much. It feels like he's talking a lot. Shane doesn't talk a lot. Ryan doesn't know much, but he knows that. Even in his dream. Nightmare. Fever.

He's still in the woods, but it's colder. Freezing like the night Jake died. He stumbles, everywhere, can't find any direction. He keeps calling Shane's name, even though distantly, he knows he shouldn't. He knows he's supposed to be away from Shane. But he keeps calling anyway. And the words, against Shane, form around it. Shane's name. Until it's obvious. 

Ryan just wants this to stop. He wants to stop being cold, stop hurting. His foot catches. Jake's grave. That's where he is. Jake's not there, though. It's just Ryan. And he pitches forward.

His body goes so still. Still enough that he isn't breathing. Stiller than it's been ever before. Still like death.

~  
  
He doesn’t though… he doesn’t make it.  
  
Shane so fucking desperately wanted him to. Ryan deserved sunlight. He deserved morning and life and better than this mess.   
  
The rain softens and eventually stops altogether.  
  
And Shane is aware of the moment his breath starts being the only breath in the room. He squeezes his eyes shut, presses his face into Ryan’s hair, and his voice, hoarse from whispering — even just from whispering — breaks as he starts crying again, different this time.  
  
Every hope he’s ever held onto, every fragment of it, this belief he’d started to cultivate that he was… enough… (and God, he’s tried so hard. He’s tried _so_ hard) it’s ripped out of him. He’d scream if he had the energy, instead his voice just cracks, breaks in his throat, squeezes tightly from his chest because he can’t get enough air either. He can’t breathe in. Somewhere, he’s aware that this is a panic attack.  
  
What is he supposed to do without him? Without his stupid fucking sports and his Kobe Bryant and his smile. What’s he supposed to do without Ryan’s persistent faith in others, his stupid bravery, the way he said Shane’s name? How does Shane live without this boy who he can’t sleep without? Who taught him what living felt like, in the middle of the apocalypse.  
  
Part of him thinks _Get up, end it before he turns_ , but he can’t breathe, he can’t stop crying. His chest feels like his ribs are knitting together, tighter and tighter and he presses his grief into Ryan’s skin but he can’t breathe him in anymore.  
  
He can’t breathe without Ryan.  
  
~  
  
Ryan's wrist hurts. There's Jake, somehow, warm and dry and fine. He doesn't look at him. He's just there, and Ryan needs to be where he is. Because he's Jake. And he's safe, and Ryan needs something to stop this hurt. He's so close. He's so close to being able to breathe again, to never having to breathe again.

 _Jake_.

Jake looks up and Ryan takes a step, not really a step, this crawling, gasping movement. But he stops, sudden and jarring. He stops and looks at his wrist. And it's there. This red rope. Tugging at him. He can't see the end of it. It's just the neverending rope. But it's not just Jake. There's still Shane. Somewhere. But Ryan can't see him. He's so far away, and Jake's so close. So easy. But Jesus, he wants to go back, back to Shane. He takes a step, collapses. He can't. He doesn't know how to get back there. He's completely broken. His bones feel shattered and scattered through his body. 

_I can't._

He remembers all these things about Shane. These little things he's said about Ryan. How he can't sleep without him. How much he feels. How angry he gets. How he makes anger so pretty. How Ryan wants to reach out and touch it, even if it hurts. Shane is so desperate, desperate for Ryan. Ryan has always thought he was so strong. He is. He is strong. He can survive this, if he just tries. He's not trying.

_Shane..._

Ryan is in so much pain. His knees, his wrist, his mouth. His body hurts like a cyclone unleashes inside of him. He can't keep pushing. He pushed for so long to protect Shane, from Ryan biting him, hurting him. He stares at the rope on his wrist, and it feels like it's painted in blood. In his, in Shane's.

_I can't._

But Shane has always been worth it. Been worth pain and hurt and loneliness. He's the only thing that's been worth it.

 _You can_ , and it's Shane's voice, because he said that. Because Shane's pushed through this. Not letting go of this stupid, impossible hope. And it's here, in front of Ryan, maybe. Maybe if he chooses this, fights this. He can give him what he needs. Just this once. He pulls against the rope and sinks his fingers into the side of the grave, it's muddy and awful. It's so hard. It's so, so hard. But it's Shane. Everything hurts. Every slow, pathetic beat of his heart tears him apart. But it's for Shane. That's the only reason it's beating, and he can't let it stop.

He needs Shane.

Shane needs him.

If he dies here, so does Shane. And he fucking refuses. He will not let this idiot die. He can't be the reason anyone else dies.

Especially Shane.

He pulls himself up, pressing into the rope, using it to get back over the edge. And it's still cold. Freezing. But it's not raining. And this blackout, far-off heat lets up. Just a little.

He takes this gasping, aching breath against Shane. His eyelids flutter, but he doesn't wake up. He just breathes, a little stronger, a little more even.

~  
  
It scares him. Like he doesn’t know where the noise is coming from. It seems to resonate inside Shane’s chest, too.  
  
For a moment, he thinks _this is it_. This is the moment where it’s too late even for Shane to stop Ryan from turning. God, he’s failed him in so many ways. His whole body jolts with this spike of adrenaline, this absolute fear because zombies are always scary, they’re always horrifying and wrong, and he wishes he could have died before he has to see Ryan like this.  
  
But then he realizes that they don’t breathe. Not really. They don’t breathe in and out like Ryan is against Shane’s chest.  
  
Shane’s terror breaks. He pulls in a breath like surfacing, pulls back to see him. His wrist tugs sharply against Ryan’s, and he’s still out, he’s so pale. He’s breathing though. He’s alive.  
  
Shane waits for this to be a dream. He waits for it to start only to be ripped away again.  
  
But it isn’t.  
  
“Ryan—” Shane struggles with his breathing, with where to put his hands. They’re still attached so he just touches his face— it’s cooler now. Not like… not like zombies are cold. Not like empty. It’s just cooler than it was. Like the fever’s breaking.  
  
Shane’s murmuring nonsense. “Good, yes, God, keep breathing.” He cries through it for a few moments. Until he’s sure it’s real, but even then he still isn’t. Not for a while. Ryan keeps breathing. His heart beats stronger. Shane presses him against his own chest to feel it, he keeps his free hand against the pulse in Ryan’s neck, thready at first, but getting stronger, or at least more regular, even though it’s a little too weak, too fast.  
  
He breathes with him. Every unsteady breath, Shane takes it with him. His lungs burn, but he does it. And at some point, as the light of dawn begins to filter in, both of their breathing has evened out, totally in sync, and he’s not sure which of them started it.  
  
He’s so tired, but he doesn’t sleep. He just huddles against Ryan, with his eyes on the light coming in through the windows slowly. He stays awake, but every so often he tucks his face into Ryan’s neck with his eyes closed and just feels Ryan’s heartbeats, listens to them; this earthbound pulse of living creatures.  
  
This heartbeat that doesn’t match the rhythm of his own, but fills it, somehow. It was never silence Shane craved, it was this.  
  
~  
  
Ryan stays like that for a long time. A pseudo-sleep, that doesn't quite let him rest. But it does. As the heat in the center of  him cools to normal, and the ache fades to lingering soreness and pain from the seizure, damage the fever's done, but not the fever itself. That lets him go, so the never-ending headache backs off. And Ryan doesn't dream. Not anymore. He just breathes, like that's all the energy he has. It is all the energy he has. And it's raw and hurting, but it's not impossible anymore. He can breathe.

Time passes in a way that doesn't really touch him. The light changes. Gets brighter so dawn breaks into day, and Ryan's still out. The light brushing his eyes is what does it--nudges him the step further so his eyes open, slow, trying to adjust to this new light, this new fucking universe. Consciousness filters back into him, and his heartbeat spikes. He's sick. He was sick. He's going to _turn_.

And Shane... jesus, Shane is against him. He goes to push him back, and his arm obeys him. He's sore, fuck, he's sore, but his arm follows his movement, and until it can't anymore. He jerks, glances down to his wrist and... 

"What the fuck?"

His voice is so hoarse. It tastes like blood. Like something's carved out his chest and left him with bloody pieces. It doesn't matter. He's fucking sick, and Shane. Fucking fuck, he can't even think it. He can't even let himself imagine what Shane wants to happen here. Ryan works at the knot and it falls away. 

"Are you fucking suicidal? Jesus Christ! Why would you...?" 

He's halfway up, still shoving at Shane, still pissed. His leg gives so he doesn't get far. He's tangled in Shane. His eyes widen and he shakes his head, between glaring and staring at Shane, incredulous. His face is stiff with salt from tears and sweat. "I'm sick! How do you not--" He gasps, hisses like he's been struck, because his tongue is… he reaches for his mouth. There's dried blood. Damn, it hurts. 

He blinks. Too many times. Because he's talking, and the words are there, and his head's not pounding. Dully aching, maybe, but he's not chilled. He's not chilled at all.

That wrongness that has followed him since Zack died, getting bigger and bigger isn't there. It's not there. But that's not possible. He's seen Jake die. He's seen Zack blow his head off. His mom, his dad... they all died. No one stops being sick. That's not how this virus works.

Shane seems okay. There's blood on his hands, and there's some in Ryan's mouth. But, no. He doesn't think he attacked him. He's pretty sure he didn't. He might, in the next few minutes for this obscene display of idiocy. Throttle the fuck out of him. But he's having a hard time being properly angry. Because he's... he doesn't feel sick. His eyes move all around the room like he's waiting to see his dead body on the ground. It's not there. This is his body. The same one with the gash across the neck from the tree and the bruised wrists and the shittiest fucking leg.

"What'd you do?" He keeps some of the anger in his voice, kinda, like Shane has magicked him better and Ryan is going to be very angry with him about it. But most of it is just exhaustion. Because he's been out, but he's still so tired. Every muscle in his body feels whittled down to threads. “What'd I do?”  
  
 _Did I hurt you?_

He gets away from Shane. Maybe it's some kind of last minute thing. Maybe you feel okay right before… he stumbles back and collapses again. But he stays up enough to keep his eyes on Shane, wide and wild. Breathing like he's afraid of him. But he's not. He's afraid for him. But it's… nothing is happening.  
  
He can't let himself believe this. As soon as he does, it's going to break. As soon as he looks away from Shane, it's going to break. He's quivery again, but it's not chills. Still weakness, maybe. And disbelief.  
  
~  
  
Oh, God, there’s a lot of movement all at once. He wasn’t sleeping, but the push startles him, and then he’s just looking at Ryan with wide eyes, pulling himself tense tense tense.  
  
Ryan says _What the fuck_ , and Shane’s breath escapes him fast and heavy.  
  
“Hey—” he begins, but then Ryan is working at the knot. Shane had half-forgotten it and he raises his free hand to help, but Ryan’s… there’s something radiating off of him now that isn’t heat, isn’t frightening. He’s _furious_ , but it’s not… there’s no violence. It’s just Ryan. All Ryan.  
  
“I,” Shane starts, and Ryan pushes him again, stumbling to his feet like a newborn calf or something. It takes forever. He knees Shane in the thigh and oh fuck, he’s starting to realize how much the floor was a terrible idea.  
  
Ryan’s halfway up, then down again, and Shane reaches out to steady him but stops because it honestly looks like Ryan’s two seconds away from ripping Shane’s head off with his own two hands. “Okay,” Shane says like _whoa man_. He’s leaning back on his hand in case Ryan pushes him again, but he raises them both slowly. His lower back screams at him about the floor, about sitting all night but he barely notices because he’s starting to smile this wide, disbelieving smile. His eyes are exhausted and dark, and part of him is just as confused as Ryan. He doesn’t have answers to these questions, and his mind clicks through some in the back of his head. It wasn’t fully infected blood, he didn’t get bitten or scratched, he’s fucking magical, Shane doesn’t know, and Ryan’s pulling himself back and back and Shane’s half scared he’s going to bolt and fall down the stairs and break his neck or something, so he pulls himself forward a little, onto his knees.  
  
He’s looking at him like he’s the only thing in the room, the only thing in the world. Ryan’s eyes are dark and fixed on him and he looks five seconds from bursting into tears.  
  
Shane bursts out laughing. Relief leaks into it. His hands are covered in Ryan’s blood, and he doesn’t know where to put them. He’s been afraid to touch his face, so he just presses his arm against his forehead, skin cool against it, heated from the crying, the lack of sleep, this deep exhaustion. All of that takes a back seat. “I don’t know—” he manages, and his voice is so hoarse from all of it. He looks at Ryan again. “I— look at you. What _did_ you do?”  
  
He’s alive, and Shane’s crying a little, too, but not like last night. It undercuts his laughter in these sharp little breaks of breath, but it’s not hopeless anymore.  
  
He’s alive. He’s alive and his eyes are on Shane’s and he’s seeing him.  
  
~  
   
Ryan twitches. Because it seems like Shane is laughing. He can’t imagine why he would be laughing, but he is. It’s not a full laugh. He’s… Ryan doesn’t know what he’s doing. He’s not doing what he’s supposed to be doing. Ryan can’t quite bring this all together. He’s got to still be sick. He has to be. He feels like absolute shit. His back hurts… every muscle in his body is throbbing.  
   
Shane touches his face, and it’s Ryan’s blood. It must be Ryan’s blood on his hand. He doesn’t know where it came from, but Shane’s not bleeding. There’s nothing on him. “Stop! Don’t touch your face!” He tries to get up, like he can undo the way Shane touched his face, but he teeters and can’t work it out. He cannot let himself believe this. He cannot let himself start wanting to crawl back over to Shane because it can’t be real. “Why are you _laughing_?” He doesn’t have enough voice to shout, but he tries—half the sentence is silent. “Why are you—why did you tie yourself to me, you…?” He grabs a fistful of his hair, yanks a little to try and orient himself in something. Like there isn’t enough pain crackling through him. Tears well in his eyes and he doesn’t know what to do. He doesn’t know what to think or do. He doesn’t want to move or breathe or think because he’s going to lose this. He’s going to step wrong and screw this up like everything else before it.  
   
“I don’t understand. I don’t—what is…” He might faint, which would just be absurd, given he’s pretty sure he’s been some kind of unconscious for several hours. He remembers almost nothing. He asked Shane to tie him the rails, and the blankets, but… He looks at Shane, so hopelessly lost, half scared he’s going to kill him, half scared he isn’t. “What?”  
  
~  
  
He’s sure that part of this is because of stress and exhaustion. He can’t quite stop laughing which is great. Better than the expanding bubble of relief and overwhelm in his chest that keeps these fucking tears coming. He tries to steady his breathing, collects himself a little.

“The fever broke,” Shane says. Swallows because his throat is dry. There’s tears on his face and Ryan told him not to wipe it so he doesn’t. He looks down for a second, then back up. “Ryan—” his breath shakes softly, he laughs once, helpless, breathless. “You’re not sick.”  
  
~  
   
Ryan stares at him. He’s trying to hold everything together. Shane says what he’s thinking, but… it’s too much. It’s bizarre. There is no way his fever broke. No one’s has broken. “Stop! You don’t—you don’t know that. You don’t know… what’s…” He looks around, frantic. “It doesn’t make sense. Why would—it’s never, that’s not supposed to happen. That’s…”  
   
He wants to pull his knees to his chest. Drop his head between them, but everything hurts too much for him to move. So he just stays where he is, trying to get his head around this. The happiness, the relief, that’s starting to well versus the guilt and pain and uncertainty. It’s as disorienting as the fucking virus.  
   
“Why didn’t it break for Jake?”  
   
He asks it, and doesn’t mean to ask it to Shane. But he’s the only one there. He’s there and Ryan can’t stop circling back to him. He wants to crawl over to him, but he still doesn’t trust it. Ryan knows, on some level, it was different with him. He wasn’t bitten. Zack wasn’t… but he still doesn’t trust it. He can’t.  
  
~  
  
Shane takes a breath and there's this silence between them, this beat, and then he says what Ryan’s thinking. “I don’t know. Jake was bitten... c’mere, hey—” his breath catches as he moves a little closer, reaches out and touches Ryan’s shoulder, wondering if he’s going to be allowed this touch. “You’re okay, Ry,” Shane says, steady and soft, his eyes catching almost golden in the light. “I promise. Just— it’s okay. You’re okay.”  
  
 _God_ , Shane thinks, _I almost lost you._  
  
~  
   
Ryan starts when Shane touches him. He almost pushes him away, but there’s still this… lingering exhaustion in him. It’s both better and worse, worse because it’s all there is now. There’s no ache, no impending death—no impending death. Fucking hell. He stares at Shane, at his hand, up his arm until he’s locked on his eyes. He looks like something out of a fairy tale—Shane has always looked otherworldly, ethereal, maybe, but it’s different now. It’s so much bigger, there’s this light cast around him. This need pouring into the air because Ryan thoguth he’d never look at him like this again, without the fog of fever and fear.  
   
“Sha…” he starts but doesn’t finish.  
   
Ryan breathes these weak, uneasy sobs. Trying to come to terms with it. What it means. He thought he was dying, and now he’s… he’s not. There’s Shane, and… and it’s okay. Maybe. It’s okay if Shane touches him now.  
   
Ryan crawls, barely less weak and stiff than he was last night until his face presses against Shane’s shoulder. His shoulders shudder with another gasp, another sob. He gets a fistful of Shane’s sweater, still pressed against him. It’s thick with unshed water, bloated. “I’m so… mad at you.” He wheezes, words glittering with tears. “I’m so… so mad… at you.”  
   
Shane tied himself to Ryan. What did he want to happen? Was he going to just give up? He can’t think too hard about it, not yet, not when he’s been given this thing—this second chance, that he doesn’t know what to do with. But he wants Shane. He wants Shane to fucking hold him. And that’s okay now.  
   
That’s _okay_.  
  
~  
  
“Good,” Shane says, getting his arms around him, careful at first, like he’ll break, then tighter, more desperate, like he can’t fathom letting go again.

“I don’t care,” he whispers into Ryan’s hair. “Be mad, whatever.” He’s egging him on a little but it’s so soft somehow. He clings to him. He thinks that he’s fucking mad, too. That Ryan left. That he _left_ Shane there, And what if Shane hadn’t found him? He would have died. He fought the virus off and Shane doesn’t know how or why or what that means but he thinks Ryan would have died anyway if he hasn’t found him.

Something else would have. Or the rain, or not getting warm. “Jesus,” Shane says, voice harder. He presses the word into Ryan’s neck and thinks the words he said last night, wants to say them, but it’s way too much right now, for both of them.

He doesn’t know if Ryan heard him.

He wonders why the hell he’s still waiting. “Come on,” Shane says, pulling Ryan down with him, to lie down the blanket, keeping him close, “Please don’t leave me again, I… I need you, I thought—”  
  
He’s going to make this worse. He presses his mouth into Ryan hair and kisses him, hard. He wants to kiss his mouth, but there is still blood in it, and is he ever going to be able to stop crying? He sniffles against Ryan’s shoulder, huddling down closer, tighter, fingers fisted in his shirt.  
  
~  
   
Ryan freaks out as Shane pulls him down. Everything is freaking him out. He wants to stay mad at Shane, but it’s draining out of him. Because Shane’s holding him, and that’s all Ryan cares about. It’s all he’s wanted. He hooks his arms around Shane’s shoulders and buries his face in him. He has blood all over him—blood he’s worried might have gotten on Shane. Blood that could still be infected, partially infected.  
   
Shane kisses his hair. There’s so much desperation in him. God, Ryan can’t be that mad. If Shane had done the smart thing—Ryan would’ve died. He doesn’t even know what would have happened. But, if nothing else, one of those zombies in the woods would have made sure he was infected.  
   
“I didn’t mean to,” he says—he’s definitely losing his voice. He feels bad even promising anything. He sees how bad he hurt Shane, but he thought he was dangerous. He was dangerous. “I should’ve died—I…” His voice keeps cracking, breaking, and he gasps because he’s still crying. They both are. They need to stop. But Ryan has no idea how to even begin to go back to normal.  
   
“Did you tie yourself to me before you knew I wasn’t sick?” He gets his hands around to Shane’s jaw so he can pull his face down, so he can meet his eyes. “Please tell me you didn’t do that. Please tell me you weren’t just gonna let me kill you.” His hands and mouth quiver because he knows the answer. But he searches Shane’s face anyway, reaching, like he’s going to do anything if Shane tells him the truth. Tells him he was going to just give up.  
   
Like he’s going to do anything but hug him again.  
  
~  
  
Shane takes a long breath but holds his eyes, wondering how the hell to admit his. Because he knows it’s not the answer Ryan wants to hear. And Ryan’s still saying he should have died, and Shane doesn’t know how he means it. “I c— I couldn’t—“ Shane begins, listening to his own hoarse voice crack. It’s the wrong thing to say. He couldn’t do so many things. Lose Ryan again. Keep living. Leave him alone even as one of those things. Ryan doesn’t want to be alone. Ryan left, but it wasn’t because he wanted to be without Shane. He gets that. He knows this goes against everything Ryan would have wanted. “I’m sorry,” Shane says, and he’s dropped his eyes because fuck, he’s been so selfish. It’s so bad. “I’m, I couldn’t just leave. I wanted to make sure I had you, even—”  
  
~  
  
Ryan takes this angry breath, lets it out and then pulls Shane back down, himself up so his head falls against Shane's neck. He doesn't know what to do or say it think. He gets it, fuck, he does. But he can't tell him it's acceptable, can he? It could happen again.

But Shane looks as worn as he does. He's as scared as Ryan was, maybe worse. Ryan can't make him fight anymore.

"You're an idiot," he says against his neck. "But it's... it's okay." He can bring it up again later, try and convince him to stay alive. Or Ryan could just not die.

"I guess I got an extra life for putting up with you. Lucky you." His voice fucks up again and kinda ruins the joke but he half smiles against Shane's neck anyway.  
  
~  
  
Something about that... the way he says it. Shane pulls back enough to see him, catches his eyes and gets hold of his jaw to keep him there. “You deserve this. You’re so good, Ryan.” This is something that’s been cutting away at him since last night. Since Ryan said that Shane and Zack were good, like he excluded from that definition. “You’re... so—“ how does he even begin to explain? “You’re the best person I’ve— you’re alive because you fought. You fucking idiot, you’re here because you deserve to be. You’re supposed to be, even if I... you make everyone better. It’s not just about me. Stop punishing yourself for whatever you think it is you’ve done, because I _see_ it. I _hate_ it. Fuck. _Ryan_. Why do you think I—?”  
  
~  
  
Ryan scoffs and tries to look away. He's crying so this shouldn't feel like too much, but it is. He thinks about telling him, why he feels this way, what's he did. But Shane looks so broken. He can't. Not now.

"I'm... I'm not punishing myself. I wasn't sick thinking, oh great, my come uppance has finally arrived, you weirdo."

It's evasive. Shane is going to know it's evasive. Ryan tries to find something to give to make it less obvious. Because it warms something in him, he flocks to the words like a flower starved for sun.

"Thank you, though. I... would be so dead if you hadn't decided to play Tragic Hero in the woods."  
  
~  
  
“Shut up,” Shane says, with such seriousness, it’s nowhere near a joke. “Don’t fucking ever do that again.” He’s searching his eyes. “I mean you were— you were half out of it half the night, you have no fucking idea how that was for me.”  
  
 _Selfish, selfish, selfish_ , this little voice in his head says. He ignores it. “I can’t do this without you, man,” Shane says, voice tight, hurt. He’s fighting back something and he doesn’t quite look at Ryan as he says it, because of how true it is. “I would have followed you wherever, that was my best option. He pulls away to sit up, grab the rope and toss it between them. One hand is still clinging to Ryan’s shirt like he’s forgotten it’s there. “That’s my— that’s the game plan.” He holds his eyes for a second, breathing unevenly, but at least he’s not crying right now. He just looks at him, and then says “Is that too much for _you_?”  
  
It’s definitely a challenge, but it’s an admission, too. Because that’s part of it. Being too much. That’s at least one half of this thing between them. Ryan is too much and Shane is not enough, but somewhere in there, Shane thinks, they’ve switched places. And he _needs_ Ryan to know, to put those pieces together, that that’s how much he cares. That’s how much he…  
  
~  
  
Ryan's eyes go wide. Guilt crushes against him. He did run when he said he wouldn't. He did let Zack get infected. He promised Shane to do better. He's just done worse.

"No, no, of course not. Of course it's not." It's never been this way, for Ryan, someone throwing this to him before he can. And it's Shane. The last person he ever imagined would do it. The first person Ryan thinks he's ever loved. Really, truly loved.

"I just wanted you to make it. I... I feel like I've fucked up and gotten so many people hurt, I didn't..." He sucks in a breath. His tongue is still hurting. What did he do to it? "But I did. I should've talked to you or... or something. But I couldn't have killed you either. You have to know that. If you want to..." He picks up the rope and winds it around his palm. His wrists are too fucked. Fuck, he means it. He wants Shane to live, but not if he's miserable. Like Ryan would be without him. "If this is what you want, you've got it. Because I'm not doing this without you either.”  
  
~  
  
Something eases, just a little, and Shane’s whole posture softens, his shoulders falling unevenly out of this horrible tension and he takes a soft breath. He watches Ryan’s face, watches him wind the rope around his palm. He tries to think of something to say, but the only thing left is the last thing… the thing he should have said forever ago, and they’re both so hurt and tired right now, they’re both so sorry and so— it’s a lot. All of this is a lot.  
  
So Shane swallows the words down again, and reaches out for a bit of the rope, twists it once around his wrist and gently tugs Ryan’s hand closer before he takes it, presses the red fibres between them, holding his hand far harder than the rest of this movement, because he lets go of Ryan’s shirt to touch his jaw again, and holds him there as he very very carefully brushes his lips over Ryan’s. All the blood there has dried, or Shane’s cleaned it up, and it’s just for a second.  
  
He’s not scared anymore. It’s not infected blood. _He’s_ not infected. And Shane’s going to kiss him if he fucking well wants to.  
  
He pulls back. “That’s what I want,” he says, softly, then looks up.  
  
~  
  
Ryan closes his eyes. They stay closed for too long because holy fuck, he never thought he'd get this again. It's so soft. So impossibly soft. It gushes through him like a fresh flow of blood. A new life. He's paralyzed, for a moment, completely enamored.

It's still dangerous. He has to stay himself from panic.

But he manages. He smiles and shakes his head. He runs his hands down Shane's face and leans forward to kiss him on the cheek. "Me too, but let's see how delayed gratification works for us." He tugs Shane back to the blankets, playful, almost teasing. "Come here. I'm tired."  He plays at a kid, just for that bit. "You'll still be able to kiss me in a few hours. Minus the blood."

Because he will. Jesus, he will.  
  
~  
  
Shane follows him down. It hurts, but he’s sure it’s nothing compared to what Ryan feels. He curls around him and holds on, gets his fingers in Ryan’s shirt again, clutching before he spreads his palm over Ryan’s heart.

It’s a struggle, but he waits until Ryan falls asleep. It doesn’t take long, this time, and as soon as he does, Shane’s under.

His dreams are a mess. Finding and losing Ryan. Finding him again. They don’t make a lot of sense, and they don’t shake him out of his sleep. Because Ryan’s right next to him, and Shane’s hand eventually slips from his chest, but he can feel his warmth, feel him breathing. 

He’s tucked into him, around him so close that even his damp clothes don’t make him cold. They sleep for a long time. So long that it’s almost sunset when Shane finally opens his eyes. 

His face is tucked into Ryan’s shoulder, and he doesn’t pull away, just breathes, carefully twists until the vertebrae in his spine pops. He focuses on Ryan’s breath. His throat is sore but it’s because he was speaking for so long last night, because he was crying. He imagines Ryan’s worse. They need water, food.

He left everything at the car.  
  
~  
  
Ryan doesn't dream. There's nothing. His brain has given everything it has, do it's all black. He wakes a little after Shane, panics until he feels him. Feels the normalcy of it.

And then everything else. Fuck. His breath scrapes his throat, his body throbs. Everywhere. He's thirsty, hungry. Starving potentially. His stomach might be eating itself. And then there's the bruises, the places where last night left damage that didn't disappear with a virus.

Shane's awake. He feels it more than sees it. Ryan tries to stretch, does, a little. He groans, softly. It tears through him, cuts into his tongue. He needs to wash his mouth, eat, but all he wants to do is stay curled around Shane.

"Shane?" He has to coax his voice. It's just scratchy nothing the first few tries.  
  
~  
  
He hums something, an affirmative. _I’m here, I’m listening_. He doesn’t pull away. Ryan doesn’t sound great, but he’s not feverish. It’s just that his voice is raw.

Shane doesn’t pull away. “Water?” he suggests into Ryan’s neck. He’s desperate for some, despite the rain. He wonders what’s here in this place. He didn’t check last night.

Last night... He sighs and pulls Ryan tighter against him, arm around his back. “You okay if I look?” he asks after a moment.  
  
~  
  
A jolt of relief runs through him when Shane responds, like the terror was waiting to catch him by the throat if Shane didn't respond, took too long. Ryan doesn't want him to leave. He's still jarred, panicked like he's going to succumb to fever again and be back in that hellish fucking fog. He doesn't want to move. That, or he can't.

He tries to pinpoint where he's hurting. To try to work himself into using... anything that isn't. His shoulders and arms throb more than anything else. He can't really look, but maybe bruises. His legs hurt more distantly. And then there's his wrist and mouth--shallow, stinging kind of hurts. And his chest feels like someone's hollowed it out with a fucking pickaxe and then worked their way up his throat.

So that was a waste of time. Everything is fucked. But he should be able to walk, help Shane look for food or water, get back to the car if nothing's here. It'll fucking hurt, but he'll make it work. Shane's already had to do too much without him. He still hasn't looked around where they are, only has a vague idea of it. It can't have beds. He's confident Shane, in his infinite ridiculousness, would've found it and put Ryan on it last night if there was one.

He lets go of Shane, slides his hands down so their only loosely against Shane's waist. He can't pull back because Shane's still wrapped around him. But he lets go to show him he's not going to combust if they get up. It backfires because holy shit, it feels like he's going to. Was he feverish last night or in a goddamn avalanche?

"Mhm. I can help look." Jesus, his throat is scratchy. "Dying of thirst after that would be..." His voice is bad. He probably shouldn't make jokes with it. "A waste." Instead of being smart about, he tries to push it back into a more normal register by using it again (it doesn't work): "Do you feel okay? I feel like I remember you crashing into something last night..."

He does, and he also knows his blood is on Shane's hands, and Shane kissed him, while he was sick. And even if it didn't turn Ryan, that doesn't mean it won't turn Shane—even if it doesn't, he can't watch Shane go through that. He can't.

~  
  
Shane’s been thinking it. Of course, of _course_ he has, with that soft underlying terror that hasn’t come up until now — now that Ryan is safe. And so what if Shane _is_ infected?  
  
But the way he sees it, the thing he keeps telling himself, is that Ryan was even further from turning than Zack at that point, and it wasn’t blood, and the only thing wrong with him is exhaustion and hunger and thirst, and his sore throat. He has no other symptoms. He might _get_ some symptoms if he doesn’t do something about this wet clothes situation, because parts of his pants and sweater are still wet.  
  
Ryan’s asked him something and Shane’s been quiet too long. “Yeah,” he says, quickly. “Yeah, I... walked into a fucking coffee table, _twice_.” He tries to make it a joke. Jesus, he really doesn’t want to get up. But they have to. This is only going to get worse, the longer they wait.  
  
He groans softly, half-frustrated, against Ryan’s skin, just before the collar of his shirt begins, then pushes himself up to almost-sitting. His heart’s beating really fast. Definitely dehydrated. He searches for Ryan’s eyes.  
  
He sort of can’t really believe that he’s still here. It takes everything in him not to just bed down against Ryan again, pull him tight against his own chest. But there’s still blood on Shane’s hands and on Ryan’s neck. There are little cuts and scratches all over their faces from trees and who knows what else. God _damn_ it, he wishes he hadn’t left the first aid kits at the car.  
  
He winces slightly, thinking about that, then pushes himself all the way up to sitting. Okay. Progress.  
  
~  
  
Ryan pulls himself up. Things are pushing into him now. Shane's declaration earlier, that if Ryan does—he will too. That Ryan is still alive and Jake isn't. It's so much to process.

Shane seems okay, but fuck. What if Ryan infected him? All this anxiety is coming back, crashing past the shock and relief of not being dead. Ryan pushes himself up and it's hard. It's so impossibly hard. He's never felt weakness like this. Never close.

He rubs absently at his wrists. There's a little dried blood there. The sting pulls him away from the rest of it. 

"Damn, dude, be careful," Ryan says as though Shane hasn't already done the damage.

"What is this?  Like, a camp office or something? Maybe they have  protein bars  or something." He tries to stand but comes back down pretty fast. He just wants to move before this panic and guilt and uncertainty can catch up to him but he can't move fast enough.

He drops his head into his hands because it's spinning, a little, like he's gotten up too fast. He did not. He got up so slow. How is he still tired?

What if he infected Shane?

~  
  
“Okay,” Shane says, half-laughing to mask this freakout he’s starting to have internally. He touches Ryan’s hair, tries not to linger too long because he’s already fighting with himself to get up, and being close to Ryan’s making it ten times harder. He touches his wrist very softly, frowning at the bruises. Stupid. He shouldn’t have tied him up. He shouldn’t have listened.   
  
“You sit. This place is small, you’ll still be able to hear me down there.” He stands up. “Look, you can see half the place through the— the railings there.”  
  
Jesus, he’s unsteady. He needs to eat. He sways a little, takes a breath. Yeah, okay, he’s got this.  
  
~  
  
Ryan is fucking losing it. It's worse than when he thought he was sick. Everything Shane does is scaring him. He's swaying. Unsteady. 

Ryan pushes himself up, grabs onto the railing to stay that way. His vision blacks out and swims back in slowly. "You don't have to do everything. It's fine. I'm good."

 _Please don't be sick. Please, please, please don't._  
  
~  
  
Shane looks at him, trying to figure this out. If this is guilt or fear or something else. In any case, they’re going to waste time fighting about it so Shane sighs softly, and reaches out for him. “Okay,” he says.

Maybe he’s going too easy. Maybe that’s a testament to last night and everything he wasn’t prepared to lose and thought he lost anyway. Now they’ve been given a second chance. Or a hundredth chance. This world is so dangerous...he knew it before but he’s had a taste of it, now.

Shane slides his hands over Ryan’s waist, gets him closer, away from the railing, and braces him. He had to focus on it, keeping them both steady, but he manages. “You ready for stairs?”

 _It’s another chance_ , he thinks, and _I’m_ not _sick. We’re fine._

~  
   
Ryan glances down at Shane’s hands on his waist. He’s glad Shane’s not fighting him, but mostly he’s nervous. He’s so fucking tired of being nervous—and now it’s worse. It’s the first time he thinks it: he can’t do this without Shane. He’s known it, even told Shane earlier, but it hits him now. And he gets it, why it was so hard for Shane to keep that promise. Ryan would’ve waited until the last second too.  
   
But fuck, he doesn’t want to have to.  
   
He glances over at the stairs. He’d forgotten them, despite being overlooking the first floor. He’d managed to block them out of his memory. He takes an uneven breath and stares up at Shane, hands braced against his shoulders.  
   
“Worry about yourself, sir. I’ve got this.” He wants to step away from Shane to make his point, but instead he just rebalances them so he’s mostly supporting himself. It’s hard, but he’s going to do this through sheer force of will. It’s something to think about—other than Shane, other than Shane being sick because of him.  
  
~  
  
He smiles at that, then looks away. This is going to be fucking awful. 

“I think we’re regressing,” he says, “we’re getting worse at the apocalypse.”

He clears his throat, because it hurts, falls silent as they somehow make their way to the stairs and start that awful task. He’s worried about Ryan’s leg. He goes first in case he falls, clutching the railing, hanging on tight to Ryan’s arm with the other hand. 

He looks up at him. It’s weird to look up. “If you fall we’re both going to die, so. Don’t.”  
  
~  
   
Ryan glances back at the blankets. It’s probably safer if they stay up here, so he leaves them.  
   
“No pressure.”  
   
He doesn’t shake Shane off because he’s pretty sure he’s holding on for his balance as much as he is Ryan’s. It’s not easy. But his leg isn’t any worse than it’s been—just the weakness pulses through it harder. It shakes, mostly through his knee, but it doesn’t give. He’s not going to let it because a fall down the stairs would absolutely kill them both.  
   
Ryan clings to the railing. It’s a weakness that he doesn’t love. He doesn’t love a lot of this—that he can’t just, operate his body normally. He’s spent so much of this apocalypse being unable to do what he needs to. Now he’s trying to lose his voice. He keeps his eyes on Shane. If Shane falls, he’s going to catch him. Grab him, find some way to keep them both upright.  
   
If Shane falls…  
   
Stop. Relax. Breathe.  
   
They get most of the way to the bottom, but the silence is killing him. It’s pressing into him and whispering, biting. Shane could be sick. Shane could be sick. Shane could be—Ryan speaks again, “This is so embarrassing. I feel like I’m eighty-freaking-five. Which might be normal for your ancient tree soul, but not mine. My soul is like fourteen and it hates this.”  
  
~  
  
“What are you talking about?” Shane laughs, “I’m not even that much older than you. And anyway,” he slips slightly and catches his breath in this sharp way that makes him cough. “Jesus,” he’s got this death grip on Ryan’s arm that must hurt and he loosens his fingers, heart slamming against his ribs.   
  
“We need to fuckin’ chill,” he says when he’s caught his breath. He looks up again. Up at Ryan. “I’m the only one here to witness you being embarrassing, anyway, so.”  
  
~  
  
"Be careful." It's kinda sharp. But it's mostly masked by the way his voice scratches.

His arm goes tense enough to crack along the bruise on his shoulder as he braces to support Shane.

He schools his face into something neutral. He's trying not to notice everything Shane does, the cough, the breathing. He grips the railing so tight his knuckles go pale.

It's fine. Everything's fine.

"You act like an old man. I'm pretty sure your soul is older than Gandalf." He's leaning so hard, harder than usual, on this, on joking, because the alternative is panic. It's weird having Shane below him.  
  
~  
  
“If I’m Gandalf you’re a hobbit. So come on Samwise Gamgee, you’re giving me a crick.” There’s only three steps left. Shane steels himself and starts down again.

He’s not sore, but he’s unsteady. He needs to eat or he’s going to pass out or something and probably give Ryan a heart attack, and then where will they be? 

“Yay,” he says as he reaches the bottom. He says it completely deadpan.  
  
~  
  
Ryan doesn't understand why he can't at least be Bilbo or Frodo or a main character. He doesn't push it, mainly because terror is making it hard to talk. Also his throat.

Shane makes it to the bottom and Ryan laughs this mostly silent laugh because it gets caught behind the shit the fever left behind. 

Ryan stutters over one of the last steps when his knee buckles, but he uses the rail to work it out. He glances up, up again, at Shane once they're both on the ground.

"We might have to go back up for the blankets if we're staying here. In case you were feeling overly triumphant."  
  
~  
  
“It’s safer upstairs,” Shane says, doubtfully. “We’ll just… we’ll… we could make… a pulley system. Hey, that actually sounds cool.”  
  
Now that they’re downstairs, he looks around. To the right is the room he brought Ryan into yesterday. The coffee table in the waiting-room type place is all askew from where he ran into it, and there’s still a dampish breeze blowing in through the broken glass by the door. They’ll have to fix that if they’re planning on staying here.  
  
Shane make sure Ryan is steady, then goes to the door and locks it. It’s a stupid precaution because it’s easy enough for any human to get in. He picks up the pipe and goes back to Ryan. Jesus, he didn’t even check this place for zombies last night. But it’s so quiet, he doubts there’s any here. He hopes. He hands the pipe to Ryan to use as a crutch, but he says “Here, you back me up. Jesus, you look like you’re about to black out.”  
  
He goes back into the office, trying not to look at the bench… jesus, all these places he thought he was going to lose him. The candle he lit on the desk has gone out. It’s a mess. Everything’s where he dropped it. Drawers are still open, there’s pens scattered everywhere. The letter opener is on the floor beside the bench. It must have fallen out of his pocket. Shane picks it up, fingers sliding over the front pocket of his sweater. He wants dry clothes _so_ badly. He wants to be warm.  
  
There’s a locked door behind the desk and Shane turns the handle but it’s locked. There has to be a key here somewhere.  
  
~  
  
Ryan takes the pipe, stares at it. He wishes he'd brought the hammer. Shane needs as many good things as he can get right now. Ryan just wants him to be stable, okay, not stumbling over his steps.

"Back you up? Against what? Pens? I don't need your pipe, I'm fine..." But he doesn't make the movement to return it. Not yet. Because he potentially might black out and fuck if he's giving Shane that satisfaction (or panic)...

The place looks like Shane half intentionally trashed it. Ryan remembers none of this. He barely remembers the bite of the gun against his temple. But guilt crushes into him anyway. Shane was terrified, so terrified he did... all this. Ryan tugs at his sleeve. They're thick, wet with rain and dried with salt. It scratches and makes him aware of how awful it is. How cold.

This is why Mom always told him not to fidget probably. It makes things worse.

Shane tries a locked door and Ryan walks over to it. It reminds him of the closet, the apartment. This unopened place no one thought about. He flinches inwardly and moves toward a filing cabinet behind the desk. Looking.

There's a hook stuck to the side with a set of keys. He assumes they go to the front door, maybe the cabinets, and the door Shane's at. He pulls the chain off the hook and turns back to Shane. Fast, so his vision purples.

"Maybe this opens it." He's still not using the pipe like he should be. He walks back to Shane and hands the pipe back. "Here, let me open it and you... back me up."

He gives this closed mouth smile that way too pleased with himself.  
  
~  
  
“Well. Aren’t you a clever little guy,” Shane says, because Ryan looks far too smug. “Should we knock first? Warn the zombie Boy Scout that’s inevitably gonna be in there that we’re coming in?” He does back him up though, hovering at his shoulder so close to him that his clothes brush Ryan’s back.  
  
He half thinks Ryan might just collapse. His free hand brushes his hip, just for an instant, supportive, maybe scared. He doesn’t think he can deal with zombies right now. He doesn’t know if he can deal with anything beyond this horrible, aching hunger, and the residual terror from last night.  
  
He can’t even… he still can’t get his mind around it. What could have happened.  
  
~  
  
"Let's don't." The first key doesn't work and he had to steady his hand before sliding the second one in. Shane's all but on his back behind him, and Ryan can't even say anything. He gets it. Even this mild, unsteadiness in Shane is making his heart beat wrong. He knows what he must've done to Shane last night while he apparently tripped out on zombie blood.

He swings the door open, to knock back anything close to the door. It doesn't hit anything so he eases himself inside. It's dark. His heart slams hard enough against his chest to hurt. He needs there to be nothing. He needs Shane not to have to use the pipe.

There's a tall cabinet directly in front of him, metal and closed. Ryan looks sideways and there's a flicker of movement, and he jumps back, screams like that's going to do something. He gets a hold of the door to try and keep himself up because he falls. It's not stable so it only partially works.

The movement isn't moving anymore. He thinks it might be plastic.

"Jesus fuck."  
  
~  
  
“ _What?!_ Fuck!” Shane yelps, and he’s halfway between bringing the pipe up and catching hold of Ryan’s arm to steady him. It’s a fucking… it’s a water bottle. One of those big ones. There’s a few of them actually.  
  
Shane exhales shakily, clenching his jaw. “Okay, great,” he says, sounding more annoyed than he should. His nerves feel like they’re all about to fucking explode. He also doesn’t think he could swing the pipe hard enough to hurt a chipmunk, if he’s being honest. He can’t shake this awful terror. It’s clinging to him like a film, and it doesn’t _go_ anywhere.   
  
There’s still, always, this underlying fear. Of everything. It’s just that now neither he or Ryan are in any shape to really do anything about it.  
  
“Good, Ryan, you found the water. It was a narrow escape. But we made it.”  
  
~  
  
Shane's pissed, or at least frustrated. Ryan's pissed because he doesn't know why he reacted so much. He glares at Shane and snatches his arm back. It's not fair because he's angry at his own stupidity. Not Shane.He gets back upright and gives his throat a second to get over the scream. To get over any of this. He can't begin to understand why he feels like he still needs to lie down. They slept all day. But he's here, trying to make Shane not get worse, and screaming at fucking water jugs. 

"Yeah, yeah, my bad," he says, trying to bring himself out of all this negative noise in his head trying to tear him apart.  
  
~  
  
Shane slips past him, shaky. He frowns at the water because it looks heavy, but after a moment he just drags it off the shelf and half lets it fall to the ground. He made a partial effort to lower it but it doesn’t work very well. It doesn’t break at least. He glances back up towards Ryan and wishes they were still in bed. He wishes this was… easier. He wishes he were better at doing the right thing.  
  
There’s a lot of boxes. Most of them are printer paper, some extension cords… he wonders if the power works here. He wonders if there’s hot water, or running water at all. He can’t quite look at Ryan straight on for some reason. He didn’t mean to get irritable.  
  
He gets this sudden awful rush of panic and catches hold of the metal shelf. It’s not… it’s _not_ infection. It’s just exhaustion. “I uh… don’t think we’re going to find food in here.”  
  
No, that’s it. He just hates the idea that he might not be able to protect him. They got way too close to that. He doesn’t want it to happen again, and Ryan is so fucking stubborn that it’s going to be a nightmare making sure he’s safe here, while Shane can barely function on his own.  
  
“I uh,” he breathes a laugh he doesn’t feel at all. “I need to fucking eat something or I am _going_ to pass out.”  
  
~  
   
Ryan is doing everything he can to just regulate his breathing. Everything Shane does is scaring him. And he can’t let this scare him—if he is sick, (god he could be sick), then Ryan can’t freak out. It’s not going to help. But his emotional control is in pieces somewhere upstairs. His hands shake for no reason. He’s weak—his arms burn with every motion, his headache is even coming back. Mild, comparatively.  
   
But it’s so hard. He needs to focus on Shane. On making sure he’s not sick, on handling it if he is. Because if he is—he can beat it. Ryan’s not dead, or a zombie. Shane won’t be either. He’s watching the shelf, breath shaking in time with his hands. He wishes he could tell Shane to go upstairs, go sleep some more, or sit down… but he can’t. At this point, he’s pretty sure between the two of them he’s got less to give.  
   
Shane wouldn’t listen.  
   
Food. Shane needs food. Okay, Ryan needs food too. The inside of his stomach has been converted to broken glass and dust. And if he eats, he’ll probably be less weak too. So food. That’s what they need. Ryan looks around the room. It’s not a giant space, and Shane’s checked one side. It’s mostly supplies. Useless supplies.  
   
“Don’t pass out.” It sounds a little like he’s begging him. “Try drinking the water. He works the tremor out of his voice. “Can you stab it or something? With the letter opener…” He has no idea how they’re going to get the water out without tipping it, or if either of them have the strength to—but he’s always read being hydrated is the most important thing.  
   
Ryan fumbles checks one of the metal cabinets opposite of Shane. There’s a crate in it that he pulls out. It’s not heavy, but he drops it because his arms just kinda… go on strike midway through the motion. “Fuck.” He kneels and pulls the lid off, lets his vision blur and focus over the mess of the contents.  
   
“Oh, hey…” It’s food. A lot of plastic packages. Something called dehydrated eggs, pancake mix (he has no idea how to prepare either of those, but oh well), dried fruit… and then a few bags of nuts, energy bars, and beef jerky. “Here’s some food.”  
   
His intent is to get up and take something to Shane, but his body doesn’t cooperate. He just stay where he is, working back towards standing.  
  
~  
  
Stabbing it isn’t a bad idea. Shane gets the letter opener and squints at the jug like he’s trying to think of the most strategic way to do this when there’s a loud crash and he jumps.  
  
“Jesus, man,” Shane says softly. “Anything edible?” he asks. He just takes a stab at the jug and the letter opener skitters to the side. He gets his hand around the top part of it and thinks about how much easier everything would be if he had any strength left to use. He takes a deep breath, holding the container steady, then stabs the letter opener through.  
  
It’s a bit of a struggle to work it out again, because the hard plastic clings. He’s stabbed it about a quarter of the way from the top, and it leaks slightly as he works the letter opener free but as he works it out, there’s a fairly decent stream of water. They’re going to waste some doing it like this, but at this point, he doesn’t care.  
  
He contorts himself, too much limb, and catches some in his mouth. There’s something about the taste of lukewarm water that’s been sitting in plastic that Shane’s never really liked, but in the moment, it’s one of the best things he’s ever tasted. He pulls back and realizes he can’t press his fingers over the hole to stop the water because they’re still stained with Ryan’s blood. “Uh,” he says, and sort of flails about, drinks some more so it doesn’t go to waste. “How about that apocalypse, huh?” Shane asks.  
  
~  
  
Ryan gets his leg up like he's unfolding a fucking ladder. He's holding two energy bars and turns to see Shane dance around the water he's wasting. But Ryan can't care—how else are they gonna get to it?

He smiles, would probably laugh if he had more energy. "Idiot." 

He glances back at the bin. Too bad there's no gum. They could plug it with that. Oh well. He walks over to Shane and hands him the bar. "There's some beef jerky and nuts and stuff too. What's best when you're starving? We need that boy scout zombie to help us." He bends, much more gracefully than Shane can (he's got a lot less leg) and drinks some of the water. Holy shit. It's like stripping an entire layer of concrete off the lining of his throat.

He backs wipes his hand clear of any excess blood from his wrist and plugs it with two fingers. "Here, maybe you can use some of it to get the blood off?" He looks up at him, eyes wide like he's asked a teacher a question.  
  
~  
  
Shane laughs at him a little, he stares at him a moment too long with this look. This mixed look where it’s mostly affection, gentle humour, but something darker too, more anxious, something desperate and wanting and uncertain. He blinks and it clears.  
  
“Yeah, okay,” he says it quietly, like he’s just obeying, and looks away, pulling the sleeves of his sweater up, holds his hands out. “I um…” he begins, but can’t quite figure out how to continue.  
  
~  
  
Ryan doesn't like the look. He looks away, like a flinch, because it's fear. And he doesn't want it leaking into him. It's already leaking into him.

"Just...c'mon." He grabs Shane's wrist and let's go of the water. He should just let go, but he doesn't he works some of it off with his hands. It's dry so he has to scrub at it. His fingers slide over Shane's skin, beneath the water. The touch is resonate, even beneath the lukewarm, almost cool stream of water.

A few times the water splashes the ligature marks on his wrists, and it cools them. And stings. But mostly cools. He takes Shane's other hand, like he's on autopilot and washes it off until both hands are as clean as water can get them.

He looks up Shane's arm into his face. "Good?"  
  
~  
  
Shane relaxes under his touch. Almost unconsciously he leans closer to Ryan, head down. “Yeah, he says, when Ryan looks up. Shane turns his palms up and circles Ryan’s wrists loosely with his fingers. He pulls them beneath the water as the stream begins to slow to a trickle, and as it stops, he slides his thumb beneath one of the marks.  
  
His skin is so thin there, at his wrists, and Shane wishes he never listened to Ryan when he said he should be tied up. “How much of last night do you remember?” he asks quietly before looking up to meet his eyes again. They’re so close. Ryan’s lips have dark stains from blood, in all the dry places. Both their lips are dry from thirst. Shane desperately wants to kiss him anyway, but he doesn’t.  
  
His heart is beating too hard, but he’s almost used to that now.  
  
~  
  
Ryan doesn't want to talk about this. Shane looks at him so deeply, like he's seeing what Ryan can't.

And Ryan needs him to stay like that. Stay making Ryan feel like he's okay. Like all this guilt is wrong.

He chews his lip and looks at his hands. "Other than you crashing into the bench?" It's playful, if unsure. "Not a lot. I remember wanting you to tie me to something so don't—if you're feeling bad, don't. It was smart." Shane has looked at his wrists a few times, so he guesses he feels bad. Jesus, what if Ryan has to...?

No, he's not going to. Shane's going to be fine.

Ryan thinks about last night. Mostly it's fear, crippling, deathly fear, and pain. Freezing and burning at the same time. Shane talking to him, a lot. More than Ryan's ever heard him. He doesn't know what was dream vs. reality. And Ryan wanting Shane in this awful, consuming way. Needing him more than water or food, or fucking air, and knowing he couldn't. Maybe that's why he felt him so much, because he wanted to. He wanted him there, even when he said he didn't.

"Other than that, nothing except..." He shrugs. "Being freaked out and having a killer headache."  He meets Shane's eyes. "And you, uh, being around."  
  
~  
  
“Oh, okay,” Shane says, and he absently rolls part of Ryan’s sleeve up where it’s gotten wet. It’s equal parts relief and disappointment. Jesus, he can’t breathe. “I… there’s something I wanted to…” he fiddles with the fabric, folding it somewhere over Ryan’s forearm, then looks up and meets his eyes and it’s so overwhelming and scary and, Shane thinks, it’s possible that this is still just a… that it’s not the same, for Ryan, and maybe it was unfair to say what he did last night, that maybe it’s unfair to say it now when Ryan’s feeling like he did something wrong by getting sick. Shane sees it in his face.  
  
 _Say it, Shane, jesus_ , he thinks, and takes this quick little breath and then pulls back a little, lets him go.   
  
He can’t.  
  
“I forgot to tell you that I found this,” he says, and his voice doesn’t match. It’s brighter now. Not falsely bright, but it’s a switch. It’s a switch from the breathless uncertainty from a second ago. He extracts the Lakers hat from the front pocket of his sweater. It’s muddy. Fuck, that sucks, but he thinks maybe if they can ever wash it somehow, it might come out. It doesn’t show up that much against the black anyway. He holds onto it for a second, reliving that moment — that moment of finding it, then he holds it out to Ryan. “I just… I found it.”  
  
~  
  
Ryan is holding his breath, maybe. Waiting. There's something on the edge of his memory. Words, words he needs to say. Words he thinks... maybe Shane said.

I love you.

He remembers trying to say it last night. Wanting to. He didn't, like he didn't put it in that text he left Shane. Because it's not fair to say that when you're dying. But he's not dying now. And he still can't. It's too big. Shane's done so much for him. Has said he can't do this without Ryan.

But love seems simultaneously too big and too small for someone like Shane. Like if Ryan admitted it, Shane would just say "okay" like he does sometimes, soft and startled, and Ryan would break in half.

But, Shane starts, and there's this white fire of hope in him and his eyes light with it. Then Shane shows him the hat and Ryan feels the wind rush out of him. The light doesn't extinguish entirely, because the hat is... it's the one thing he can't bear losing.

"Oh shit!" He takes it, smiles at Shane as brightly as he can under the loose film of disappointment. "Thanks, I... Sorry I lost it."

Shane does all these things Ryan needs. Delivers in every way until Ryan loves him so much it could kill him. But he can't imagine it, a reality where Shane is in love with him. It'd be like a galaxy trying to love a meteor. 

Shane is so many things, all at once, and Ryan is just... Ryan.  
  
~  
  
Shane smiles back. It’s so easy when Ryan looks at him like that, but he still feels… he keeps failing. Maybe if he can’t even say it, he doesn’t deserve for Ryan to know. He licks his lips. “There’s mud on it,” Shane says, like Ryan can’t see this for himself. But he can’t say anything he’s supposed to, like _it’s not your fault you lost it_ , or… it’s too big. Words don’t cut it.  
  
Maybe that’s the problem with a lot of things.  
  
“Okay, food,” Shane says, and reaches out to drag the crate over. It’s a fucking task, but he’s got long limbs so he uses it to his advantage, despite the fact that they’re shaking so much he can barely push himself back up to sitting properly.   
  
“Oh, hey, pancakes! Fuck. I wonder if there’s power here…” He’s going through the box with rather too much focus, so he doesn’t have to look up at Ryan again, so he can shake this weird moment. “Here you want a… banana… chocolate chip bar?” He holds it out. “There’s peanut butter ones too…”  
  
~  
   
“Uh…” Ryan has re-plugged the hole Shane made with his finger. He guesses he should let it just run out. It wouldn’t be that much more of a waste, but he hates it. He stands there for too long, looking from Shane to his shaking arm over the hole. Maybe he’s taking longer because of this thing that just happened. Shane isn’t looking at him—like he fucking know what just went through Ryan’s head.  
   
And for some reason Ryan’s embarrassed. Like, trying not to flush embarrassed—and he doesn’t know why. It’s not like he said anything, or did anything, but the idea, maybe, that he thought Shane said it. Was going to say it. Has him in knots. Or maybe it’s that Shane mentioned the mud on the hat—which… is his fault. For running off, for losing the hat. A lot of things are his fault.  
   
He doesn’t know whether to focus on that or worry about Shane, so his mind settles on both and nausea curls in his stomach and crawls up the back of his throat. Amazing that he could be this hungry and still think, I’m not hungry.  
   
He takes another drink of the water to steady himself, and to keep it from going to waste, and then he lets the rest of it run out as he moves back over to Shane and the food. It’s an effort. Movement is an effort and it pisses him off, almost as much as the muddy hat in his hand and everything it represents.  
   
“I’ll eat whatever.” He hopes eating isn’t going to fuck his tongue up. The water’s got it feeling tingly, not bad, necessarily—but certainly more present. “I wouldn’t count on pancakes.” But Shane’s mentioned pancakes, and Ryan’s nausea is vanquished. God, he would kill for an actual breakfast. And then he’s just trying not to salivate over the idea of pancakes and butter and syrup, and—he reaches into the box. “Here, this says it’s fruit. That’s good for energy, isn’t it?” He grabs some of the dried fruit—it’s in a plastic pouch. With all these withered looking fruits in it—he’s assuming that’s how they’re supposed to look.  
  
~  
  
“Yeah, I think so.” Shane glances at him over unwrapping one of the granola bars, then does a double take. Without much warning, he reaches out to press the backs of his fingers against Ryan’s cheek, frowning a little.  
  
“You okay?” he asks, because there’s something— he looks too warm, or there’s something off in his eyes, but then Ryan’s eyes are so expressive it’s impossible to keep up sometimes. “You look…” He doesn’t feel warm, though, so Shane draws away because he doesn’t want to freak him out, and takes a bite of the energy bar, turning to frown into the food box instead of frowning at Ryan. “This is gross,” he says, with his mouth full.  
  
The thing is… the thing is that if he tells Ryan something like this, not only might it change things between them, but he thinks, too, that then Ryan might feel obligated. To stick around, to do more, to try harder. As though he doesn’t already try hard enough. Shane doesn’t want… he doesn’t want anything to change. It would be one thing if they still lived in… Before. Before all this. If they’d met by chance, somewhere, somehow, despite living on opposite ends of the country.  
  
Of course, it was always big. It was always big to tell someone you loved them, but it was also… different. Shane looks up at him again, and he’s hit again with the fact that he almost lost him, almost lost this. It twists this gut, sours the food there. He doesn’t want Ryan to try harder and Ryan, Shane knows, is the kind of person who would. He’s the kind of person that would think that he’d led Shane on somehow, and that now he should pay for creating that emotion and Shane would have no way to say ‘no, it’s not like that, that’s not what I do.’  
  
He thinks… he thinks telling Ryan he loves him would just end up making Ryan feel more guilt. He can fucking love him anyway. He will. He does. He can just… he can do it quietly. If he’s careful. Just, it’s getting harder. Shane feels like everything he says just screams it in the background, like static. That he’s going to look at Ryan someday and Ryan’s just going to _know_.  
  
Shane reaches up and presses the heel of his hand against his eye and pushes his fingers through his hair, wild and tangled from the rain, training his eyes on the floor. He does what he always does when he feels uncertain, which is push himself into some practical action. Something that makes sense, that will make things better even in some minuscule way. “Ugh, all right. I think… I hate to say this, but I think I’ve got to go back to the car. I left the keys in it,” he admits. “So... sorry. It was stupid.”  
  
~  
   
Shane checks him like Ryan has a fever. But Shane’s the one that feels warm, and Ryan tries not to let it get in his head. Bile rises in his throat again. He can’t freak out. He _can’t_. He needs this to be okay. He needs them to be okay, whether Shane loves him or not. He just needs Shane.  
   
Shane takes a bite of the bar and pulls a face. It startles Ryan out of his panic and into this weak laugh—mostly it’s a wheeze because his throat can’t make the appropriate sounds. But it makes him laugh—because it shoots soreness down to his abdomen.  
   
“I’m fine. Just processing.”  
   
He doesn’t ask if Shane’s okay because he’s afraid of it—like this question he needs the answer to, but can’t risk. He opens the bag of dried fruit—it takes him a couple tries because he’s shaky but he gets there eventually. It all looks so strange. Brittle, and most of it’s orange. The kiwi looks like a fucking centipede. At least he thinks it’s kiwi.  
   
Shane talks about the car. Ryan tries not to wince. Shane’s the one saying sorry, but Ryan’s the one who left. And he heard Shane in the woods—he saw him. He knows how much panic there was. Felt it in the fucking raindrops. And he should have tried, should have talked to Shane. It was so easy to run, and now, thinking about the other side of it—thinking if something is wrong with Shane. If that is wrong with Shane. Ryan has no idea what he’s going to do. What he would do if he woke up and Shane was gone.  
   
“No, don’t be sorry. _I’m_ sorry. If you hadn’t come out there, I would be dead. So I’m not gonna… burn you at the stake for leaving some things there. We need to get back to the car eventually, anyway.” He turns the fruit in his hand, again and again. He’s set the other bar and the hat on the floor beside him. He’s not looking at Shane, except in these stolen glances. And Shane’s not looking at him. Fuck, he’s so scared he’s ruined this. He’s so scared Shane’s dying—he’s so scared.  
   
He’s so tired of being scared.  
   
He puts the piece of fruit in his mouth. It tastes nothing like it looks. It’s chewy. Really chewy, and not horrible. It’s a mango, maybe. He has no idea. He holds out a piece for Shane—it’s the same thing, flaky and thin. “Try this instead. Energy bars are notoriously disgusting.”  
  
~  
  
“Yeah, I’m starting to miss those Vienna sausages... Thank you, he says. And they sit there on the dusty floor eating, trying to get some energy back. It sort of helps. His head swims less as he stands up and reaches down to help Ryan.

He wants to be closer to him so badly. He wants to go back upstairs to the blankets on the fucking floor and just fold his body around Ryan. He wants to rest his forehead on Ryan’s shoulder as Ryan eats the weird mystery fruit in the bag.

He wants a lot of things.

“You want to stay here?” Shane asks, already knowing the answer but foolishly trying for it anyway. “You can hold down the fort, man the— the defences. Wait, is that how it goes? I shouldn’t be long.”  
  
It’s a lie. He got so turned around last night he has no idea where the car is, but he’s going to pretend that he does.   
  
~  
   
Ryan takes Shane’s hand, but tries not to use it much. He mostly just wants to touch his hand. Without relying on him for strength. Shane doesn’t have strength. Neither does Ryan—but Shane… but Shane.  
   
 Shane’s talking about going back to the car, as Ryan’s getting up. Asking him if he wants to stay while Shane goes and roams the woods. Ryan has a hunch that Shane doesn’t exactly know where the car is. He didn’t go back to the car last night, and sure, maybe this place makes more sense. But Shane didn’t know it was here. The car would’ve made the most sense.  
   
Shane was lost last night. Ryan remembers that.  
   
They both were.  
   
Ryan scowls. It’s so stupid Shane would ask. It reminds him of the cabin, when Shane just did everything and Ryan did nothing. “I’m not gonna—” But it’s too much, too much effort, and he’s still half getting up—trying not to use Shane, so his leg just quits. He stumbles forward, into Shane. He reaches up, on instinct, to catch himself on Shane’s shoulder with one hand, while the other crashes into his chest.  
   
It’s the exact opposite of what he was trying to do. His hips slide against Shane’s, and he can’t get his grip. Shane isn’t steady at all, but there’s this rush of touching—unexpected and searing—that keeps him from getting his balance like he wants to. That makes him cling for a second and think, _please don’t fall._  
  
~  
  
Shane gasps and it hitches horribly in his chest. Ryan’s hand slams against his chest in the same place he hit him before. It disorients him somehow like he can’t quite figure out what’s happening or why.

They stumble and Shane instinctively grabs at Ryan, knees buckling a little as he tries to catch him and steady himself at the same time. It doesn’t quite work. Ryan’s hips collide a little painfully with his own and it’s— oh fuck. He wobbles a little, and they both hit their knees. One of Shane’s rolls a little so he’s pressed hard, chest to chest with Ryan, one hand clutching at his should hard in pain and for balance.   
  
Shane makes this breathless sound, not quite a groan. He’s got one arm hooked so tightly around Ryan’s waist it sort of hurts. He doesn’t let him go even fractionally in case he somehow falls further.

“Hey... you got it,” Shane says. It’s not a question. He’s breathing a little too quickly into Ryan’s neck.   
  
_Fuck—ow._

 _Okay_ , Shane thinks. _He’s definitely not coming to the car._ If zombies show up, they’re gonna be toast.  
  
~  
   
Ryan lets out an exhale of air that’s between a grunt and a groan. They’re on their knees and Ryan wants to punch himself in the face. Shane was already trying to talk him out of coming, now he’s going to use this as ammo. He glances up into Shane’s face and sighs. They’re still close—he’s working up to standing up. He needs to do it on his own to prove to Shane he can do this.  
   
His skin prickles at Shane’s breath on his neck. It’s weird to be affected now, when both of them are so… broken. It’s wrong. And he feels where this is going—a fight Ryan doesn’t want. But he’s not letting Shane go out there alone. He can’t.  
   
“Sorry, fuck. I didn’t—I’m fine. I… You’re not going back out there by yourself.” He’s still pressed against him, not standing yet. “You aren’t any better off than I am.”  
  
~  
  
Shane makes a doubtful sound. “I’m fine. I got some food into me, it’s… I’m not the one who had to…” he starts working on extracting himself because it’s distracting, being so close to him. “I didn’t have to deal with what you did last night, so, look… Ryan, that took a toll, all right? On you. Just… half an hour. Tops. And you can wash your face or something, because you’re still— there’s blood, still.”  
  
He twitches slightly like he doesn’t know what to do. He’s still holding Ryan’s arms, but they’re not quite so close anymore.  
  
~  
   
Ryan squirms back further. He cannot be this close to Shane, and not… it’s so stupid that he wants to kiss him. Shane kissed Ryan while he was sick—hell, Shane kissed Ryan earlier today. Ryan hasn’t kissed him and there’s this tug in the center of him like a string around his rib. Wanting to kiss him, touch him in all these ways that he hasn’t since… all these ways never thought he would again.  
   
He gets up, shaking but as steady as his body will let him be. Which isn’t terrible. “No. You had to deal with plenty last night. I’m over it. I’m not sick, and you’re barely standing upright. If the blood is bothering you that much, I’ll wash my face and then we can go. It’s almost night. You’re not going out there on your own.”  
  
He doesn’t extend his arm to help, because given what just happened, it seems like a comically bad idea.   
  
~  
  
“You’re over it,” Shane repeats, sitting back, knees bent. He rubs at one of them idly through his jeans. “Okay, great.”  
  
He drops his eyes. Fuck, he doesn’t want to fight. “Fine. Whatever, go wash your face.” As soon as he says it he gets paranoid about what could be out there again. Fuck, are they ever going to be able to do anything normally again? He works on getting up, grabs his pipe and stands up slower than usual. “Bring that— the letter opener,” he says. “You left the hammer in the car.”  
  
~  
   
Ryan drops his shoulders. It sucks. When Shane gets this rigid. But Ryan can’t back down on this one. He’s worried about him, and even if Ryan is weak now—two weak people is better than one. And Shane can’t be much better off than him right now.  
   
He goes over to the jug, still leaking water, more slowly now. It’s fortunate because he isn’t sure how he’d do it if he had to tilt this thing. He wets his hands and runs them over his face a couple times. He has no mirror, so he doesn’t know where there’s blood, but his mouth feels a little caked. So he works his hands over it a few times, hard. His arms scream with the movement. His shoulders. But he doesn’t stop. If he gives Shane anymore reason, then he’s liable to tie Ryan to the railing again.  
   
He finishes and grabs the letter opener. He regrets not taking the hammer now. It made sense at the time, so much made sense. It doesn’t make sense that Shane followed him. That Shane says he can’t do this without Ryan. Ryan wants to shake him, make him get that he’s really not worth it. Not worth Shane’s life. But he is, to Shane. Just like Shane would be to Ryan.  
   
He walks back over to Shane. It’s horrendously awkward. Just this yawning silence that stretches between them.  
   
“Okay… you wanna go now?” He tries so hard to make his voice soft, gentle—almost apologetic. But he’s not sorry.  
  
~  
  
Shane is trying not to look at him. And his stupid mouth, reddened from being rubbed at so hard. He swallows and nods.  
  
It’s still damp outside. It’s not a summer rain. The heavy air makes it cold whenever the wind blows through the trees, and they make this agonizingly slow pace that has Shane’s shoulders so tense that his entire upper back aches but he can’t make himself relax. He stays close to Ryan. Close enough to support him, to protect him.  
  
There’s nothing. They don’t go back the same way they came — at least, Shane doesn’t think so. They don’t see the gun or the flashlight again, and he hopes that it’s because it’s just somewhere else, and not because someone else found them.  
  
In the end, it takes more than half an hour, but not much longer. The light has just faded to twilight by the time they do find the car, a shock of orange against forest and the darkening sky.  
  
It’s just as they left it. The two doors on the passenger side are still wide open, and the contents of Ryan’s bag are scattered over the backseat. The radio is on the floor of the car, the books, everything. Shane’s belongings spill out of the front seat and into the mud. Finn’s mug is bright, almost jewel-like where it lies in the dirt.  
  
Shane bends to pick it up, carefully, like it’s made of porcelain and not tin. The keys are still in the ignition, and Ryan’s phone is still charging — charged — where Shane tossed it onto the driver’s seat. He looks away from it and back to Ryan, trying not to remember how it had felt to read that unsent text message. He doesn’t really know what to say.  
  
~  
  
They make it to the car. It doesn't take as long as Ryan thinks it could, but he wishes it had. He stops short when he sees the car. There's stuff everywhere. Shane's bag, his bag. A ton of stuff is on the ground, wet from the rain.Shane says nothing and Ryan just... clenches his fist until his wrist and should pulse with it. He didn't want this. He didn't mean to. He opens his mouth to apologize, but it seems so insufficient. He sees his phone still charging. He guesses Shane got the text. It seems so stupid, almost over dramatic, now. It's glaring. How much wrong he did. How badly he fucked up. He thought he was dying, worse than dying. He had a gun to his head. He would've pulled the trigger if Shane had let him.But it's all pointless, looking at this. How much he did hurt him. He almost wants to run again because he can't imagine Shane not hating him for this.Shane's looking at him, and silence feels unfair, but he doesn't know what to say. "I'm..." His voice starts to break again. "I'm sorry. I really... I thought it was..." It doesn't matter what he thought, look what he did  "I'm really sorry."

~  
  
Shane has set Finn’s cup gently on the dash and has gathered up one of his t-shirts, soaked from the rain. He looks over at Ryan as he speaks, and tosses the shirt onto the seat. “Don’t—” he falters for a moment, then just says, “I know.”   
  
Shane presses his lips together, looking at this mess. It leaves him feeling sort of sick.  
  
He blinks quickly, then closes the distance between them and carefully, carefully puts his arms around him, like he thinks he might just collapse under the weight of Shane’s limbs. He doesn’t pull him, just steps into Ryan’s chest, one hand holding Ryan there against him by the back of his skull and says “Idiot… I know.” His voice shakes. He pretends it’s laughter, presses his face into Ryan’s hair, but they can’t… they’re not alone in these woods. He starts to pull back so much sooner than he wants to. “Come on. Let’s get this and get out of here.”  
  
~  
  
The touch surprises him. It almost makes it worse. Like it's a step closer to the edge. He hugs him back anyway, even though he can't imagine why Shane's consoling him.

Shane starts to pull back and Ryan holds on too hard. He presses his face into Shane's shoulder. It's clingy, desperate. He's sorry, but he's more than sorry. Because he's scared it'll be him. Alone with a text message. He can't be alone.

Shane starts to pull back and Ryan holds on too hard. It's clingy, desperate. He's sorry, but he's more than sorry. Because he's scared it'll be him. Alone with a text message. He can't be alone. Shane is a part of him like no one else ever has been. There's no Ryan without Shane, not anymore. Not a Ryan he wants to face.

Not one he could face.

So he holds on like he can make Shane stay. Like he can freeze this, keep it. Keep Shane. Safe and whole and soft. He lets go eventually and steps back. He loves him, fuck, he loves him. He doesn't care if Shane doesn't. If he'll just be okay, Ryan can love enough for both of them.

"Okay," is all he finally says.  
  
~  
  
“Okay,” Shane repeats, eyes on him a moment too long before he quickly pulls back, like he has to trick himself into doing it, and starts shoving things into the bag haphazardly.  
  
It feels like it might rain again, he thinks. He unplugs Ryan’s phone and holds it out to him once they’re both packed up their bags. Shane closes the front door as softly as he can.  
  
He’s really cold. Colder than he could be and he sort of huddles into himself as he shoulders his bag. He worries about the weight of Ryan’s. “You ready?” he asks, standing too close. Fuck, it’s getting dark. “We’d better, uh. Move it.”  
  
~  
   
Ryan really doesn’t want his phone, but he takes it anyway. It’s a distraction from Shane. Because he’s shivering, and… Ryan really doesn’t want this. He doesn’t want to have to think about this. He keeps having to focus on his breathing to slow it down. He’s helped Shane get most of the stuff back into the car, and he’s seesawing between using the hammer on his own face because he feels bad and screaming because Shane might be sick.  
   
What is he going to do?  
   
Okay, Shane obviously knew he was sick and didn’t lose it. Shane did this right. Ryan wants to get this right. Just this once. Even if Shane is sick—he wants to do the right fucking thing for him.  
   
He grabs the hammer and pulls his bag over his shoulder. His leg twitches, and he almost ends up with a face full of mud. He manages to stop it this time, fingers digging into the metal of the car for just a beat. God damn it. He doesn’t have time for this. He doesn’t have time for this sickness to linger. He doesn’t have time for the way his shoulder _hurts_.  
   
 _You should’ve just killed me if you were gonna kill him._ He doesn’t know who he’s talking to—who it’s directed at, but if he lives—just so he could fucking infect Shane.  
   
 _Focus_.  
   
The light’s starting to fade. Shane’s talking about leaving, and Ryan’s just off in his own world. Leaving everything to Shane like he always does. He tunes in, shakes his head with this one-sided smile. “Yeah, okay, let’s go.”  
  
~  
  
Shane walks close to Ryan as they make their way back. They hear something in the woods, something unnatural, but it’s far enough away that Shane doesn’t immediately panic. He can see the cabin in the distance, but it’s dark now. It’s really dark.

His hand shoots out and he catches Ryan’s arm and holds on tight. Everything in him screams _get the fuck inside_ but he doesn’t think either of them can run. In fact he thinks that running will probably make a lot of things worse, especially with the weight of their bags. He scans the shadows around them. Nothing moves. Nothing moves but the two of them, but there’s a rolling, bubbling growl somewhere out there... Shane clings to Ryan and keeps his eyes focussed on the cabin, nine yards away, six, three.

They make it back and Shane pushes Ryan in first, gently enough, right up against him. He pushes the door shut and gets them away from it, away from the broken glass. It’s too small for a person, even a small one, but still they should fix it.

Later. 

Shane shudders once, heavily, now that they’re out of the cold dampness of the wind. God, he’s exhausted. Panting, he meets Ryan’s eyes, freaked, relieved. “We did it, we made it.” He reaches out to help him get his pack off.  
  
~  
  
Ryan tries to keep his pace neutral as they walk back. There's a sound, but he definitely can't run. He's doing well to stand up. He keeps running these scenarios in his head of how to stop this thing. He's so zoned in on it, on anticipating, on the way Shane walks—that he doesn't realize they're back. He's been tracking the cabin, but it sneaks up on him and just... There's the door.

Shane shoves him inside and Ryan has to work to unclench his hand around the hammer. It hurts. He glances at the broken window, flashes back to Shane breaking it open. They need to fix it. 

He looks back at Shane once he talks. Ryan is so tense. He's trying so hard to just be fucking normal. But he's not. He can't. Shane looks freaked out. Normal, because of the noises. Normal. They're both out of breath. It hurts Ryan's throat. He hopes it doesn't hurt Shane's.

"Yeah, you okay?" 

He thinks about sitting but doubts he'd get back up. His legs crackle like he's jamming needles into them. He drops his bag abruptly, harder than he meant to, especially since Shane was trying to help. "Sorry..." It feels like all that's come out of his mouth since he woke up. He tugs at the strap on Shane's shoulder to get his off.  
  
~  
  
“Stop saying you’re sorry,” Shane says, shifting to let him. He shifts his shoulders, lets the pack slide down his arms and onto the floor and then just steps into Ryan. It’s not an embrace, really. He’s just too close for a moment too long, and then he isn’t, he steps back.

“Okay,” he says. He wants to lie down. He wants to crawl into a warm, proper bed and sleep for a week. “Let’s... I need to get some dry clothes on... are you... cold? You okay?”

He knows it’s better, safer if they keep sleeping upstairs but it’s just so hard to even imagine getting back up there right now. God, he wants a real shower, he wants to be _warm_. It’s making him more miserable than it has any right to, given the fucking miracle of having Ryan standing in front of him right now. 

But he’s so tired of making all these decisions. He’s just really tired.  
  
“You should probably rest,” he tells Ryan, because it’s easier than admitting that he also needs to, especially when Ryan still needs him to be fine.   
  
~  
   
Ryan almost says he’s sorry for saying he’s sorry, and thinks better of it. Or really, thinks about it at all. And the lack of what it would accomplish. But he doesn’t know how else to respond, after the car, after last night. It seems like the only thing he can do is apologize.  
   
“I’m fine.” Ryan is cold, and tired, and his head is definitely hurting now, but he’s not shivering like Shane. And that’s terrifying, but he needs to figure out a way to cope with this. “You look like you’re…” He struggles with the words. “You look like _you’re_ tired. Don’t make this about me.” He frames it like a joke, because Shane is making it about him when it probably isn’t. Even if Ryan is tired. It’s not what Shane’s thinking about—if his face is any indication.  
   
Ryan thinks he’s gotten fairly good at reading Shane’s face.  
   
“We probably need to go back upstairs, but just...” He’s trying to get a handle on this, but it’s hard to take himself seriously the way his voice keeps cracking. It’s not great, anyway, because he’s being very careful not to move his tongue too much.  He grabs Shane by the arm, pulls him over to the bench. “Sit, maybe. For a sec.”  
   
He chooses not to think about the way Shane’s skin feels. That it is still warm, even when he’s cold. Ryan lingers on Shane’s shoulder, partly to convince himself he’s wrong, partly to steady himself, and mostly because he misses touching him. He misses when moving around didn’t feel like dying all over again.  
   
He misses when sickness felt further away, when it hadn’t touched him—couldn’t touch Shane.  
   
A door near the back wall catches his eye.  Or, it might be a door. It looks like a door. “Oh, hey, hold on…” He doesn’t make it sound like much—doesn’t really want Shane interested in it right now. He’ll probably look, anyway, but whatever. If he tells him, Shane will pull some bullshit about how Ryan’s too feeble to check for zombies on his own. He might be, but he has no interest in hearing about it from Shane Madej right now.  
   
He gets his tighter grip on the hammer and walks towards the back. It’s past the stairs, but it’s definitely another door—the closer he gets. He stands back for a second, collects himself, begs his legs to stop whining, before he tries the door knob. This one’s not locked. And Ryan is not going to scream this time. Even if it is a zombie, he’s banning himself from noises. Potentially forever. He pulls his phone out of his pocket and checks the flashlight function.  
   
It works. Somehow.  
   
He turns the knob and opens the door the same way he did the last one, with force enough to knock anything close enough to the door back. And then he walks in, checks either side of the room with the bluish white light of his phone. It’s another small room—it’s hard to tell any colors in the light, but it’s different from the rest of the cabin. Less wooden.  
   
And no zombies.  
   
The right side is a small shower, bathtub combo. He has to push back to curtain like he’s in a horror movie to make sure there’s nothing behind it. There isn’t. He brightens before he remembers it’s probably got no water, then he wonders if maybe there were beds here at one point. It’s far enough away from any other civilization—it makes sense people might stay. Maybe they used sleeping bags. Maybe there are sleeping bags somewhere around here.  
   
“It’s a bathroom,” he calls back to Shane, because if he’s not already thinking Ryan has been sucked through a portal to hell, then he will be soon.  
   
Ryan turns around to the opposite side. There’s a sink and a mirror. He catches his own face, and it’s… bad. He looks way thin, and there’s all these scratches and marks on his face from the woods. He winces and steps to the sink, tries it. It spits and gurgles for a second, and then there is water.  
   
Fuck, okay. Maybe if they can coax it to warmth, it’ll help Shane. Dirt bothers him, too, more than it does Ryan. So maybe just getting clean we’ll help. He’ll be clean, and warm, and then he can sleep.  
   
Ryan moves his light over the back of the room here a toilet is tucked behind a wall that lazily separates it from the rest of the room. Okay, this is something. This is good. Now if he could just sit on this floor for the rest of the night, it would be great. He turns back to the door, half-expecting Shane to already be there, because as much as he tells Ryan to—he never stays out of things.  
  
~  
  
Shane’s doing his best not to drop his head into his hands because he wants to. He also wants Ryan not to be going off on his own.

He remembers last night, the way Ryan had called out to him, _I’m scared... come back…_ Shane’s heart twists.   
  
Nope. He’s not doing that to him again. Shane needs to know where he is. He drags himself up. There’s probably no zombies in here but there’s always a chance. There’s _always_ a chance.

It seems to take longer than usual, and the room spins. His vision starts to white out. He takes a couple steps the has to catch the edge of the desk and hold on, head lowered between his shoulders until he’s a bit steadier. Ryan says something that Shane doesn’t quite hear, but his tone is okay, so Shane takes a couple long slow breaths. This is _normal_. He hasn’t eaten nearly enough, it’s been a lot of stress... 

He straightens up, slow, slow, then follows the sound of Ryan’s voice, so he is in the doorway when Ryan turns. “Jesus,” he says, because it’s... nice. Not that his standards are too high these days. “Does the water work?”  
  
~  
  
"Oh, yeah, it does."

Christ, Ryan kinda wishes he wasn't there. He is barely upright. Ryan isn't sure if he's pale or it's the light. 

He can't do this with Shane. He can't do severed jaws and crushed heads with Shane. He can't do death. He can't. He needs time to stop. There's so much wrong. So many fears that swarm like his vision going black, so there's barely reality anymore. It's all warped.

_Why didn't you just die?_

But if he'd died, Shane would too. Not if you had pulled the trigger. But Shane may have already been sick. Probably not, though.

_Stop it. Just stop it._

It's not what he wants. He couldn't let Shane do that, kill himself, either. And Shane told him he couldn't do this without Ryan. Ryan ought to believe that. He tied himself to Ryan. Fuck, he tied himself to Ryan. There's more to it than not pulling that trigger. So why does Ryan still regret it? 

He can't regret it. He needs to be present and he isn't—he's in the future. This future where Shane's gone like Jake and Mom, and Ryan's... But he can't be. Not yet. 

He presses into the sink for balance and turns the faucet to prove the water works. Shane might be fine. He might be _normal_ sick, so he needs Ryan. He needs Ryan not to be throwing elaborate fucking pity parties right now. 

He's got it turned to hot, hoping it might get warm. It's not doing much. "There's a shower-bath thing. If it's not warm, a bath would probably suck. But I assume standing as a concept right now sucks, well, I mean you look like a tree trying to weather a tornado, so… that's an option."

He's rambling, and it's worse than usual because he's hoarse. But it's better than saying nothing. Quieter, in his head. And maybe it's normal. He wants this to be normal, for Shane. He's still leaning on the sink, with his phone clutched hard against it. But he's pretending it's to check the water.

"Oh, it's getting warm. Maybe. Maybe not. No, I think it is..."

~  
  
Shane laughs a little helplessly and moves closer, slides his fingers beneath the water, slides his fingers over the backs of Ryan’s beneath the stream. “I mean, it’s not _cold_ ,” he says. “I’m okay even with not cold.”  
  
Instead of dropping his head to Ryan’s shoulder like he wants to, he pulls back and makes a cursory search of this room, which mostly involves crouching on the floor, his shoulder resting against Ryan’s thigh for emotional support more than actual. He thinks if he leans into Ryan, Ryan will collapse.  
  
He pulls the cupboard under the sink open and there’s just… there’s a lot of shit. Rubber gloves, toothpaste, cleaning stuff, toilet paper that looks like maybe a mouse has made a home in it at one point. There’s a bottle of liquid hand soap refill and he pulls it out. There’s also a bag of about thirty disposable razors, some cleaning rags and, inexplicably, a blue rubber ball. Shane holds the ball up to show Ryan, perplexed, before he gathers all his strength and uses the lip of the counter to pull himself, and the handsoap, slower this time, back up to standing.  
  
“How’s the temperature?” he asks softly. The hand soap is lavender scented. Apparently it’s organic and biodegradable, so, great. Tell that to the disposable razors, Shane thinks.  
  
“Do you think the…” he begins, before Ryan can answer, then stops, uncertain about this topic. “H _ow’s_ the temperature?” he asks again, changing the subject back.  
  
~  
   
Ryan tries not to bob too much as Shane’s shoulder touches him. He wishes he had more energy. There is so much he would be doing if he did. The temperature is slowly heating, not getting hot, certainly—but heating from not-cold to warm. Shane rummages through the cabinet and shows him a couple things—the most important being a rubber ball. He almost asks Shane if he wants to play fetch with zombies.  
   
Great, they can get clean. That will help. They’ve got soap and water—they haven’t had that since… well, he never checked at the motel. They may have had it there. But he doesn’t think so. It’s been awhile.  
   
“It’s warm now.” He isn’t sure about the sentence Shane starts and stops. It nags at him, but he isn’t going to push. He doesn’t think either of them can handle pushing right now—literally or figuratively. “I don’t know how long it’ll stay this way, but it’s definitely warm.” He doesn’t turn off the tap incase Shane wants to feel.  
   
“You think you’ve got it in you to get through a shower, or bath, or some manner of cleaning?”  
  
~  
  
He checks it. It’s decent. It’s better than he expected. He reaches out and shuts the sink tap off, which drops them into this strange silence.   
  
Everything is so silent, without white noise.  
  
“You should go first,” Shane says. He sets the ball on the countertop and moves to the tub, leaning over the edge of it and touching the taps there. “The warm water might last longer if it’s in the bath and besides I want… you’re probably sore after, uh, yesterday, so… I’ll go after you, okay?”  
  
~  
   
Oh no. Oh, please god he doesn’t want to do this. He turns, slowly, to face Shane. “You were…” There’s no sense lying about it. Shane was cold—whether it’s a normal kind of sick or something else. He was cold. Ignoring it isn’t going to change that. “You look cold. I’m not that cold right now, so I think it makes more sense for you to go first.” He doesn’t say he’s not sore because he’s pretty sure Shane would find it patronizing. Of course he’s sore. But—priorities are important. And Shane getting well is bigger than Ryan shaking off an illness that’s already gone.  
   
He grabs either of Shane’s arms and pulls him forward, gently, like it’s going to make this easier. Because Shane relented about the car—which turned out fine—but it’s going to look like Ryan is on a mission to defy him. He always has to look too far up during these confrontations. But he doesn’t want to step away from him.  
   
“I promise I’m not being intentionally difficult.” He half-smiles, even though it feels like the wrong time to do it. He’s not faking it, at least. “Your opinions just suck.”  
  
~  
  
Shane raises his eyebrows, and then laughs, looking away. “You— I’m— okay.”   
  
Man, it’s— he misses being close to him, he misses everything, and it’s right here, and that’s scary. He’s scared. He’s still scared and he doesn’t know if it’s residual from last night or if it’s something else he’s trying not to think about.  
  
He looks into the empty tub, fingers brushing the tops of Ryan’s thighs before he finds his hips. It’s barely a touch. He swallows and says, “Just— then come with me.” His voice sounds way too small and he sort of hates it. It’s hard to avoid Ryan’s eyes when he’s so close so he doesn’t quite manage it.  
  
It makes sense anyway, he tells himself. They’ll save the warm water. Maybe it will last for a little while. And he doesn’t want to be by himself.  
  
~  
   
Ryan’s eyebrows shoot up. “W-with you?” He stammers, physically, over the idea. Looks away. “With you, like in the bath?” It shakes him loose, temporarily from the panic. And then there’s this intense surge of uncertainty, of nervousness, that doesn’t feel like it belongs in this dead world. Shane does that sometimes—makes him feel things that he felt before, things that have too much color for this place.  
   
It makes sense. It would save water and they could both… use it. He glances at the bathtub. “Is it—is there enough space?” Jesus, Shane’s given him a fucking blow job. He shouldn’t be this keyed up over it. He’s pretty sure Shane’s not looking at him, which is fine, because Ryan’s not looking at him either.  
   
“I mean—fine, if that’s…” He laughs. It’s too breathy, nervous. Shane seems like he needs this. It’s just a… comfort thing, maybe. Ryan’s making it more than what it is. But Shane’s got his hands on Ryan’s hips, and his brain knows it. His brain doesn’t know anything but it. “That’ll work.”  
  
~  
  
Shane lets out this relieved exhale like it’s forced out of him. “Okay,” he breathes, and there’s so much relief in it. He knows he should pull back, he should— start the water running or something, anything, but he doesn’t want to move away from Ryan. He feels shaky all over again, but it’s different this time.  
  
“I’m— my legs bend you know. I can bend them.” He lets his lips brush Ryan’s hair at the edge of his temple. “I’m not actually a tree.”  
  
He really does want to sit down. He shuts his eyes, but it makes him feel unsteady so he opens them again and carefully pulls back.  
  
~  
   
Ryan is going to catch on fire. He’s definitely never taken a bath with a person before. Is he supposed to make conversation? Do people talk? They would have to, right? They can’t just sit and stare at each other for however long. How long are they supposed to do this for? There should be written rules for this. Shane probably knows them. He probably takes bath with people all the time.  
   
Ryan laughs, because he doesn’t really know what else to say. And Shane isn’t a tree. No, Shane is definitely not a tree. He is a full scale person with lips on Ryan’s hairline and hips and thighs—everything else. Just like Ryan. Shane pulls back, eventually.  
   
“Okay,” he repeats. Ryan starts the faucet, gnaws on his lip like he can work it off. He desperately needs to sit down, but before he can sit down, he has to take his clothes off. He’s been naked in front of Shane before. But not in a bathtub. It feels more vulnerable. More exposed.  
   
He sets it to hot and waits. There’s a well of energy in him that’s making him move too much, making the aching more achy. He looks back at Shane. He still looks unsteady. But Ryan is too. Ryan can barely stand too.  
   
It’s okay. This is all okay.  
  
~  
  
Shane’s got his eyes on the floor, wishing he could feel this... better, fuller, not mixed with all this anxiety and uncertainty and fear. He reaches back and pulls his sweater off slowly and drops it on the floor, followed by his shirt. Mistake. It’s been damp against his skin so long it was almost warm. He’s colder now. 

He meets Ryan’s eyes, feels his heart skip a little. He thinks that this should be nicer or at least less... difficult, but none of that takes away from the anticipation, not bad this time, of seeing him like... like that first night in the cabin in Illinois.

This room, the bathtub, it’s reminding him of that, now.

“Your... you have good collarbones,” Shane says. “They’re very... I noticed he first time I met you. That they were good.”

He’s just going to pretend he’s delirious with fever or something, that’s his excuse for saying something like that out of nowhere. And he feels like he needs to say something.  
  
~  
   
Shane is so skinny. Ryan can see every rib—and there’s this want in him to run his fingers down them. It’s weird, especially given it ought to be worrying. They don’t eat enough. Shane hasn’t eaten enough, and… he is not allowed to die while he’s starving. It’s not fair. Shane is mostly leg. His torso is shorter than expected, and Ryan’s taking too long assessing it. He looks away.  
   
Ryan has no idea where his head’s at. He’s trying to get it straight when Shane starts talking about his collarbones. Ryan reaches to touch them, instinctively, because Shane always pays the weirdest compliments. But this one’s more random. He wishes Shane had waited for him to take off his shirt, because now it seems like an even bigger thing.  
   
“I, uh… thanks.” One side of his mouth smiles as he shakes his head. “Should I compliment your sternum or something? That seems about on par.” But he doesn’t know what to say about Shane—just that looking at him makes Ryan want like he’s never wanted. It opens a hole in him that he needs _filled_.  
   
He remembers being nervous through the door back at the cabin—scared of being exposed even knowing Shane was in the same house. He blows out a breath of air and slips his shirt over his arms and onto the floor. The cold air makes him shiver. Shane must have taken his sweater off last night because it’s not here, and Ryan hasn’t been back upstairs to look.  
   
He checks the bath water again. It’s getting warmer. Which means they need to get in before they start wasting it. Which means… pants. He puts the stopper in the drain. Okay. He sighs and pulls his shoes off, then drops his pants, but not his boxers—because somehow he’s clinging to them. He looks up at Shane, hands on the waistband.  
   
“You said you wanted to have a lot of first things with me. This is definitely a first. Bathing with someone.”  
  
~  
  
His eyes are on Ryan who is so much smaller than he ever realized somehow, especially compared to that first night, when he was... maybe eating better, or hasn’t been eating poorly for so long. Back when he still... well, it was closer to having Jake than now.

Shane feels like a lot of that is his fault. It makes him fucking sad, and he wants to apologize, even though he’s been doing his best, maybe he could have done more, but then—

Then Ryan says that, about firsts, and Shane catches his breath and says “oh,” and it’s not just soft, not so cryptic. Fuck, that _means_ something to him.

“Yeah,” he says, “I’ve actually never... I haven’t either.


	21. Part 21

Part 21

Ryan crosses his arms, partly against the cold, partly like he can stop some of the vulnerability that he’s feeling. Because he’s not wearing pants—and he can’t quite convince himself to go further. So he looks at Shane, tries to find a way to steel himself here. Damn it, this shouldn’t be hard. This shouldn’t… there’s so many things going on in his head that shouldn’t be. He just needs Shane to be warm and healthy and okay. The rest doesn’t matter.  
   
“That’s good,” he says, even though he’s not quite sure why it is good. Maybe because it should abate some of this ineptitude he feels. Shane feels so worn, so experienced, in all these ways that Ryan isn’t. “Or bad, because we’re both being awkward.”  
  
~  
  
Shane laughs softly and says “Yeah, sorry.” He drops Ryan’s eyes and prays silently that he won’t pass out while he’s trying to remove his pants. He sits on the edge of the tub to unlace his boots and take them off, then stands up again, close to the wall just in case. This way, if he falls he won’t reach for Ryan because then they’ll both fall.

He undoes his jeans and pushes them off, underwear, too, and finally feels the heat in his skin. _Helpful_ , Shane thinks. At least he doesn’t feel so cold in this moment. He manages to step out of them without cracking his head open though, so bonus. He’s doing great. He doesn’t look at Ryan, just presses one hand against the wall to keep himself up as he steps into the water. “Come on,” he says, eyes flickering to the vicinity of Ryan’s chest, not quite meeting his eyes.  
  
~  
  
Ryan doesn't know what to do with his eyes. Or his mind. Or the way his heart's beating. He's never seen this much of Shane. All of Shane. He's all pale bones. His legs look even longer like this.I Ryan licks his lower lip. There's something frail, almost delicate, and he just wants to touch him.

Shane was wobbly with his clothes. Ryan wonders if he should've helped. This is all so foreign to him. He drops his boxers and tries not to collapse. From nerves or exhaustion or something else.

He steps into the tub, leaning on the wall further back from Shane. The water is warm. It sears across his toes. He takes Shane's arm to steady him. Or to touch him. 

"Okay..." He tries to keep his eyes on Shane's face, but that's worse. So he just looks at his shoulder. This is too much. "You sit first. Do you... Can you make it?"  
  
~  
  
He’s shivering and he’s really not sure that it has all that much to do with the temperature of the water or the room.

“If I can’t, do you promise to never tell anyone after I split my skull open?” It’s not a great joke. Not at all. He wishes he could take it back with such ferocity that it allows him to lower himself into the water without too much mishap. He holds Ryan’s arm as carefully as he can, lets the touch flow from his elbow to his wrist. It’s not even hot but it’s warmer than Shane’s been in what feels like a long time. Maybe since Arizona.

He gets his fingers around Ryan’s and doesn’t tug, just holds on. “Okay, careful.” His eyes flicker up and Jesus it’s a lot. He knows Ryan, knows what he looks like but not really all at once. His heart’s pounding out this rhythm that makes everything sound like he’s underwater and so he tries to keep everything else steady. His breathing, his fingers, Ryan. But Shane’s shoulders shake, fighting but not containing this full-bodied shudder that’s everything to do with Ryan.

It’s _everything_ to do with Ryan.  
  
~  
   
He forces a laugh at Shane’s joke. He really shouldn’t be as affected by it—but it tugs at him. Just like Shane as he gets down into the water. It’s not very high yet. He’s still not sure what to do with his eyes. Or his hands. But Shane handles that for him because he holds onto Ryan’s hand after he’s down.  
   
“Okay…” Ryan says it just to say something. There’s this heartbeat in him, too hot to breathe around. A thousand wants crash like colors inside his chest. He lowers himself, facing Shane, so that their legs are just a mess between them. “I haven’t even—” He’s talking against just to stop the awkwardness. To stop his eyes wandering and his fingers from reaching. “The apocalypse is definitely a good campaign for baths. Before it, I don’t think I’d taken one since I was eight or something.”  
   
He meets and holds Shane’s eyes. There’s heat from the water—it’s good, warm in a way he hasn’t been in a while and his muscles relax in it. Strain and ease in spurts where the water coaxes them.  He really has no idea what to do.  
  
~  
  
“I was always more of a jacuzzi tub kind of guy,” Shane says and Ryan is so freaked out, so uncertain looking that Shane flicks the water at him gently with his free hand a couple times.

This is somehow simultaneously so strange, so foreign — and so calming. He feels better knowing Ryan isn’t going anywhere, that he isn’t going to leave Shane alone in cooling water to just... shiver and worry. “You’re stupidly gorgeous,” Shane says, sudden, unexpected, squinting at him.

It feels too small when Ryan’s once compared Shane’s bone structure to ancient buildings, but his brain feels like it’s melting. He’s still tired, but he feels better, or maybe just calmer. He can relax a little now that he’s not tensed against the cold.  
  
~  
   
Shane splashes him and Ryan wrinkles his nose, flicks a little bit of water back but doesn’t take it further than that. They do not need to lose all their water in a five-year-old splash war.  
   
Then Shane calls him gorgeous, and Ryan makes this kind of startled noise, certainly not a laugh, but not entirely separate from one. Because Shane is complimenting him, and he doesn’t know what to do with it. Whether it’s his collarbone or just… this general… thing, that he does. He did it before at the department store. Called Ryan beautiful. Ryan can barely remember the context, but he can still hear the words. And now here he is again. Saying this.  
   
He could normally hold his own. But he’s so off-balance, panicked about this looming future, and vulnerable in a way he’s a little bit afraid of. He trusts Shane—but this is entirely new. He looks at Shane for a long time—the line of his shoulders and neck, the almost fluorescent _white_ of his skin. Like Shane’s carved from alabaster—something surreal, that Ryan has willed into existence from this fucked world.  
   
But he’s not. He’s not because he is, human. He’s got freckles, moles—one on his cheek, on his neck. And the place under his eyes is so dark. Like he’s half-submerged in it. Fuck, Ryan wants to kiss him. He almost does, twitches—but he definitely can’t. His tongue is still smashing into his teeth, reminding him it’s bitten every other word he speaks. It wouldn’t be safe.  
   
Besides, he’d definitely make an idiot of himself trying to traverse this tangle of limbs between them. Impale himself on Shane’s knee or something. And as the water rises, his muscles, and the bruises along his back and arms, feel like they’re turning his whole person into gelatin.  
  
“You’re—you too, you know.” He catches his eye for a second and looks away, because this is truly the most vulnerable he’s ever felt.  
  
~  
  
It’s slips through him like silk, soothing all these jagged places inside and out until he doesn’t feel like a fucked up collection of limbs anymore. Until he actually believes it or, at least, believes that Ryan thinks so. 

To be honest, Shane’s never been overly aware of his own body except when his joints hurt, or beds are too small, or it’s impossible to find pants that fit, or the collars of his shirts gape awkwardly at the nape of his neck because of his awful posture. He’s been aware of what he could clothe it with until he liked the result, and how he could use it with other people but he’s never really been aware of it as a part of him. Not like this. Not like it’s something he should really give a shit about.

He looks up at Ryan, but only catches his eyes a second before Ryan looks away. Shane’s eyes are dark with something. Maybe fever or this need for Ryan or his own wildfire pulse, taking over all of him in this heat he can feel that doesn’t feel bad. It feels like a breakthrough.

“Well,” Shane says, too soft, too vulnerable. “Obviously.”

He’s too good at dry humor, at sarcasm. His voice only shakes a little with something like laughter or this overwhelming fucking love.

It’s not— it wasn’t obvious, ever. It just never mattered all that much before Ryan. Shane reaches, circles his fingers around Ryan’s calf in the water, just above his ankle — the leg that was broken, and traces the line of his shin bone with his thumb, like he can find all the broken places and put them back in place, but he’s already done it once.  
  
~  
   
Shane has always seemed detached from himself. Like one of those people that doesn’t care about the way he looks—any of it. Certainly not the way Ryan does. He carries himself like sometimes he just forgets he has a body, even with all the careful motions attached to having the limbs he has. He holds it like smokers hold cigarettes, like he’s barely holding it at all. No grip, just somehow it stays.  
   
But then he says this, and there’s a sudden self-consciousness to it. It’s a joke, because that’s what both of them do. They joke when they feel uncertain. That’s probably why almost everything Ryan says lately is a joke—but this one, it makes Ryan want to do more than look at him. It makes him want to say more than you too, but he doesn’t know what else to say.  
   
He laughs, and it’s more genuine than when Shane joked about splitting his head open. But it’s as soft as the words out of Shane’s mouth. Gentle. Shane’s hand doesn’t startle him, for once, when it circles his calf, even his fingers over Ryan’s shin. But it trills through him, until goosebumps rise along his neck that have nothing to do with the cold.  
   
He sets his hand on Shane’s knee, runs a thumb along it. He’s starting to settle into this, as much as he’s going to, maybe. “Yeah.” He meets Shane’s eyes and brings his eyebrows up, almost like it’s meant as encouragement. “Obviously.”  
  
~  
  
Shane holds his eyes, swallows, and the moment is a little too long before he reaches to shut the tap off, because the tub is finally full enough. 

Silence surrounds them again, familiar but strange because of all the things it means. Shane takes Ryan in, bruised eyes, like he can read all the places his heart is bleeding in the darkness of his gaze. 

Shane wishes he knew how to take these moments and make them last, be in them, without worrying, always, _what happens next?_

Ryan makes him more present than anyone else he’s ever known, and he thinks that if it were before all this, before zombies, Shane would have pushed and pushed at the edges of that comfort until it tore. To try and see if Ryan really would stay. Because Shane was stupid and... maybe he would have thought that he didn’t deserve someone so gentle.

But now they face losing one another every single day, every other moment and Shane—

Shane thinks the words he wants to say for the thousandth time in his head but every time he tries it’s like he can’t breathe at all. Because if he just keeps waiting for the right moment, the next one, maybe that can will that moment into existence. And the one after that and after that and after and after, until they have so much time.

Shane’s eyes fall from Ryan’s to his fingers on Shane’s knee, he pushes slightly into that touch because Ryan doesn’t touch him, like he’s afraid of something, and Shane wants him to know he can. 

He knows he’s difficult. 

He backs out a lot, like he just did by looking away, because he thinks Ryan’s going to see everything in his face, because he feels like he half knows what that encouragement means, because he’s scared of what it means to take all the possible future moments he’s lined up as protective measures for them both in order to say these three particular words, and pushes them all into this, right here. 

Right now. 

His mind is trying, glitching over to another subject, trying to get him off of this, because he’s frightened, but he should he. It’s fucking zombies and he’s trying so hard to craft this protective web around them but it’s made of gossamer, and it’s so so fragile. He knows it won’t keep the zombies out.

He gives in to the glitch. It’s marginally less terrifying.

“Question,” he says to Ryan. “Have you ever... have you had seizures before?”  
  
~  
   
That’s certainly a weird question to be asked. Even if they weren’t naked in a bathtub together—it would be weird. Ryan draws back a little, kind of a flinch from the question. Because there’s probably a reason for it.  
   
“Uh, no…”  
   
He sets his hand on top of the water so it ripples around him, tickles his palm and the pads of his fingers. It’s easier than doing anything else. Than thinking about where to move or what to do or why Shane’s asking about seizures. Or analyzing whether Shane looks better—because he does, maybe, but not enough. And there’s a fear in his eyes—this thing he’s trying to fight off, just like when Ryan knew he was sick. Because problems consume Ryan, but Shane… Shane consumes problems until he wears them like a second skin.  
   
Seizures. Hilariously, it’s easier to focus on that—something removed from losing Shane, somehow, than it is on anything else. “Why?”  
~  
  
He exhales, some relief in that, and shakes his head a little. “I just... you had one, I think, last night. It was probably just from the fever, you know, but I wondered if you— but okay.”

He’s been thinking about medicine and what he would do if it happened again, because he hadn’t know this time. “I just wanted to know what I... or, if you feel shittier than you expected that’s probably why.” 

He hates remembering it. It was terrifying. All the times he thought it was over, and it wasn’t, and then the time he thought— really thought that that was the end. Shane pulls away a little and cups some water in his hands, scrubbing his face, pushing his fingers through the tangles of his hair so that he doesn’t look at Ryan’s wrists and think about how much better off they’d be if he hadn’t been tied up during the convulsions.  
  
~  
   
“Yeah, I…” He’s pretty sure it wouldn’t be a coincidence. A seizure in the middle of all that. So unless it permanently fucked up something in his brain, he should be fine. He watches Shane scrub at his face. “Probably the fever.”  
   
It makes sense too. Why his muscles feel stiff enough to be dry wall. Why everything hurts so bad. Scary, but at least it makes sense. That must have been terrifying. A seizure would absolutely… well, it’s not hard to think what it would seem like. “Thanks for not—I mean, that was probably horrifying, given the circumstances.”  
   
It’s stupid that Shane let it go that long, but if he hadn’t, Ryan would be dead. Ryan should absolutely be dead, but Shane stuck it out. Maybe Ryan can too. Maybe they’ll both be okay.  
   
Jesus, he doesn’t want Shane to be sick. He doesn’t want to have to watch Shane have a seizure. He closes his eyes and sinks into the water as much as the weird spatial situation will let them.  
   
He thumbs over the bruises on his wrists. It’s soothing, in the water, and he hates that he can feel the heat dragging away from them. “Do you—we should probably use the soap?”  
   
They left it on the sink, so just throws his head back and sighs for a really long time.  
  
~  
  
Shane looks over and says “Ah, motherfuck...” ridiculously glad for the distraction. He looks at Ryan, way lower than he is in the water because the tub is only so big. Their legs are so tangled.

“I can... I  mean I can probably reach it without even getting out...” he stretches an arm out towards the sink as of to demonstrate how long it is, but it’s going to involve standing, which he’s really not looking forward to. 

Now it’s his turn to raise his eyebrows at Ryan. “Unless _you_ want to stop sighing dramatically and try.”  
  
~  
   
The way Shane’s been getting up and down, Ryan’s not sure he should let him get up. It’s progress, really, that Shane’s giving Ryan the opportunity to try. “I can get it… it’ll take you forty-five minutes to stand up, anyway.” He doesn’t love getting up, freezing and soaking wet—and, obviously completely naked.  
   
But it’s better than Shane having to do it. He puts an arm on the side of the tub. It quivers like it used to after long arm workouts. But he uses either side of it to push himself up. It’s quick, so the burn in his arm doesn’t last too long. He wobbles, goes a bit lightheaded for a second and then looks at the sink like it spit on him.  
   
There’s a numbness through his muscles—abating the ache for a few seconds before it snaps back into him like a rubber band. Shane may have been able to reach this without stepping out, but Ryan absolutely cannot. He steps out with one leg and presses his other knee (the shitty one) onto the side of the tub.  
   
He reaches, has to really push himself, but he gets a hand around it and pulls back. He tries to be careful. It doesn’t work. His foot slips back so he almost falls bodily on top of Shane, catches himself on the ledge with his arm. The impact his hard, but it doesn’t register past the embarrassment, frustration—whatever this is.  
   
He’s managed not to crush Shane but now their chests are close, and so is everything else. There’s a lot of skin, above the water, beneath it—it’s all painted with water, glistening. Ryan hisses in what might be pain, might be something else. He needs to get his body up and away from potentially falling on Shane (into Shane) because now is _not_ the time, but it’s not cooperating. So instead he just presses a finger to Shane’s mouth before he can open it and says, “Don’t say anything. I got the soap.”  
   
He regrets that, because now he’s feeling Shane’s mouth—this thing he’s been thinking too hard about since Shane took his fucking sweater off. And it’s not quite wet, but almost damp with heat, steam, maybe.  
  
~  
  
Shane gasps so his lips are parted when Ryan presses his finger to them. He’d reached for him when he fell but he wasn’t fast enough. Somehow Ryan hasn’t slammed into Shane’s knees so that’s good for both of them, his knees are sharp. It means he’s between Shane’s thighs, though, and _oh God, fuck, fuck_. A lot of water sloshes over the side.

Shane lets out this bark of a laugh, slightly panicked, definitely overwhelmed. The chaos settles and leaves him breathlessly panting against Ryan’s skin, almost against his chest.

His eyes are still bright with humour, but darkening like a storm coming. Something in him aches. Jesus, he wants to kiss him so badly. He wants to press his open mouth to the water rolling down Ryan’s skin. There’s a drop that slides over the curve of the top of Ryan’s upper lip and clings there, glistening, and Shane tracks it with his eyes before it falls.  
  
Shane meets his eyes again, and flicks the tip of his tongue against Ryan’s finger, lingering just long enough to be on purpose, daring. He’s as still as he can be beneath him.  
  
~  
  
Need flares up in Ryan. He hates how good Shane is at these games, how bad he tends to be. But Shane's playing them so he must feel better, kinda.

Ryan just wants him to feel better. He sets the soap on the edge of the tub. He watches Shane's mouth too long, thinks about tongue and teeth and touch. Shane's eyes are dark, but in a way that reflects all the light too bright. It's dangerous, but not angry. Ryan adjusts so his thigh brushes Shane's beneath the water. He lets it and withdraws his hand from Shane's mouth. He places it, instead, on his chest and presses into the indention in his breastbone.

He leans into the way their thighs touch, moves forward with his push so water clinging to Ryan's skin could reach Shane's. He smiles, close-mouthed, his own eyes stoked with the water's heat. And his.

"I'm not above drowning you in sixteen inches of water." His voice is too low, it tears until the intent is something new. Just as threatening.  
  
~  
  
Shane twitches, tilts his head, acutely aware of all the places they’re touching. He reaches up and brushes the tips of his fingers down the front of Ryan’s throat, just right of his adam’s apple. “I thought you were the one who liked not breathing,” he ventures, tentative, so cautious, and he’s pushing. He wants to push, but he wants to do it right. There’s goosebumps all down his neck and shoulders. 

He’s got his gaze, holds it hard with his own as he spreads his fingers soft, light, over his throat. “And I can feel all the places you’re alive.”

And he is. He is so, so alive and Shane burns beneath that knowledge. That he still has him, has this. That he could put his ear to Ryan’s chest or his lips against his throat, and feel the blood flowing through him. Or he could press just had enough into his neck, like he does now, to feel it against his fingertips.  
  
~  
   
Shane’s touch spikes through him hotter than his words. He’s pushing back into this. It hums fluorescent beneath Ryan’s skin, his eyes. He draws in this raking, shivering breath beneath Shane’s touch. His hand slides down Shane’s front as Shane’s fingers spread over his throat. It’s involuntary, the way it slides, and he all but hiccups to get it onto Shane’s thigh. To support himself.  
   
Ryan can feel all the places he’s alive too—because Shane presses into them, these rush of pressure that pools in the bows of his throat. His pulse ratchets up, hard, against Shane’s skin so the pressure goes deeper into his chest. Down his throat.  
   
He digs his hand into Shane’s thigh, almost like he’s gasping. But he isn’t. He isn’t making any sounds—he’s just holding Shane’s gaze like it’s an order he can’t disobey. He leans into Shane’s hand, and there’s so much touch. Whispers of touch that pushes Ryan’s mind to cinders. But the grip on Shane’s thigh stays, tight, desperate—and his eyes don’t move.  
   
“I like breathing.” He catches his lip beneath his teeth, like he doesn’t know why he’s talking or where it’s going. “When you let me.”  
  
~  
  
Those words rattle through him, swell there, and Shane surges forward until his mouth is almost almost touching Ryan’s. It’s like all the times before — before Ryan kissed him outside a store in some other state, some different life that is somehow connected to this one. It seems like so long ago, but it isn’t. It isn’t at all. 

He’s still got his hand around Ryan’s throat, but it slides around to the back of his neck and into his hair, and pulls his head back a little. He’s shaking. He thinks he can feel Ryan shaking too but he isn’t sure. It’s like their muscles are held together by twine, fraying. Shaking where he holds himself up by one arm, Shane drops his face to Ryan’s neck and just presses into him. It’s not a kiss, really. “Ry,” he says softly, but he doesn’t know where he’s going with it.

Jesus he wants him so much. Ryan’s hand on his thigh is sending sparks through him, hot and unrelenting, and fuck, it’s not like he can hide it, but exhaustion creeps beneath this hotter need. He exhales shakily against his damp skin.

“Let’s just... uh, fuck, I...” he loosens his fingers in Ryan’s hair and just holds onto him, presses him closer, spreading his fingers between Ryan’s shoulder blades.  
  
Ryan lets his head rest on Shane’s chest. Beads of water, of heat, make it slippery—shining, almost. A breath brings Ryan’s lips closer so they brush against it, bottom lip clinging, dragging before he closes his mouth. He’s still holding himself up. It’s hard, but he really doesn’t want to completely drop on Shane. So much touching so fast may actually kill them both. Zombie viruses be damned.  
   
He shouldn’t, but a small part of him feels like he may have won this round of this game they play. So often it’s Ryan who’s overwhelmed—and as much as he wants, as much as he needs to keep going—he’s tired. Shane’s tired. And, this time it didn’t have to be him who crumpled.  
   
It’s just Shane’s fingers on his back, the same and so much gentler than just a few seconds ago, on his throat. Ryan pants, trying to catch his breath against Shane’s skin. His limbs shake. Part of it’s Shane—wanting Shane, all of this, and some of it is just the effort.  
   
“I’m going to ignore the fact that you said _let’s just fuck_ , because I’m a great person.” He picks his head up like it weighs a thousand pounds, meets Shane’s eyes. “I went to all that effort to get the soap. We should probably actually wash off before this water gets cold.”  
  
~  
  
“That’s not— okay, that’s really not what I meant. Jesus— Jesus Christ.” Shane’s breathless with something, several things maybe. He shifts, swallowing at the slick press of Ryan’s fingers on his thigh and how close that is to this heated, aching place that pulses all the way up his spine to tighten his shoulders.

He meets Ryan’s eyes, and nods a little as he looks away because it’s too much. “Okay. Here, you got it?” He asks, shifting to sit up more, help Ryan sit up.  
  
~  
  
Ryan slides his hand off Shane's thigh, so it's against the floor of the bath. He pushes himself up and back. It's so difficult, stupidly difficult but he gets back into a sitting position and massages his bicep where it was holding him.

It pulses through him, relief and want. Ache. Ache that bites down to the center of him. Beneath his waist. Far, far too exposed right now. He laughs because it's easier than this breathy, heaving silence.

"Always." He keeps the smile, partly, even though Shane's not looking at him. "You wanna go first?"

~  
  
Shane almost smiles. It’s this thing that sits at the edges of his mouth like a promise, but he’s trying to keep a straight face when he looks back at him because God, he’s so... he’s so endeared, always, by Ryan, it’s ridiculous. 

“Are you just going to sit there and watch me soap up? This isn’t a peep show, Ryan,” he says, but he reaches up to grab the shower head, thankfully detachable, and ducks his head to get his hair wet.

The thing with liquid soap is that it’s slimy, it doesn’t lather right, but he’s not in a place to complain about it. Still, he’s sulking slightly as he pours some into his palm and scrubs it through his hair. It’s very tangled so he has a hard time. It’s what he’s always wanted, really, to be gross and exhausted and incapable of basic human tasks, and distractingly desperate on top of all of it, in front of the person who’s figured out how to make him feel things.  
  
~  
  
Ryan hisses in this blade of air and looks away. "That's not--no, I wasn't...fuck you." A peep show, Shane says like taking a bath together wasn't his idea. Ryan does watch him, though. It's kind of cute, how irritated he is at the soap. Ryan almost makes a joke but doesn't, because he likes the way Shane looks. His expression. Childish in a way he doesn't often let it be.

But okay, Ryan's making it weird. He grabs the soap after Shane uses it. He's not sure if he should offer to help. If that's a normal thing to do, in the bath with someone.

"You got it?" Ryan asks it gently, reaches like he might take the shower head. He's offering but keeping his own arms up long enough to handle his own hair is going to be a mess. They're still shaky, and the range of motion on his shoulder is... not great.  
  
Still, he half extends his hand, to see if Shane wants help. Or if he'll let Ryan help.  
  
~  
  
Shane misunderstands the gesture or he knows he’s too close to the edge of this want to let Ryan get his fingers into Shane’s hair like in the bathroom — man, it feels like years ago now, but it was only a few months.

So he hands the shower head over to him so he can wash his own hair, and draws back a little, wipes at a bit of soap with his wrist as it slides down over his forehead.  
  
~  
  
Ryan blinks a few times, potentially aggressively, because dealing with Shane is more exhausting than having a seizure. Which is something he can now saw. He takes the shower head and tries not to sulk, tries not to hurt at how hard Shane rejects him when he decides to. 

Ryan pulls on the shower head and ducks his head. His arm protests the movement, so he winces, but gets it wet. And now Shane's handed him this thing too early and Ryan has it and he hasn't even used the soap.

"Uh, here, for just..."

He gives it back in this awkward extension, and gets some of the soap into his hand. He runs it over his shoulders and chest first, because it's easier. He's trying not to look at Shane because if he looks then he's going to want to touch and Shane's clearly not in a being touched mood.

He exhales and brings his hands up to push the soap through his hair. It's the worst. Because his hair is that kind of dirty that resists, through tangles and supernatural entities and god knows what else. His arms quiver with exhaustion, which would be completely manageable if his shoulders weren't grinding in their sockets like gears knocked out of alignment. 

He doesn't realize how hard he's gritted his teeth until he brings his hands down. And his jaw sinks into the release. He's not done. But he's tempted to pretend he is. It's the apocalypse, not a job interview. He wipes some of the soap from his forehead and press his hand into his hair again. 

He doesn't have that much hair. There can't be that many tangles.  
  
~  
  
Shane watches from the corner of his eye as he takes the shower head back and rinses his own hair it as best he can at the awkward angle, and with only one hand. He should have asked for help. 

Eventually, he shuts the water off again and puts the shower head back in its hook on the wall, pushes his wet hair off his forehead, then reaches for Ryan without asking, without the gentle question Ryan offered him. Shane knows he‘s unfair, he knows, somewhere, that it’s hurtful but that’s not what he’s trying to do. And watching Ryan’s arms shake is awful, it gnaws at some central part of him until it hurts. 

“Here,” he says, “what’re you doing?” Like Ryan’s never washed his hair before. He gets his fingers into it, deep and pressing, brushing away Ryan’s.  
  
~  
  
Shane just gets his hands in Ryan's hair without any sort of preamble and Ryan hates it. For one, because it's this thing he can't do, for two, because Shane did it fine without him. Ryan grunts, softly, but enough to acknowledge his irritation. Because Shane's asking what are you doing like Ryan's a moron. And Ryan feels like one.

He should pull back, makes like he might, but as much as he hates how he's always the weak idiot in these situations—even when Shane is probably running fever, it feels good. And it's easier to just let his arms drop. They tingle with the effort.

"I was washing my hair," he says, like he needs to prove it. His body's hot from a lot of things at once. "We don't all have three hundred feet of arms, Mr. Fantastic." He's sulking because it's the best he's got right now.  
  
~  
  
“It’s Madej,” Shane says, which is nonsense, and he’s trying very hard not to just get his hands, slick with soap, on Ryan’s face, and his mouth on Ryan’s, and their legs — mostly Shane’s legs — are a mess between them, so he says “Turn around. Face the wall there,” he says, pulling his hands away. 

He _is_ still feverish, but it’s different now. It’s not the sick, draining pull of cold and the exhausting need to shiver and shiver and keep shivering until he falls apart in a clatter of bones. It’s just all this heat, the rapid-beating heart of his body working against whatever is wrong. But Shane’s had fevers as a child. He knows this feeling. He associates it with Finn sitting cross legged on his bed and telling him about what he missed on TV and the shock of cold water, colder for the heat of his body, and the push and pull of blankets at night as he was too hot or too cold to ever get properly to sleep. It’s cold grey mornings in Illinois and waking up to know it had finally broken.

Shane’s at the cusp of it. He’s not sick. Not that way. He’s just Shane... it’s just that means more now than it did before, because of the way Ryan says his name. Because of the way he looks at him, and the way he sulks beneath Shane’s touch and the way his smile manages to feel like it’s breaking Shane’s heart and pulling all the jagged pieces of himself back together all at once.  
  
~  
  
A startled sound escapes Ryan's opened mouth as Shane pulls back. He stares, completely disbelieving, at Shane. He squirms, still scowling, and meets Shane's eyes. "What? Are you a drill sergeant?" 

He's so alive under this command Shane's given him. His body curls and crackles around it like a live wire. He has to make an effort to keep himself from complying, but... he does, at least for a second.

"I could do it." It's this weak, clinging protest. His head's bent, so he's looking even further up at Shane than he has to be. He tries to raise his chin. It only half works. He catches his lip in this nervous grab. It slips, and it almost scares him. Because in this bizarre, almost thrilling way, Shane does. It's not like Ryan thinks Shane would hurt him. He wouldn't. But he could do a thousand things. A thousand things that Ryan would hate, a thousand more he'd like, and he's fascinated, almost enamored, at knowing which it is. Whether it hurts or doesn't.  
  
~  
  
It takes a second, gears clicking, and then he gets it. It’s not that Ryan’s mad at him exactly... it’s something different and Shane feels his stomach flip as his chest fills up with air. This slow, controlled gasp.

“Are you trying to ask me what I’ll do if you don’t?” he asks, voice low. He searches Ryan’s eyes, taking his time to feel this out. It leaves this heavy silence between them, like the pause between lighting and thunder. How far away is the storm?

“What do you want?” He asks it carefully so it doesn’t sound sharp in any way. He narrows his eyes a little, something Ryan said to him one slipping back into his mind unbidden. He reaches out to wipe at a streak of soap just before it reaches Ryan’s dark eyebrow, and he lets his touch linger there, at the corner of Ryan’s eye for a moment. “Hm?”  
  
~  
  
Shane always plays so deep in the truth. It's like when Ryan grabbed his wrist, back at the cabin. And Shane said _what do you want from me?_ Ryan doesn't know what he wants, maybe. He just wants Shane. The rest he's figuring out, what of this is guilt, is begging Shane to take it from him. And what of it is just... Ryan.

"No." Everything is coming out of his mouth too softly. It isn't defensive, but it's almost panicked. "That's not..." But he doesn't know how to finish his sentence. Because it is. On some level, it is. Shane wipes at some soap and let's his touch linger. And it consumes Ryan's awareness. He's flushed from so much more than cooling water. This is a challenge he can't answer. It's unfortunate that he's the one who issued it.

"You know what, I'll just..." He moves, twists himself with as little movement as he can so he's not facing Shane. It's a relief. For more reasons than one.  
  
~  
  
Shane blinks, thinking _Oh, no, I—_ but he doesn’t say it. And suddenly he’s faced with the bare expanse of Ryan’s back and there are bruises on his shoulders and at first Shane doesn’t understand, but then he remembers. He remembers the way Ryan had slammed himself back against the railings, the way he’d jerked and shuddered against them. “Oh— Ryan, _Jesus_ ,” Shane says, and the low tone of his voice is gone to be replaced with something that sounds like it’s his body that’s hurt, not Ryan’s. He touches them gently, spreads his hands over the place like he half expects Ryan to sprout wings and he’s too afraid to touch the places the skin will split. 

How hadn’t he noticed this? Why didn’t he think of it? He’d tried to get him to stop, but he’d been concerned about him hitting his head. This… he’s furious with himself all over again for tying him up. Shane exhales roughly. “Fuck, why didn’t you say something?”  
  
~  
  
Ryan is still trying to get his head on straight. He's as hot and cold as Shane is, with this. With this thing he tugs at, from Shane. He needs to stop or acknowledge it. Really acknowledge it. He's so unsure. Why is he like this?

Then Shane's talking and Ryan has to process what he's saying. Shane touches the back of his shoulder, and it's tender, kinda. "What?" Ryan asks, hoarser than he has been. Because his minds still got Shane's expression locked in it. His question. The other one.

"About what? My arms?" He turns his head like he can see it. He can't. Shane sounds almost pissed. Ryan doesn't know if it's residual from Ryan scrambling away from reality or because Ryan hasn't mentioned whatever Shane's found. "If we're gonna start making detailed observations every time one of us suffers an injury, then we're going to need to sleep at least two hours less." He rolls his shoulder. "It's barely sore. It's fine, or I would've said something."  
  
~  
  
“Oh, okay, bullshit, it’s really... no, it’s pretty bad.” Shane says, but he’s almost talking to himself. He holds both Ryan’s upper arms a moment, near his elbows, then lets him go. “Sorry,” he breathes, touches the side of Ryan’s neck. 

There’s not a lot of room. He slides his arm around his chest and coaxes him back just a little, so he’s between Shane’s legs, but not up against him. He sighs and touches his fingers carefully to Ryan’s forehead, making sure there’s no soap there before he gently pulls his fingers through Ryan’s hair, which is as tangled at his own.  
  
~  
  
"I could get a papercut and you'd say it was really bad." He rolls his eyes. Shane's not wrong. It hurts, but he's seen Shane eyeing him about last night. He feels bad. And it's absurd that he would, that he didn't kill Ryan was... lucky. Anyone else would've. He should have.

He breathes unevenly as Shane scrubs his fingers along his scalp. It's so much touch, and Ryan's keeps wanting, wanting, wanting. He wants Shane to drop to his neck again, to hold him tighter. 

But not now. His shoulders are burning. Shane's still shaky. And Ryan's tongue is split open. And this is okay. It's enough.  
  
~  
  
“No I wouldn’t,” Shane retorts, something petulant beneath the softness in his tone. His arms feel like they weigh about a thousand pounds each, but they’re not shaking like Ryan’s were. The water is cooling off and the relief, the feeling-better that came with being warm for the first time in forever is fading away, but still… Ryan is a good distraction.  
  
While there’s still a film of liquid soap on his hands, Shane lets his fingers slide down from Ryan’s hair once he’s finished working the soap through, and lets them slide down Ryan’s neck and out over his shoulders. He’s very careful with the bruises, trails his hands down on either side of Ryan’s spine, drawing away to just his fingertips at the middle of his back before he runs out of soap and space. He’s too limby for this tub, for most things, so how is it that he’s figured out how to fit so well around Ryan.  
  
He’s still for a second, not touching him except where his thighs brush Ryan’s sides, then he reaches back for the shower head again and says “Close your eyes, tip you head back, here. I’ve got you.”  
  
There’d been a time when he couldn’t say those words, and then those words started meaning something else. Something more than just _I’m here_ , but it still isn’t enough.  
  
~  
   
Ryan shivers, almost imperceptibly—he’s trying to stop it, as Shane runs his hands down his neck, his shoulders. Like part of Shane heard these raging thoughts in Ryan’s brain, just enough to leave him with a taste of it. Enough to plunge him back into it. He focuses on evening his breathing as Shane runs his hands down his back, and then he’s not there—and the emptiness is black and freezing. And he’s aware of the heat fading out of the water, of his own body.  
   
Ryan forgets he needs to get the soap out of his hair. He forgets breathing and blinking and everything people do until Shane speaks again. And when he thinks back on the moments before it, he isn’t sure where he was. Not here, not in the apocalypse. But with Shane, just the same.  
   
It’s vulnerable. The things Shane asks for, like they’re nothing, always are. But Ryan’s done all his resisting for today. It earns him questions he isn’t ready to answer, and they’re here now. He may as well listen. “If you dunk me into this water, we’re gonna have problems.”  
   
He doesn’t actually think Shane will, but it’s something to say—some way to break the tension, the thickness, that Shane conjures just by speaking. It must have been like that, for other people too—the way Shane takes hold of a room and wraps his hands around it like he’s got everyone in it by the throat. Or maybe it’s just Ryan. It doesn’t matter. It’s just Ryan now.  
   
_I’ve got you._  
   
He does. He always has.  
   
Ryan lets out a breath, closes his eyes, and tips his head back. There’s nothing particularly relaxed about it, though. His teeth bite together, and his eyes squeeze more than slide shut, shoulders tensed—biting into the rest of him like a teething child. But he does it.  
  
~  
  
“Oh yeah? What’re you gonna do?” Shane asks, trying for playful as he turns the tap on and turns back. 

But he can sees the tension in him, feel it when he touches the edge of Ryan’s jaw. “Shh,” he hears himself say, and touches one hand to his forehead to keep the water of his eyes, and rinses the soap from his hair with the shower head, running his fingers though it gently so the soap runs out of all that dark.

“I think you have some greys,” he murmurs, sliding his thumb over the soaked strands. “Uh oh.”  
  
~  
  
He almost fires back when Shane shushes him. It's uncalled for. Especially after Shane eggs him on. He isn't even saying anything. Still, his shoulders relax a little. For some reason. They relax in Shane grip, under Shane's fingers in his hair.

It's this sort of realization that it's okay, that, at least in this, Shane isn't going to pull back. To look at him too long and see things Ryan isn't ready to. But it reminds him of how sick he was, of how Shane was shivering against the cold. He can't tell now, not in the water, but Shane had a fever. He could...

Then Shane drags him back, talking about Ryan's hair. Irritation scrunches his features, but he doesn't open his eyes. "Yeah, well, stress is a bitch." He doesn't like it. Even though he'll probably never grow old in this world--probably won't make it, he doesn't want to be old. 

~  
  
Shane rinses the soap from Ryan’s shoulders, quiet, not laughing — he’s too far away. He’s thinking about how much he’s changed since he met Ryan, and how it was somehow both like he’d known Ryan all his life and just met him at the same time.

He’s thinking about how Ryan surprises him all the time with his bravery and his humour and the way that smile just breaks across his face like he was always just seconds away from it. All the light in his eyes. He thinks about how Ryan is familiar, a comfort, in spite of all of the things he does that throw Shane, confuse him, break him open at the ribs and breathe something warmer and purposeful into Shane’s anatomical heart and make it mean something more.

He likes this discovery. He likes that no one knows it but him. He likes that he’s got him this close, and that he’s managed to keep him where he couldn’t keep anyone else. He likes that keeping Ryan isn’t hard, like it was with every other person Shane has ever tried for.

And it’s stupid; to care about this absurd, ridiculous, totally normal thing. People go grey, they get older. Ryan is only twenty-eight and sometimes feels worlds younger than Shane and sometimes feels like he’s touched the age Shane feels in his own bones that belies his age (or is it the other way around?) Ryan had two or three grey strands — Shane can’t even see them now with the way the water’s made his wet hair fall. He puts the shower head back on the hook but doesn’t shut it off, and in the white-noise silence, in the rain-sounds it makes into the bath water behind them, Shane presses his face into the peculiar texture of damp hair behind Ryan’s ear and says “I love it,” against the shell of it, and pauses too long because it was so close. _God_ he was so close. His tone changes tracks ever so slightly because he has to keep talking: “You’re gonna look older than me.”

And there’s something in him that wants— _Jesus_ , he wants... he wants that glimmer of a life beyond this one. Or that continues from this one somehow, but there’s a break between now and the future and Shane has no idea how to get there.

He’ll do it though. He’ll do everything he can to get there. And he’ll find out a thousand things about Ryan that only he knows or notices. And they will have so much time. 

Shane can’t separate this fantasy from reality. He can’t, and it alters something in him. Or maybe that change happened a long time ago.

The first time he ever saw Ryan, Ryan was soaked, dark-eyed, cold rain.

 _I really needed you_ , Shane thinks, desperately, lips brushing Ryan’s shoulder almost by accident, clinging to beads of water. He draws back.  
  
~  
   
It’s sudden, like all of Shane’s touches, and soft. Softer than most of them. Shane puts his mouth against Ryan’s hair. It quivers through Ryan like everything Shane does, holds him perfectly still, paralyzed, save that quiet shiver that doesn’t even ripple the water. He closes his eyes, the beginning of a smile quirking against his mouth.  
   
He slides his hand up, so it finds the hard bone of Shane’s shin. He runs his hand up the front of it, idly. Almost lazy. No one has ever made Ryan be still before—that’s why he’s so enamored with it, with being under Shane’s control like he feels like he is. Because he’s still. His mind, his body, his heartbeat—all of it is still. Like there’s been a storm in him since the day he was born, that stopped the second Shane opened that cabin door. Just for a second. And it’s been stopping in beats ever since.  
   
It strikes him. Overwhelms him until he can’t breathe. And he likes it—he likes everything about Shane. Even the way he pulls away too fast, too soon, and follows through approximately forty percent of the time. He hates it. And he loves it. He wants to make Shane move—that’s what he wants. Shane makes Ryan still, and he just wants to make Shane move. He doesn’t know where or how, but that’s what he wants. He wants to fucking move him.  
   
He doesn’t know how to. If he ever has. Ever will. But it’s what he wants.  
   
He scoffs, but it’s quieter than he means it to be. A little lost, even as he smiles. “Oh, keep dreaming—white people age like fucking… avocados. And if I was a skyscraper I’m sure I could find some grays in your dumb hair too.” He tilts his head back, over his shoulder, so he can find Shane in his peripheral.  
   
Water rivulets track down his skin like an echo, a ghost, of these little touches Shane has left him with. And they track Shane too, making his skin too white, too bright in Ryan’s vision. Ryan wants to touch him—even with a hand on Shane’s shin. He wants to touch him in a way he’s never touched anyone.  
  
~  
  
Shane laughs. “Well. There was never much hope for me anyway, you should have seen my baby pictures.”

He takes a breath, eyes on Ryan, the curve of his cheek. Ryan’s always going to be beautiful, that’s just... he will be. At least Shane will think so, but, he thinks, so would the whole fucking world. 

“You almost ready to get out? Water’s getting cold.” He doesn’t move though, because Ryan is touching him, and his hand is so warm, and Shane wants it to last forever like he always does.  
  
~  
   
Ryan pulls his hand away from Shane, reluctantly, but quick, because it’s the only way he knows how to do it. He laughs. Nothing’s funny, necessarily. Shane said the baby thing a while back, and Ryan wouldn’t be surprised if he was a weird baby. He’d be disappointed if he wasn’t. But he laughs because—he’s not ready to get out, not really. It feels like a reality is waiting for him outside, something that’s going to make him sad and anxious and worried. Something’s going to start the storm up again, because in this mess, Shane can only make him still for so long.  
   
Ryan goes to run a hand through his own hair. His shoulder burns, though, and he stops, just wipes at the water running down his face. “Yup. I no longer feel like my skin’s turning into dirt. So I think we’re good.” He massages his wrists beneath the water, taking advantage as long as he can. “You first.”  
  
~  
  
“Hm, _pretty_ sure I went first last time,” Shane says, quickly runs a handful of soap over his arms, chest, cursory, disinterested. He rinses off as best he can while still sitting but he has to do this sometime, and pretend that he doesn’t want to pass out from the very thought of standing, and that standing, re-dressing, in front of Ryan isn’t going to make him feel more feverish than he already does. 

But he’s not going to be fucking shy about it. He takes a breath and uses the edge of the tub to stand, water streaming off of him. He feels like his weight is strangely displaced, so he’s moving slower than usual, even more cautious. “Take a good look now,” he says, like he won’t just burn up beneath Ryan’s gaze. “In a couple years I’m going to look like an avocado and you can look for some other, uh, less overripe white guy.”

He feels about a thousand years old but he manages to get out of the tub without dying. There are no towels. Not smart. He thinks about his pack and the car and then says, somewhat dejectedly, “All my clothes are wet.”  
  
~  
   
Ryan turns to face Shane as he’s getting out. He’s rethinking not going first. He’d originally said it because he was in this weird position that was going to make it hard to get up. But now he thinks Shane may have needed help (because he is secretly a sixty year old man—also potentially feverish.) Ryan half-turns. He does look at Shane. More of him than he ought to. Shane is all limbs and bones—an architecture that Ryan’s never seen before. Like walking into a different country and seeing a whole new way to build things.  
   
Ryan’s eyes catch in places they shouldn’t, probably. Shane’s legs—he’s actually, his thighs are the least small thing about him, the one part that doesn’t just look like skin on bone, and then his hips, and his chest. His shoulders. He looks too long, still half-smiling. He’s about to say something when Shane brings up the towels.  
   
He laughs and it jars him out of the anxiety starting to form. Because, they don’t have any towels. What are they gonna do—fucking air dry?  
   
“Holy shit,” he says, like Shane’s said something groundbreaking. He’s still laughing. He drops his head into his hands. Fucking—now he’s thinking about fighting off zombies without clothes, and… Christ.  
  
Okay, it’s fine. He has dry stuff.  
   
“Do you want—we can dry off with something in my bag. It wasn’t wet, was it? You can probably at least pretend to fit in some of my stuff. That way you won’t have to be wet.” Fuck, he definitely forgot Shane threw all his shit in the mud. Which was Ryan’s fault. And Shane’s got a fever. Ryan knows he does. And he wants it to just be a fever. A fever Ryan can tend to and _fix_. Seizures not included.  
  
~  
  
Shane scrubs a hand through his hair and meets Ryan’s eyes and then goes to see. At least they left their bags close by. Still, it’s absolutely one of the least favourite things he’s ever done a, naked and vulnerable as hell and dripping all over the place in the middle of the apocalypse. He knows none of Ryan’s pants will fit him, he’s not even going to try. He hauls the driest pair of pants he owns out of his own bag and pulls them on hurriedly, then hauls Ryan’s bag back into to the bathroom.

He feels like a kid running up the basement steps. He feels safer with Ryan. And maybe it’s not just because Shane wants to keep an eye on _him_.

He looks at Ryan, eyes searching, then drops his bag and moves closer, reaches out to help him up because he remembers this morning. His knees are bruised from that mishap. “Come on.”  
  
~  
   
He should’ve gone first. He definitely should’ve gotten out first. He sighs. Shane’s offering to help him, when Shane’s the one who washed his damn hair for him. Ryan really ought to be ashamed of him—really, he is. Horrifically.  
   
And now Shane’s going to be clothed while Ryan isn’t—and it’s something else he’s going to think too long and hard about.  
   
“Sorry.” He winces, because Shane definitely told him to stop saying that. But he is. He is sorry. He gets up mostly without Shane’s help. He does have to press into his hand once, because he tips off balance. His legs wobble because his head’s gone light and sprinkled with too few colors. “If I’d known you—if I’d thought about it, I definitely would’ve gotten out first.”  
   
He slides past Shane and dries off and pulls his clothes on in record time. Lost.

He struggles through the pain in his shoulder—the refreshed bruises on his legs from the bathtub fall—just because he needs to have clothes on. He feels better once he’s got his pants over his waist, even if he's still damp, and slightly cold. While he’s buttoning them: “It won’t matter. Overripe or not, I’m not going anywhere. I’ve never liked looking at someone as much as I like looking at you.” He doesn’t meet his eyes as he says it, but he does when he smiles and finishes, “I guess I’m _really_ into avocados. Or this one, anyway.”  
  
~  
  
He catches his breath softly, but he’s collected himself when Ryan looks back at him. Collected himself until Ryan smiles and Shane falls apart all over again  and just had to stand there and stare at him like he’s been temporarily stunned by the sun. 

“Uh, I— that’s just cause you broke your glasses,” he quips. It’s not a very good one. He reaches for one of Ryan’s shirts, the one at the top of his bag and toys with the fabric for a second before he pulls it on over his head. It’s soft, worn out, and it smells like Ryan, but it fits which just makes Shane realize how disproportionate he is and how good Ryan’s shoulder are and Jesus. He glances at himself in the mirror in it, because he wants to see — his wet hair and wild eyes and Ryan’s shirt — he imagines some other life. Going to work or just out to breakfast or something in something of Ryan’s. Because he could. Not because of the apocalypse or because Shane had thrown all his own clothes into the mud.

And then he realizes all at once that he recognizes himself. In his reflection. He feels real.

Or maybe it’s just the fever.  
  
~  
  
"That's not why."

He finishes getting dressed and waits until Shane's got the shirt on. It fits. Which is all kinds of surprising, but most of Shane is in his legs. He drops his eyes to his still-wet pants.

"You could probably try to wear some of my pants. They'd be short, but... dry, at least." He wishes Shane Ryan's shit in the mud, not his own. Ryan was the one he was mad at.

He looks at the bathroom door. Ugh, this means they have to go back upstairs.  
  
~  
  
Shane doesn’t say anything to that, just closes up Ryan’s bag again and shoulders it. “Come on,” he says. “Maybe we can wash stuff tomorrow.” He moves towards the door, then holds a hand out like he expects Ryan to take it. He smiles this half-smile.  
  
“Then we can install an elevator.”  
  
~  
  
Ryan stares at Shane's hand. It's a weird gesture. Open. And it brings this clawing vulnerability back to the surface of Ryan's skin. Ryan meets Shane's eyes and half laughs like he's an idiot.

"That doesn't help you tonight, but fine." He takes his hand, narrowing his eyes and peering at Shane like he suspects him of something.  
  
~  
  
“Oh,” Shane says, and tsks like he’s seventy years old at the way Ryan’s looking at him. “What do you think I’m going to do to you?” he asks fingers wrapped around his.

He pulls him towards the bottom of the stairs and thinks that he was sure that there were less of them this morning.

He gently pushes Ryan forward so he’ll go first, lets go of his hand. Briefly, he touches the small of his back and something flickers over his face, darker, troubled. “Go,” he says, a little too short.  
  
~  
  
Ryan doesn't know what to think or do, so he just doesn't. Shane let's go of his hand at the stairs and pushes him, albeit not hard, toward them. He has no idea how to process. 

It's mean. A little. The way Shane says it. Sudden and mean and... No, it's not. Shane's moody. He always has been.

Ryan focuses on the steps, bites his lip. If he hesitates for too long, he's half worried Shane's going to crane kick him in the head. It's just stairs. He's been walking fine all day.

He grips the railing and pulls himself up one step at a time. He's trying to relax his own mind, because it's bleeding into his legs. And falling right now would just... really make things difficult. He's at his fall quota. He fell into Shane earlier, and again in the bathtub. It's ridiculous.

Shane is tired and not sick. Not like that. Shane is going to be okay. And be moody and interested in Ryan for strange intervals before he's moody again. That's all Ryan wants. This weird, impossible combination lock of a person. Even if Ryan's combination works once a fucking year. He just needs it to stay.

Ryan almost falls forward once. His knee hits a few stairs up, but he works it out and drags himself to the top before he looks back. Shane could fall too and Ryan was so focused on not falling--how is he supposed to help Shane if he falls?

 _Please don't. Please stay._  
  
~  
  
Shane reaches for Ryan fast, like he always does, always tries to do, but Ryan figures it out, doesn’t need him, and together they make it up the steps.

Shane puts down the pack and all but collapses onto the blankets on the floor, rolling into his back in a sharp mess of limbs. “Okay. I’m done for the night.” He looks up at Ryan, craning his neck a little. “Come down here,” he says, voice too soft. He’s cold again, already. His wet hair and his rain-damp jeans. “I’m taking these off, don’t get alarmed,” he says, lifting his hips to push them down. He doesn’t even need to undo them. Fuck, they really need to eat better.  
  
He’s got underwear on beneath them, and his bare legs aren’t much better, but at least he can draw the extra blanket up over himself. It’s the one he had over Ryan’s shoulders last night. He tosses his pants aside and sits up to unfold it, glancing back at Ryan almost like he’s trying not to he caught looking.  
  
~  
  
Shane's fine. Everything is fine. The words are playing on repeat in his head. Ryan stands for longer than he should, watching Shane. Waiting for something to drop. It doesn't, not yet. So Ryan sits down beside Shane.

Shane wriggles out of his pants and Ryan grins. It's ridiculous. It's funny, the way Shane goes about things. "I'm always alarmed when it comes to you."

It's better for Shane to not wear wet stuff. Even though the water in their hair keeps dripping and seeping into their clothes anyway. He helps Shane with the blanket. He needs something over them so he won't be tempted to look. 

"But yeah, sleep." He has his eyes on Shane's lap, not his face. "You look exhausted."  
  
~  
  
“What are you going to do?” Shane asks, voice soft. He’s trying not to shiver. There’s goosebumps on his arms. “Lie down with me at least.”

He doesn’t want to tell Ryan he looks tired, too. But he does, and Shane doesn’t know what to do, still. He doesn’t know how to help. He doesn’t know how to make him feel... safe enough... he doesn’t even know if that’s what’s wrong.  
  
He shifts, reclines a little, pulling the blanket up, and it realizes all at once that Ryan’s taking care of _him_. He looks up at him like he’s startled by it.  
  
~  
  
"What?" Shane's looking at him like he's confused, but Ryan doesn't wait.

Shane's definitely colder than he should be. Ryan's cold, but not... cold like Shane is. Maybe body heat will help.

"Needy." It's playful, which takes some strength to shake out of all the anxiety. But Shane needs him. And he likes that.

He crawls the brief distance to Shane and lies down beside him him. He's trying not to focus on sleep. He's afraid it's going to be worse, the insomnia, with all the new material he's got to work with. But Shane cannot focus on Ryan's insomnia. He needs to sleep. Get better. Because he will.

He tugs Shane down to the blankets. He's definitely warm. Ryan grits his teeth against it, the fear. He grabs Shane tight around the shoulders and pulls him so Shane's head is beneath Ryan's, against his chest.  
  
~  
  
Shane makes this soft muffled sound and forgets what he was going to say about _is it bossy or needy, Ryan? Make up your mind._ He’s ready to contest both, but then he just doesn’t.

He huddles closer, until he’s pressed almost flush against him, and shivers once, hard, like trying to shake it all off at once.

He’s tired. He closes his eyes and lets himself just drift in his thoughts for a while, but he doesn’t feel Ryan relax at all. He feels tense against Shane’s body. Unfamiliar. 

“Ryan,” he says, lowly, lips brushing the hollow between his collarbones. “What are you doing?”  
  
~  
   
Ryan’s face twitches. He’s got his knees staggered, pressed against Shane’s abdomen. He’s not relaxed. Shane can probably sense it, but he _wants_ to be. There’s just too much noise in his head. About death and zombies and sleep and Shane. Like an endless rain of shattered glass. Ryan tugs Shane’s chin up, so he’s looking up at him, then looks down so their eyes connect. It’s always weird to look down at Shane, even more so now, but he doesn’t hate it.  
   
“I don’t know…” He runs one of his hands through Shane’s hair to give himself something to do. It’s definitely still damp, still warm from fever or sickness or anything else. “I hate when you ask me what I’m doing. Because I don’t know—I never know, especially when it comes to you.” He takes a breath. “To this.”  
   
Because he doesn’t know. He has no idea how to help Shane, how to stop doing things that scare him and start doing things that make him feel okay. He walked in to Shane’s life as a burden and he can’t shake the feeling that he still is. That no matter how hard he tries to help, it’ll always be Shane pulling him up—never the other way around.  
  
~  
  
Something tightens in his belly, hot, not unpleasant as he meets Ryan’s eyes. He exhales when Ryan’s fingers comb through his hair, eyes falling shut just for a moment before fluttering open again.  
  
“I’m… anything you want is okay with me.” He frowns a little, trying to figure this out, the right way to say things, but all of it sounds wrong, even in his head. He sighs and slides his fingers lightly over Ryan’s back, up and down and back up the edge of his spine. “You’re not gonna screw up,” he finally settles on, and swallows. “You’re not gonna do something wrong and push me away you… you should just…” He shrugs a shoulder and drops his eyes to Ryan’s chest, lets his hand slid around over Ryan’s side to smooth open like a starfish over the centre of his ribs. “You know I’d do anything you asked me to do,” he says, so softly he’s not sure Ryan can hear it, even as close as they are.  
  
~  
   
It should help. It does, maybe, on a smaller level. Just like the way Shane’s hands on his back, his side. He doesn’t know how to lean into it—how to work this without letting Shane go, or he would. He would do anything to sink further into this, into Shane. But his body just keeps bobbing back to the surface. So all he can do is scratch at the edges of whatever’s beneath it. At Shane, who is so far down, deeper than every fucking crevice in the ocean.  
   
He barely hears Shane. Everything he says, and then the last bit. But he _does_ , he feels it in his fucking veins, and he doesn’t know what to do with it. Because he doesn’t know what to ask. What if he asks something that’s wrong? He shouldn’t have this much power over anything, especially something like Shane. It’s like giving Poseidon’s trident to a fucking trout.  
   
He doesn’t know how to ask. What to ask. When.  
   
It isn’t like Ryan hasn’t asked for things Shane can’t give before.  
   
He keeps one hand in Shane’s hair but brings the other to curl around the hand Shane’s got laid on his ribs. He squeezes. _I love you._ He doesn’t know if he’ll ever say it aloud. He can’t—not without everything that comes with it. And he just can’t drop that on Shane. He can’t drop anything else on Shane.  
   
“Yeah, well, I’m asking you to go to sleep.” He presses his fingers into Shane’s hair again, and then he lets the back of his fingers linger on Shane’s forehead for a beat too long before he goes back through his hair. He’s too warm. And what are the odds that it’s not, after—?  
   
_Just shut the fuck up, Ryan._  
  
~  
  
He laughs a little, but it cracks, and suddenly he’s pulling himself up, up to Ryan’s level so they are exactly eye to eye. 

He doesn’t want to pull his hand from Ryan’s so he presses it into him, pushing him into his back and follows him down. He’s not over him, exactly, but he pushes himself up onto his free elbow so he can look down at him, and Ryan’s leg slides against Shane’s hip.

It lets him get his fingers into Ryan’s hair. “What are you thinking about?” He asks, and there’s this undertone, this desperate thing. Something’s wrong… he can feel it in the air around him, all this anxiety. Shane’s opened up more to Ryan than to almost anyone he’s ever known. He’s probably the last person alive that Shane would open up to. He doesn’t know why Ryan doesn’t, to him. He wants him to.  
  
~  
  
He lands on his back, not quite sure how he got there. Shane's over him, watching him. And in no way sleeping, or even trying to sleep. Ryan huffs a kind of exasperation, stares up at Shane. Shane knows. He's doing a shit job of acting normal, clearly.

He can't look at Shane for long. Instead he stares at the rafters on the ceiling. "I'm thinking about how much the apocalypse sucks. And how much insomnia sucks." His eyes flicker to Shane, too fast. Then he closes them. "I'm scared of everything. Fuck, I'm scared of me. I just don't want to lose you. You are the only thing I haven't lost and it... I can't lose you."

There's things he isn't saying, even as his voice breaks. Things he's afraid of saying. About how it feels like Shane was half put here to give Ryan everything, everything from nothing, just to wrench it away. He doesn't say some part of him feels like the universe wants to punish him. And he doesn't say he thinks he deserves it.

But Shane knows. He said it earlier. He knows Ryan like the sky knows a storm.  
  
~  
  
“Ryan,” Shane says. Sighs it. _Ryan_ , like it’s pulling something from him. And it is. It’s this interconnected thing, it’s tying their wrists together with red rope. It’s all the times Shane’s promised he’s not going anywhere only, apparently, not to be heard or believed. 

His eyes flicker over Ryan’s face, his closed eyelids. He hears the break that was in his voice again and again. Shane leans down and kisses him, impossibly soft, like he did when there was still blood on his mouth, but he doesn’t pull away this time.

“I’m here,” he says, almost exasperated, like it should be obvious, but it’s so soft. Too soft. _Don’t you feel me? I’m right here._  
  
He says it against Ryan’s lips, feels them catch, then he moves to kiss him again, questioning, a little harder. _I’m right fucking here…_  
  
~  
   
He doesn’t open his eyes. He doesn’t completely know Shane’s going to kiss him, but then he does. His lips slide against Ryan’s, heated with fever and something else. Something desperate. It’s almost enough to shake him free of the fear—of everything. It’s just Shane’s lips against his, and he wants it like he wants sunshine and Disneyland and everything he’ll never have again. He would take this over it.  
   
“I’m here,” Shane says it like he’s irritated almost, like it’s so absolutely apparently. Like Ryan didn’t just almost turn into a zombie and eat him. Like he doesn’t have a fever. And Ryan believes him, for a second. Ryan pushes back, leans up, into the kiss just enough. He presses so his lips find the shape of Shane’s. Then there’s his tongue, not hurting, but—there.  
   
_But for how long?_  
   
He pulls back, getting a hand between their mouths so his fingers rest against Shane’s lips. He breathes hard between them so his breath bounces off Shane’s mouth. He keeps his thumb at the corner of them, but gets a hand around Shane’s jaw so the rest of his fingers splay across his cheek. “I fucked my tongue up—it’s still…” He tilts his head. “You could—we shouldn’t…”

~  
  
Shane’s breathing in this way that’s carefully controlled, breathless beneath the inhale and exhale he’s forcing his lungs to take in a slow rhythm. 

“You’re not infected, Ryan,” he says softly.

He doesn’t pull Ryan’s hand away from his jaw like he wants to, just cups Ryan’s cheeks in both hands, leaning down over his chest, careful, careful. 

“I want to kiss you,” he says, just above a whisper, and it’s shaky. He feels strange without it — something they had had for a handful of days and now it’s like... like it’s being taken away from them both.  
  
~  
   
Shane is hovering over him. Threatening this tentative hold he has on logic. Shane wants to kiss him. He wants to kiss Shane, and it seems absolutely absurd not to. Because Shane’s eyes are brown glittering black, and his breath tastes like a sweet wine, and there’s all this extra heat swirling off him, off the hands he’s got on Ryan’s cheeks, wrapping around Ryan. How could Ryan not want to kiss him? How could Ryan not kiss him?  
   
He keeps breathing against Shane, trying to use Shane’s control to make his own. It’s not working—he’s just watching the way Shane’s mouth parts a little after every breath. Jesus, he wants him. He doesn’t think he’s ever wanted anything, not like this. He runs his tongue over his bottom lip, traces the lines of Shane’s face for too long.  
   
“I want to kiss you too,” he says, maybe softer than Shane. “But I was last night, and you don’t know how long it… it stays.” He’d probably sound more convincing if he wasn’t staring at Shane’s mouth like a starving animal, thumb creeping a little further along his lips. If his grip on Shane’s jaw didn’t keep swaying between bringing him forward and back.  
  
~  
  
“No, I don’t,” Shane agrees, eyes on the soft glistening place Ryan’s tongue touches. He’s right. Neither of them know anything. He kisses him again anyway, because he feels that pull, that little hitch in Ryan’s wrist. It’s almost softer than the first time as his lips brush Ryan’s but he touches the tip of his tongue softly against Ryan’s bottom lip and heat flares into his chest.

 _Please, please, please,_ he thinks, even as his fingers soften on Ryan’s cheeks until he’s barely touching him with his fingertips. This time, he doesn’t pull back.  
  
“Ryan,” he whispers against his mouth, just to say his name.  
  
~  
  
Ryan feels himself cracking, sees it like glass under pressure. Shane hasn't pushed like this before. Shane doesn't push at all. He tries for another second to fight this. To be smart about it. His tongue is probably mostly healed... but he can't. This is for Shane. 

Then Shane says his name and he comes undone.

"Fuck it." He whispers it back against Shane and opens his mouth around Shane's tongue. He slides his hand back, back into Shane's hair and pulls him into him. It's not hard, but it's quick. Like if he doesn't move fast enough he'll back out.

~  
  
Shane groans, his whole body presses into him, mouth, chest, hips — like a wave rushing through him, a shivering thrill. 

His nose slides against Ryan’s, and he tilts his head to accommodate this better. He gasps against his open mouth, and then he’s tasting him, the soft slide of the tip of Ryan’s tongue, then teeth. Shane catches his lip between his own teeth but doesn’t bite, doesn’t linger, just dives in again like he’s been starving for him. Maybe he has. 

His fingers slide back over Ryan’s ear, into his hair. “Ry,” he whispers, it slips out, harsh and desperate.  
  
~  
  
No one has ever said his name like Shane does. Like it's something they can taste, like it's something they want to taste. And then he says Ry, and it's like this blanket around Ryan's shoulders. This promise that Shane's okay. That he still wants to be near him, wants to know him. This breathless moan pulls from him, like he wants to answer and can't.

No one's ever kissed him like that either.

Shane tilted his head to deepen the kiss so Ryan let's him. He sucks at Shane's tongue, until his mouth can't taste any deeper, and then he pushes back. He gets a breath of air before he slides his own tongue into Shane's mouth, drags his free hand down to Shane's waistband so he can pull his hips closer.

Ryan's all bruises and broken bones but he needs this, wants to get crushed by this current of heat and hope coursing through Shane. He pushes his body into Shane the same as his mouth, until their bones click like teeth.  
  
~  
  
Shane’s hips hitch sharply against Ryan’s, and it’s all bright and painful for a moment, hip bones, teeth. He doesn’t know when it happened, but he’s directly over him now, bracketing him in with his arms, breathes so their chests press, like he can knit their ribcages together.  
  
 He swipes his tongue over Ryan’s, feels the hotter, coppery place where it’s been bitten. It throws him even harder into this moment, how real it is. He’s never wanted someone like this. He’s doesn’t have the slightest idea what to do with all his limbs, there’s too much of him and not enough of Ryan and he just wants to be closer, closer, closer. Fuck, oh God.  
  
His thumbs are slotted beneath Ryan’s cheekbones, perhaps too tight all of a sudden, holding him in place so he can keep kissing him, so they never have to stop. Shane doesn’t know what happens if he loses himself, but he thinks that he could.  
  
~  
  
Ryan follows the line of Shane's side with his hand. His skin is hot, but so is Ryan's now. It's all a mess of skin and sweat. He can almost fit his hand across Shane's entire side. He stops beneath his shoulder blade and pulls until this fingers get lost in Shane's back.

He pulls his face back, gasping a breath before he slams him mouth back into Shane's. He gets Shane's lip between his teeth, and tugs, before he slides harder into Shane's mouth.

His tongue cuts across Shane's teeth, or maybe Ryan's teeth, he can't tell. But it hurts enough to paint his vision white. He hisses without pulling away, so it slides into Shane. Then he does pull back, the hand on Shane's back clenching into him while he draws the other to his mouth.

"Fuck..." He can't quite convince himself to put enough space between himself and Shane, so it's just this angry whisper at both their lips. Copper fills his mouth like he's sucking on a penny. There's not much liquid. He can't tell if it's bleeding again.

Mostly it's just pissing him off. Because every part of him is aching, throbbing for every part of Shane and he doesn't have time for anything else.  
  
~  
  
_Fuck_ this apocalypse, Shane thinks as Ryan hisses, and it’s like he pulls all the air from Shane’s lungs.  
  
He knows what happened — there’s only so many things it could be. Ryan touches his lips and Shane takes hold of his hand and touches two of Ryan’s fingers to his own mouth instead.  
  
“Hurt?” he whispers, then takes his fingers in his mouth just enough to touch Ryan’s fingertips to his lower teeth, eyes locked on his. He’s still breathing hard.  
  
He doesn’t know if Ryan’s bleeding or not. He doesn’t care if he is, he just doesn’t want him to be hurting. He’s so fucking done with Ryan being hurt. He’s done with the world taking and taking. Shane is going to fucking take it back.  
  
~  
  
Ryan gets this uncertain smile on his face, head cocked like he's curious, when Shane takes his hand, puts it in his mouth. He doesn't open his mouth yet, there's a flush of blood and he swallows it. It seems like the easiest way to deal with it. It's all there is.

The sting fades to a dull throb after a bit. He still has to work up the nerve to talk, but eventually he whispers, "I'm fine." He watches his hand in Shane's mouth, feels the not-quite-bite of his teeth.

Then his eyes return to Shane's again. There's a rush in his chest, his heartbeat coming too hard and fast, even as he pants. He slides his other hand around to rest on Shane's neck. He wants to kiss him again, but he doesn't, not immediately.

Instead, he half-gasps, "I really suck at the apocalypse."  
  
~  
  
He turns his head and kisses Ryan’s palm, meets his eyes again. “Fuck the apocalypse,” Shane whispers fiercely, fingers curling tighter around Ryan’s wrist. He leans down and kisses him again, hard, pins his wrist to the bed and shifts so he’s searching with his other hand, sliding down Ryan’s arm, grasping his other hand, messily, fingers tangled, and pulls it up above his head to meet the first.  
  
Is this okay? They’ve never done this. He says “I—” or “Ry—” against his lips, but it’s half lost between them.  
  
There’s a sharp flicker of taste in Ryan’s mouth — it’s definitely blood. Shane laps at it.  
  
~  
  
He follows Shane's hand with his eyes, until he pins Ryan's wrist. Something hot, warm, rushes through the center of Ryan. He looks up for too long, until Shane kisses him again. He kisses back, slow and uneven, until Shane gets his other wrist up there too. The way his heart pounds ratchets to something that lights his blood on fire.

Helplessness flutters through him, beneath his skin. Shane's muttering that name against Ryan's lips again, and this low-pitched whimper finds it's way up Ryan's throat. It's this reaching desperation. It's nothing. It sounds like nothing, but he needs Shane to keep going. To keep saying his name like that, like it's something worth saying. To keep kissing him. To keep holding him. Ryan kisses him, more gently than before.

He isn't sure if he's actually quivering with how much he needs this or if it's vibrating through him like his own internal apocalypse. He kisses him without his tongue, all mouth, like he's begging for it.  
  
~  
  
Shane’s gasping. He gets Ryan’s hands together now and presses them both down with one of his own, fingers tangled, holding painfully tight. The other he draws down Ryan’s cheek, over his throat. He presses into the softest places, but gently, a suggestion.  
  
He can feel Ryan shaking beneath him so he presses him down with his body, memorizes him, tries to remind him that he’s here. That he’s not _leaving_.  
  
He’s never been kissed like this, never kissed someone like this. He thinks that if he can just show Ryan that there’s nothing bad inside him, maybe he can fix things. So he’ll swallow Ryan’s blood, swallow the breath Ryan breathes into him, he’ll take everything in him Ryan thinks is wrong and he’ll prove to him that it is not.  
  
He’s not infected. He’s not bad at this. He’s not a burden. He’s not too much. This sound rushes from Shane’s chest and he rocks his body once, this long press, over him, feels the smooth slide of Ryan’s lower stomach against his — Ryan’s— shirt, where Ryan’s shirt’s been rucked up. “Ohjesus,” Shane whispers. “ _Fuck_ , Ryan—“ He twists their fingers even tighter. His hands are so warm. His pulse slams through him, beats like a drum in his head.  
  
~  
  
Ryan has to keep his body steady. Shane gets this soft, slender hand on all these dangerous spots along Ryan's throat. But he doesn't push. He could, but he doesn't. 

Then Ryan doesn't have to steady himself, Shane does. Shane leans into him like he'll soak through Ryan's skin. It's warm, almost forceful, like his hand pressed to Ryan's throat. But it isn't too much. It's perfectly balanced like Shane's found the key to all Ryan's locks. Locks Ryan hasn't undone.

Distantly, he knows Shane should be careful. Ryan was bleeding. He could still be. But Shane crushes against him harder, against... and _holy fuck_. Ryan feels himself detach from all this fear and become this want, this... _this_. 

"G--Sha- _please_." His wrists writhe against Shane's grip, fingers tangling in Shane's, and his hips buck like he can draw out the touch. Draw out Shane against him. This crescendo that pulls him up, up, like a thread around his throat. He pushes his head back into the floor until his neck strains with his pulse.

"Shane..." It grinds out of him in an almost wheeze.

~  
  
He hisses at the sound of his name in Ryan’s mouth. Shane presses his own mouth against Ryan’s jaw, then lower, just beneath it. “‘Please’ what?” he breathes against the pulse there.  
  
His hand slides down to Ryan’s collarbones and the hollow of his throat and his mouth follows, only half-waiting for an answer. He presses his palm over Ryan’s wild heartbeat as he sucks blood to the surface of Ryan’s olive skin, just above the dip of his collarbone. “‘Please’ what?”  
  
He has to slide down his body, pressing against Ryan’s thigh, his chest rising and falling unevenly against Ryan’s ribs. He clings to Ryan’s hands like a lifeline.  
  
_Anything, anything._  
  
~  
   
He doesn’t know. Jesus, he doesn’t know _anything_. He can’t even think of his own name right now. All he’s got is Shane’s, on a loop, caught behind gasps and fluttering eyelids. Shane’s at his neck and it’s this soft, damp impossible pull on too-thin skin. Skin that ripples under it, further and further, until it’s battered against every one of Ryan’s bones. It’s going to break him into pieces. He should want it to stop, but he doesn’t. He’s never wanted something to keep going like this. This current that Shane commands, the one he’s injected into Ryan’s bloodstream until it’s more than Ryan’s breath he’s controlling.  
   
“I…” He finally gasps out in this break of air, when Shane pulls away from his neck. But then nothing else, because Shane’s got a hand on his collarbone, on his heart. And between the screaming in his head, Ryan thinks, _he said you had nice collarbones_. And he believes it. It makes it worse, better. It makes everything pound harder. His pulse slams against Shane’s palm, and he just wants him to take it—he wants Shane to bend his fingers around it and make it listen too.  
   
Ryan’s toes curl. He tries to shake some of the intensity out with the bend in his legs, but it grinds his hips harder against Shane. Explodes in fragments of color in his vision. It rises like a fire with everything else in him, under Shane’s mouth, under Shane’s body.  
   
He wants to answer him. _Needs_ to answer him. But Ryan doesn’t know either. He’s begging Shane, and he doesn’t know what for. Shane could do anything, say _anything_ , and Ryan would comply. He’s holding as tight as he can, fingers clenched too hard, around Shane’s hands, to control the pressure that’s rising too fast through him.  
   
Everything Shane does, like this, is like he’s already heard Ryan. Before Ryan said it, before Ryan thought it. Shane’s already doing it. So how can he ask? _What_ could he ask for?  
   
“Stay,” he finally chokes out, tattered by his own blood, his own breath. “Just…” Just keep stay, keeping being Shane. _Keep touching me. Never stop touching me._ “Stay.”  
  
~  
  
“I am,” Shane says, into the hot, heavy air between them. It ghosts over Ryan’s chest. He pulls himself up again, drags his hips, presses his thigh up between Ryan’s legs. The material of Ryan’s pants drags this burn into the inside of Shane’s thigh that he thinks might hurt, later, but they are so tight around one another and he doesn’t care, barely feels it.  
  
He kisses his mouth again, coaxes Ryan’s open, slides his tongue against his so so softly, because the kiss itself is hard. He can feel the line of Ryan’s teeth. He draws back just enough. “I will.”  
  
He’s not going anywhere. He’s not, he’s not. He touches Ryan’s jaw and pulls his mouth open wider, fingers along his cheek, thumb dragging slightly at Ryan’s lower lip. Their bodies beating, flickering together with just the force of their blood. For a moment he just looks down at him, and Shane’s panting, because Christ, God, he is so beautiful.  
  
“ _Ryan_ ,” Shane whispers, pressing down against him, pressing into the persistent ache of his own body, as every shuddering heartbeat tears through him. He says it so softly that the end of the name almost trails off into his breath. He touches his tongue to Ryan’s upper lip, then kisses him again, hard, hungry. _How do I show you? How do I prove it?_  
  
There’s no fucking proof for this. It’s all promises and the way Shane’s fingers clutch at Ryan’s until he feels the bones in their hands grind. He flexes his own, catches Ryan’s again, and this movement against him isn’t just a press anymore, it’s this desperate, rhythmic pull. His heart beats out this path and all Shane can do is follow it.  
  
“This?” Shane whispers against Ryan’s cheek. His fingers settle featherlight over his throat, his free hand pins him down. Shane has a catalogue of everything that has ever darkened Ryan’s eyes, that has made him shake, that has made him say Shane’s name, that has made him reach out and he tries, fuck he tries to do all of it, to make this right.  
  
Is this what he wants, is it proof? Is this enough? How does he make it enough? How does he make it fact? _I’m staying, I’m staying, I’ll stay._  
  
~  
  
Ryan's legs press together, one knee bending like it can buck the pressure. It can't. It doesn't. It builds until Ryan moans against Shane's mouth when he kisses him. He's so dazed, so lost in everything he barely kisses back. His lips shake and he closes his mouth after Shane eases it open, a ghost of grip. He can't quite get his eyes to focus on Shane, and then they do, and there's this dark intent--a lust that Ryan can taste. Wants to taste. His eyes track him, cling to him like his hands, like his thighs, as Shane pulls his mouth open. He gets the very tip of his tongue along the edge of Shane's thumb where it tugs his lip.

The promise, _I will, I am_ , circles in Ryan's chest like blood spreading into water. He reaches for it, pulls at Shane with his body so his lips cling as Shane pulls away again. Dragging the kiss longer until Shane's whisper slams into his cheek like a second, third, fourth heartbeat. And every beat drags the center of him up too high. Too far. He's still holding onto Shane's hand, and it hurts, maybe, but it doesn't register.

He has completely lost his grip on anything but Shane. His body rocks, hard, against Shane's—this quick, desperate rhythm. Dragging the ache in him deep over Shane's too-warm body above him. It cuts Shane's gentle fingers harder into his throat, like teeth, and he can't get them close enough, get him close enough.

Shane is doing this for him. He feels the way his body bends over his breaths. He's begging Ryan to be okay. Ryan wants to be—thinks this is the closest he's been in forever. Shane has always been the closest. To making Ryan whole.

His hands strain up like he's going to pull Shane closer, but Shane's hold stops them. The restraint rushes through him hot and biting, and pools at the core of him, like everything else. He closes his mouth, trying to contain the moan that vibrates through him. It only half works. And it flits under the pads of Shane's fingers so Ryan squeezes his legs tighter.

"It's good." His voice is still cracking like the rest of him. "It's perfect. You're perfect."

More than enough. So much more than enough. More than Ryan deserves.  
  
_I believe you. But you're human. You're so fucking human._

~  
  
The sounds Ryan makes reverberate through Shane’s very bones. They feel like they’re waking him up, somehow, like he’s only been half-present in this body.  Ryan tells him he’s perfect and it circles through his head and down his spine. He drags his free hand down Ryan’s chest and rucks his shirt up, almost rough, slides his palm over Ryan’s skin which is so warm, damp. Shane wants to wrap himself in Ryan’s warmth and never leave.    
  
He clutches at his side, the soft skin there, drops his mouth to his neck because he can’t focus enough to kiss him and unbutton Ryan’s pants at the same time, which is what his fingers are attempting to do. Finally it’s too much. The ache in him — he’s been holding onto it for months — and Ryan’s unsteady breaths — the way he _looks_. Shane wants this. He actually has to take a second to pause, gather himself, figure this out. It’s not long, it’s just this moment where he pulls back, eyes on Ryan’s face, eyes flickering down between them. The button comes undone and Shane pulls back fast, letting go of Ryan’s hands, pulling away from the heat and press of him, all these sweet and aching places. Shane draws back enough to unzip Ryan’s pants with shaking hands — why is he shaking?  
  
He kneels too far away from him — way too far — between Ryan’s legs and drags his pants sharply down over his hips, down over his thighs. His breath hitches.  
  
He’s over him again quickly, his mouth slides, wet, lips and teeth over one of Ryan’s hip bones — Jesus he loves this. It’s different now — he’s not drunk, Ryan’s pants are at his knees and not just undone, Shane’s mouth on him… he makes his sound, this soft whine, at the memory, but he doesn’t want that right now. He kisses Ryan’s stomach, his side, slides his tongue and teeth up over the place where his ribs meet at the bottom, letting them hook on the bottom rung. He works Ryan’s pants down, maybe off, he’s not sure — it’s just Ryan’s panting breath and Shane’s pushing Ryan’s shirt up higher, tongue dragging over his nipple, once, and then he’s over him again, thigh between Ryan’s legs, craving him, his warmth, the press of his breathing body against Shane’s too much to sort himself out yet.  
  
He will, in a minute. Shane kisses him again — Jesus, in a minute — he never wants to fucking stop kissing him.  
  
~  
  
Shane pulls away. His mouth is at Ryan's neck, and he's there, then he's not. Ryan whines because he doesn't get it, for a second, he's so dazed. His hands are free, and there's a quiet thrum of pain circling his wrist in Shane's absence. Then he feels Shane pulling at his pants. He lifts his hips to make it easier.

He reaches down and gets a tentative grip on Shane's hair. He's shaky, it's weak, but he clenches a fistful as Shane's mouth slides over his hip. Shane makes this sound, and it twists in Ryan's chest. But it doesn’t stop. Nothing stops. Shane works his mouth over Ryan's body, pushing back up slow, too fucking slow. 

He misses kissing him, craves it. He arches his back, head pressing into the blankets. He gasps, as Shane's tongue slides the tense, sensitive skin of his nipple, and when Shane kisses him again he's halfway between a moan and "Shane..." This mess of the two. 

He's so close. He's too close, and Shane's thigh presses into him. Pushing too far. He pushes back. He gets his hands on Shane's cheeks, slick with sweat, and he pulls away to gasp this guttural, half screaming breath. His body pulses with his heartbeat. "Fuck, _Shane_."

He pulls him back, crashes into him and kissing, drinking like he's dying of thirst.  
  
~  
  
Shane’s breath shudders free, and he gets his fingers in Ryan’s hair, holding him close, kissing him back. His other arm shakes where it’s braced against the blankets on the floor.  
  
He has never been so aware of someone’s else’s body, their reactions. The way their heart beat, the way their body moved with and against his. Ryan says his name and Shane echoes Ryan’s back to him, pressing it into the space between their mouths until Shane has to stop kissing him, until he’s just gasping against Ryan’s lips, pushing closer to the edge of something.  
  
He’s pressing heavily down against him, braced with his knees, his elbow, so he doesn’t crush him, fingers splayed against the back of his skull, pressing Ryan’s mouth to his. He reaches down and digs his fingers into the outside of Ryan’s thigh, pressing his own hips tightly against the sharp ridge of one of Ryan’s, keeping his thigh tight between his legs like he doesn’t even know anymore how to pull away.  
  
~  
  
He's slipping and he doesn't know if he should be. But there's so much touch. Shane's thigh between his legs, his hand on Ryan's thigh. His mouth, goddamn, _his mouth_. He kisses Shane hard, hands barely holding the damp grip he's got on Shane's cheeks. He pushes back into his hair, tries, but he feels himself draw too tight.

It's just Shane saying his name, over and over and over again, like a prayer. And he knows, somehow, that he needs to pull back. To stay here, in this space, with Shane, but Shane has twisted him into knots, strung him out until he's drawn so thin there is nothing else.

It cracks and shatters, so he says Shane's name again. Because he's forgotten any other word, and it's just as shattered as the rest if him. And then he pants, gasps at this hot, sliding release. He breaks the kiss, drenched in sweat, but doesn't pull away. He holds on, digs his fingers in too deep, and pants with the rungs of relief that stutter through him.

He gets his vision focused again, watching Shane's face for a beat, before he kisses him in this exhausted, soft brush. His fingers slip down to his back, barely holding. The same shaky way his mouth holds Shane's. He's near collapse, head too heavy on his shoulders, but he doesn't want to let go. Doesn't want to stop kissing him.  
  
~  
  
Shane groans against him like its his own release, but it isn’t. Ryan’s slipping and somehow Shane’s just focusing on getting his arms around him. He lets go of his thigh, wraps his arm beneath Ryan’s shoulder, palm against his shoulder blade. He’s still cradling the back of his head, and follows the natural movement back, lying him down, moving down with him in this slow, sliding wave.  
  
He didn’t realize how much Ryan was pressing up into _him_. Shane’s panting tightly against the ache low in his stomach, but there’s this sense of relief, too, like he’s more affected by Ryan’s release than wanting his own. He kisses him softly, everything is softer now, slower. It’s all just his mouth, lips clinging to Ryan’s, open, vulnerable. He can feel Ryan’s heart _racing_ against his own chest. Shane lets him come down, still moving lightly against him to draw it out, to keep his own tension shivering in this _almost_ place.  
  
“Okay?” Shane whispers against the corner of Ryan’s lips, where his smile starts, where his mouth crooks upwards. He doesn’t really know why — just checking in maybe, just trying to stay connected in every way he knows how. _I’ve got you,_ he thinks, _I’ve got you._  
  
~  
  
Damn it, Ryan's trying to stay upright, moving his hands to Shane's back to hold onto him. Because Shane isn't done. He's not, but he's pulling away from Ryan like he is. Ryan opens his mouth, tries to say something but it's just the clutter of breathless syllables.

He isn't sure what to do. If he keeps trying, he's going to be close to useless. And if Shane struggle, well, Ryan isn't going to be laying down any expert moves. He was supposed to be helping Shane, so how did this happen? How does this always happen?

Either way, he needs to make it easier for Shane now. And Shane feels content, even if he has no reason to be. Ryan doesn't need to ruin it.All this energy is bled completely out of him. He's keeping his eyes on Shane, trying to make sure he's okay, and it's exhausting him. 

"Okay," Ryan finally whispers.  
  
~  
  
He smiles a little, shifts, shaky. Now that the tension between them’s winding down, he feels how warm he is, how much his body’s quivering. He’s trying to get off of Ryan so he doesn’t crush him. They’re both breathing too hard, too unsteady.  
  
He pulls back to almost sitting, catches Ryan’s shirt where he’s pushed it up and whispers, “C’mere,” tugging it up and over Ryan’s head. There’s sweat drying on him now, and he feels cold suddenly, a little dizzy, like a headache wants to start. He cleans them both up with it and tosses it aside, they’re washing things tomorrow anyway, and then he lies back down beside him, trying to figure out how to get him into his arms. He tangles them up, pulls Ryan into his chest, gets their legs all tangled. He huddles into Ryan like Shane’s smaller than he is, because Ryan is so much warmer than Shane feels. He reaches for the blankets, pulling them up over them both.  
  
They’re flush against one another. Shane presses his face into Ryan’s neck, suddenly hesitant. He half considers reaching down to finish this himself, but that’s not quite what he wants. Instead he just hitches their hips closer, keeping the tension, holding it like it’s going to flicker out, his breath coming a little steadier as he breathes Ryan in.  
  
~  
   
Ryan’s trying to fight through the exhaustion banging around in his skull to figure this out. Shane is still too warm, god, fuck, why did Ryan let what just happened _happen_? Shane’s still not there. From the looks of it, even if he did just take off Ryan’s shirt. He’s using it to clean off the sweat. Ryan half-tries to help, but his head’s spinning, maybe, so he doesn’t really get there. Not until Shane’s tucked around him again under the blankets.  
   
He can feel Shane, a lot of Shane—and he’s not sure if he should respond to it. He doesn’t. That’s usually what he does, back off, when this happens. But this seems completely unfair. But pushing Shane now would not be relaxing. If he could, if he could do it, easily, then maybe it would help him relax. But if he can’t—then it’s going to do the opposite.  
   
Ryan lets out this quaking breath and slides out one of his hands up the length of Shane’s spine so he can pull him closer. He likes this—if his mind wasn’t a demon, he would probably have been able to sleep. But this seesaw of wondering what to do has him pulled back too far into awake. He just holds onto Shane, one hand on his back, the other against the back of his head, and lets Shane press against him. His body is more relaxed than before, just from the exertion. There’s less tension, so hopefully Shane won’t end up just asking what he’s doing again.  
   
He almost says something--it’s what he always does--but he needs to give this a second. Maybe Shane will at least go to sleep, or maybe, if he doesn’t—Ryan will have a better idea of how to help. But Ryan opening his damn mouth right now is probably not what anyone needs.  
  
~  
  
Shane thinks a lot of things. He thinks that maybe they should have gone about this a different way, that he should have waited, that he should have explained rather than getting caught up. But how does he say he would take every part of Ryan because every part of Ryan is good? How does he explain what he wants to make him understand? How does he ask for something he’s... not sure Ryan is willing to give.

Shane has never been good at taking, though, when it comes to this, so it works. It’s okay. They’re okay. They’re okay tonight and they’ll be okay come morning, too.

The tension in Shane gradually bleeds out. His head is foggy, he’s cold and hot, but mostly cold. He slips in and out of sleep, struggling against it without really knowing why. He keeps jolting against Ryan, caught in a half dream of kissing him, of the heat between them, the taste of blood on his tongue. 

He finally does sleep, waking up only once, disoriented, to get his arms tighter around Ryan. “I thought you left,” he whispers, face pressed into Ryan’s chest. He’s barely awake enough to make the words.

After that he sleeps hard, there’s strange dreams, fever dreams, but they aren’t frightening. Not like the one where he wakes up and Ryan’s gone.  
  
~  
   
Shane does sleep. Ryan doesn’t. Not for a while. Mostly because he keeps trying to take a breath, calm down, relax—then Shane will jolt, and Ryan will panic. He’s half-checking his body temperature, seeing if it’s going up, or down, but he can’t tell. Both of them are warm the way they’re pressed together. Shane’s warmer, and occasionally, Ryan will feel a piece of him that’s too hot. He’ll slide his hand along Shane’s side, until he finds something that isn’t burning. Trying so hard to prove he’s wrong.  
   
Eventually, Shane stills. It makes it easier for Ryan to convince himself he’s okay. He’s not twitching. But, then, Ryan doesn’t really know what sick people do when they sleep because he’s pretty sure he never slept. He tries to still his mind, not think too hard about not doing enough, about kissing and blood on his tongue, about the creak in the door downstairs.  
   
He starts to fade, eventually, knows it because things get foggy. Become less real. He’s in his house, from when he was still a kid, before his apartment. But Shane is too. The rustling outside sounds like his Mom, shuffling by the door. He doesn’t know what time it is, if he needs to get up. He keeps waiting for her to come in and be angry he isn’t up—or be angry about Shane. But he’s not nearly as alarmed as he ought to be about it. She doesn’t, no one does, until reality crashes back into him with Shane’s voice.  
   
He pulls Ryan closer, mumbles. He’s managed to slide down so his mouth’s at Ryan’s chest when he says, _I thought you left._ Ryan winces, because he did leave, before. He holds Shane tighter against his chest, even as he feels him slip further into sleep.  
   
“I’m right here. I’m not leaving. I promise.”  
   
_He can’t trust you._  
   
He’s awake for a while after that, running his fingers through the back of Shane’s hair. Closing his eyes when the darkness moves or shifts. Shane’s still, so he’s less afraid. He just holds on. Begs anyone who will listen, _please don’t take him, I will do anything, just not him._  
   
And eventually it fades back into another time, another place, and there’s Shane, then there isn’t. Reality bends like it does for dreams and reappears like it’s always been this way. It all happens in a loop, his dad, his mom, the dresser. Flashes of it. Ryan twitches but doesn’t wake up, and then he’s walking, he’s been walking for months, years, and there’s Jake a few feet ahead of him. And all there is… is panic.  
   
“Hold on, Jake, just… don’t…” Jake’s faster, even with his injury, because Ryan’s got both bags. And something else is propelling him, something like anger. Ryan keeps stumbling. “Can you just—” He tries to catch up, catches a tree branch in the trail and drops the bag in his arms. “Fuck.”  
   
Jake whirls, shoulders squared—this black, black, black anger. “Are you fucking kidding me?”  
   
“It’s fine, I got it…” Ryan bends to grab the spilled contents of the half-open bag. It staggers, like dreams do, so Jake is there, shoving things back into the bag. Stiff, angry, violent. And then they’re back up, bag still on the ground, a few pieces of food still scattered.  
   
Jake’s madder, reeling back, until Ryan grabs his arms. “Okay, can you just—what’s the matter?”  
   
Jake shoves him back, eyes even angrier. “Why don’t you just kill me too?”  
   
Ryan lets go, steps back. “What?”  
   
The pause lasts too long. Just Jake’s eyes and breath and teeth. He squeezes his fists. “You killed Mom. And Dad. So why don’t you just fucking kill me too?”  
   
“Jake, they were sick. You’re not—” For a second, he has no idea what happened. There’s just this explosion of force across his mouth. He stumbles to keep himself upright. And then his lip hurts—stings, like… he turns his eyes back to Jake, who’s gone quivery. “Jesus—”  
   
“I am sick, you fucking moron.” He doesn’t move, but it looks like he wants to. He watches Ryan like he expects him to swing back.  
   
Ryan stands back up, trying not to let his eyes drift down to the place where he’d seen the bite. The place covered by bandages and clothes. He swallows, holds out his hands. “Is that—will that make you feel better? You wanna hit me?” He takes a step forward. “Do it. I’m not gonna fucking kill you.”  
   
This time, when Jake swings, he’s more prepared—more, and less. He falls onto his knees before he looks back. Jake is there, still shaking, but quivering with tears. He’s crying. Ryan tries to get up, to go back over there. To fix this. But the world splits and tears like it does in nightmares, where memories stop being memories and turn into something worse.  
   
So he doesn’t get up. He’s got a gun in his hand. Shane’s gun, pointed straight at Jake’s head. Jake isn’t crying anymore. He’s laughing. “Do it.” He’s echoing Ryan’s words back at him. Ryan hears them in his own voice. “That’s what you do.”  
   
Ryan doesn’t want to. Doesn’t know why his finger squeezes the trigger. Jake’s head slams back, and when he looks up—it’s like that night in the rain. The back of his skull crushed open, eyes gone white. The gun is gone, then, and all Ryan can do is run. So he does. He runs until the trees start to break into a coat rack, a hallway corner, a kitchen. His dad’s body impaled on broken glass.  
   
He doesn’t look back, but he sees her. This broken, bleeding version of his mother. Jaw half-unhinged, maybe from fighting with his dad—he never knew why. It wasn’t him. He didn’t do it. He’s got the knife in his hand, bloody. Too bloody. He trips, gasping, into another room. Their bedroom. Her bedroom.  
   
Someone grabs his hand. He jerks, looks up, and it’s Shane. Shane, in this wrong place, wrong time, looking at him like he’s lost his mind. “Ryan, what are you doing?”  
  
His voice isn’t working. He’s trying to tell him, something, anything. About his mom. His mom, and the jaw, but Shane won’t let go of the knife. He’s trying to stop him, to keep Ryan from doing anything else, but he doesn’t get it. He’s not even supposed to be here. Ryan keeps glancing down the hallway, waiting for that silhouette, her silhouette. Every breath a drumbeat of panic, terror, black ice.  
   
And then it’s there. Not down the hallway, on the other side of the door. It’s closed now, and she’s scratching at the other side, with that angry, groaning whine—getting louder. Ryan glances back once, at the windows beside the bed. He could run. He should run.  
   
He doesn’t.  
   
“What are you _doing_?”  Shane’s still talking, somewhere behind him, but Ryan can’t see him anymore. “That’s your mom. Did you kill your Mom?”  
   
Ryan doesn’t answer. He opens the door and slams the knife straight-on, straight into the eye, then staggers back. She’s on the floor. Twitching. Reaching, crawling. Ryan gets to the other side of the dresser. Pushes.  
   
It’s not until it’s falling that he sees it. It’s not his mom.  
   
It’s Shane.  
   
But the cupboard falls anyway, and that splitting, splattering sound still rocks through his entire body. And it’s Shane’s body in the puddle of blood, fingers and legs twitching—not alive, just… moving. And it’s Shane.  
   
Ryan tries to step back, but there’s so much blood. All over his hands, his clothes, oozing and oozing down the front of his face. From beneath the dresser—from Shane. Ryan tries to reach forward, to try and stop this—to try and do anything, but there’s just _blood_. Blood all over his hands. All over him. He’s going to throw up. He needs to throw up. He can’t.  
   
He starts awake, maybe chokes out a gasp. Not enough to wake Shane up. Shane. Shane, still wrapped around him—not… crushed beneath a cupboard. Ryan slides a hand up, the one that’s fallen to Shane’s neck, to follow the curve of Shane’s head beneath his hair. He’s okay. But it doesn’t stop the swirl of nausea in Ryan’s stomach, the way it makes the saliva behind his mouth too hot. He doesn’t throw up.  
   
It’s not blood all over Ryan, it’s sweat. Cold sweat. That’s what’s on his hands, his forehead. Jesus, he’s not wearing any fucking clothes. He tries to shake the dream off, but the fear clings to him liked dried dirt. It chips off in chunks. But not all of it. He brings a hand shaking hand away from Shane to wipe at his stinging, wet eyes.  
   
_It wasn’t real._  
   
Some of it was. That’s the worst part. Half of it was real. He’s glad it’s not dark anymore—there’s sunlight filtering in from the windows. It makes it easier. A little bit. To not lose himself completely in this. He wants to cling harder to Shane, but he’s scared to. He’s not sure if he should. Like he’ll squeeze too hard and there’ll be a gun or a cupboard or… He can’t stop seeing it. The dead twitching, can’t stop imagining…  
   
He holds on, anyway.  
  
~  
  
He dreams about Ryan, at first. Somewhere in the dreams that are half memories — his friends, his old school. For some reason, that’s where he is, walking up and down the hallways. He’s calling out for Joe or Matt. He knows that there’s zombies in this school, he hears them distantly — or his brain tells him he does, or he did, because his ears don’t.  
  
Why is he here? They were in California. He’s got to go back to California, because Ryan’s waiting…  
  
Ryan’s still waiting for him. He’s been waiting for a really long time. Shane turns around in the hallway to leave to see that the lights in the hall he just came down are flickering now.  
  
Nothing to worry about, he thinks. It’s just faulty wiring. Happens all the time. The voice sounds like a stranger’s in his head. He knows he used to be like that. He takes a step and nothing happens, step by step and nothing and so he starts to run. Lights start shutting off one by one by one, behind him, in front of him, in the classrooms around him, and there is so much darkness except for one door.  
  
Shane stops, panting, not scared, just… what’s that?  
  
Someone’s standing there with their back to him and it only takes him a second to realize that it’s Ryan. But why is he here? In Shane’s old school, in Schaumburg?  
  
“Ryan?”  
  
Ryan turns, and its his silhouette, side on to Shane. He leaves the classroom, the hammer in one hand, and just starts walking into the darkness ahead. There’s nothing for Shane to do but follow.  
  
As Ryan walks, the lights flicker on again, but they’re… that’s it, they’re flickering. They’re humming that horrible florescent buzz. It makes his movements look strange, like how strobes do. Shane calls out to him again but Ryan doesn’t turn back.  
  
And this is the thing, Shane thinks in the dream as he trails him down this endless hallway, lights flickering on for Ryan, and lasting just long enough for Shane until they are suspended in this buzzing, flickering, cold industrial light in all the blackness. This is the thing… Ryan’s with him, Shane could reach out and touch him if he wanted, his shoulder, his hand. He could take his hand and hold it tight and Ryan would stop and hold back, and it would be fine, but there would always be the fact that Shane could never completely see him, in the flickering lights, in the way that Ryan never turns fully to face him.  
  
There’s something in Ryan that he’s holding back, holding away from Shane, and Shane can’t reach it. He so desperately wants to.  
  
Shane’s fever breaks during the night. In the dream, the light changes. Outside. He thinks that’s where Ryan’s going, but it’s not. He was just leading Shane there. At the last moment, he veers off and starts down a hallway perpendicular to the doors and leaves Shane in the sunlight coming in through the cracked glass. This time as Ryan walks, the lights don’t come on for him.  
  
Shane looks at the doors, looks at Ryan’s retreating back and says “Hey— but we’re here.” He can see trees swaying gently. The sky is so so blue. The rain’s stopped. “We made it… Ryan… Where are you going?”  
  
He disappears into the darkness of the corridor. Shane can’t even see the light streaming in, just the void that Ryan left.  
  
He opens his eyes. It’s morning.  
  
The dream falls away slowly. Shane blinks, assesses. His headache is gone. He’s not cold anymore. He’s huddled into Ryan like he is, though, and so he tips his head up because Ryan’s breathing like he’s awake. Shane wonders if he slept at all.  
  
~  
   
It takes Shane a little more time. Ryan’s mostly steadied his breathing, worked the panic out of him before Shane stirs. But then, he does, and he’s horrified—at the idea of looking Shane in the eye after the dream. None of it was real. It doesn’t have to mean anything, but he feels like he’s betrayed him. He feels like he did something awful.  
   
Shane tilts his head up and Ryan’s already looking down at him. He’s been half-looking all morning. He ought to pretend to sleep. It stresses Shane out when he doesn’t. But he’s pretty sure Shane’s never fallen for it a single time. He meets Shane’s eyes, no matter how hard it is. Because nothing happened. He shouldn’t feel weird—this shouldn’t feel monumental or big or scary. Because nothing happened.  
   
_But maybe it should._  
   
“Hey,” he says, going for casual and mostly succeeding, “how do you feel?”  
  
~  
  
Shane’s still taking things in, like the fact that he’s still mostly clothed, minus pants, but that Ryan is not, and piece by piece that comes back to him and _fuck_ , did he fall asleep? That must have been… not great.  
  
“Better,” Shane says, and slides his hand down Ryan’s side to his hip. Oh fuck, there’s really just… so much of him not wearing anything. Shane hitches himself up a little higher so they’re a bit more level, but he’s still lower down than Ryan because he doesn’t want to move too far away. He thinks what he always does, which is did you sleep? But when he asks it, Ryan looks so… Shane swallows it down a little jaggedly. Instead he asks “How’s your— mouth,” and something like a smile flickers into his eyes before it’s gone. It’s conflicted, too...  
  
In part, Shane was right. He’s not infected, neither of them are. It’s a gentler way of saying _I told you so_ , and it reminds him of that kiss.  
  
~  
   
Shane seems good. Better. And he says he is. Ryan trusts him, if nothing else—Shane would say if he wasn’t better. If Ryan wasn’t trying to patchwork his own thoughts around the mess his nightmare left behind, it might reassure him. Shane runs a hand over him, and he’s reminded, again, that he is not wearing clothes. And Shane is. Because Shane didn’t…  
   
Okay, he’s not going to go there because there are only so many things he can worry about at once. He is definitely at the limit. “It’s good.” There’s still that sore, stiff feeling along his tongue, but it does feel a little more solid. More healed. Tongues don’t stay fucked up long, do they?  
   
He smiles, snorts this offbeat laugh. “I should probably… put on pants.”  
  
~  
  
“I mean you _could_ put on pants,” Shane says, and for a moment his eyes flicker back and forth between Ryan’s, but there’s this rush of uncertainty that follows that says _what if he doesn’t want—?_ and Shane draws his hand away from Ryan’s hip to let him go, rolls onto his back beneath the blanket. “The rain stopped,” he ventures.  
  
Something feels wrong. He doesn’t know what it is, but it weighs the air down heavily in the room. He glances back at Ryan, like he’s going to see a bite on him or something, like one of the places where Shane sucked bruises into his skin is going to be all broken, marked with his teeth. He moves as if to touch the mark by Ryan’s collarbone, then stops. “Sorry,” he says, without knowing why.  
  
~  
   
Ryan rubs at his eyes and laughs again. It’s more genuine this time, realer. Because Shane doesn’t know what to do. And he likes that. He likes everything he does. Everything Shane does is so damn good, and Ryan—well.  
   
He grabs Shane’s hand, lays it on his collarbone, smile still lingering. Shane is good at a lot of things, distracting him, helping him. Ryan sees the uncertain flicker in his eyes, going dark then light, and he needs to stop it. He needs to, but he’s not sure if he should. He can’t keep coaxing Shane into this. Not if… if he’s going to say something, if he’s going to take this seriously—then… fuck, he’s going to give himself a headache.  
   
“After last night, I’m not sure you need to apologize for anything ever again.”  
  
~  
  
Shane’s eyes go bright, and then he’s startled into this laugh as he spreads his fingers there, tracing the line of it with his thumb. “Okay,” he says and then rolls closer to kiss him and it sends this beautiful thrill through him.  
  
Because he can. He can just kiss him, like this is something they do. It’s morning, and they’re together — safe for now, and Shane can kiss him. He doesn’t let it last too long. Ryan looks tired, his eyes look tired and he slides a thumb beneath the one that has the freckle. He smiles a little, but it doesn’t reach his eyes. He can’t ask if he slept but he can say “You okay?” Because Ryan wasn’t doing great yesterday, either. Ryan’s been through worse than Shane, and maybe that’s why it still feels like it’s threatening rain in here, despite the sun doing its best to get through the clouds outside.  
  
~  
  
He kisses him back, gently, but he's more tentative. Because he feels bad. Like cheating on a test or telling a secret. He wants it so much, and that makes it worse.

Shane asks if he's okay and Ryan almost blurts it out. This thing he's been hiding since they met, and since then, it gotten bigger and bigger until now, if he says, he doesn't know what it'll mean.

Some part of him thinks Shane won't care, but then if he tells him everything... if he tells him he could've run, didn't run. Shane would have to care. He'd have to see this nasty, awful thing inside Ryan. He chose it. Chose to kill his own mom. Chose to crush her fucking skull.

"Yeah. Yeah, I'm good."

That definitely isn't telling him. His eyes flicker over Shane's face. He doesn't seem feverish. Maybe he's really fine. Maybe this stupid world wants to give Ryan a chance to do this. And if he had to lose him, he'd rather it be Shane's choice.

"You sure you are? You looked rough last night."  
  
~  
  
“Yeah, Ryan, I’m sure,” Shane says, voice soft and careful, because there’s a lot going on in Ryan’s eyes, and Shane can’t read it. “It was just a fever.”  
  
He doesn’t understand. It’s like they keep taking one step forward, two steps back, what is he doing wrong?  
  
The old fear comes back. The one that says _He can tell there’s something wrong with you, the way everyone else can, too._ But he’d been careful not to— last night… he fell asleep because he was sick, because he was tired… because he was scared, maybe, that accepting anything from Ryan last night would have shown him that Shane wasn’t… wasn’t how he was supposed to be, or how he should be or… or that he wasn’t enough, and it would be so awkward for Ryan to change his mind about Shane being enough after all this time, so maybe he doesn’t know how to do it…? Maybe he’s changed his mind?  
  
He folds his fingers into a loose fist against Ryan’s chest, then gently knocks his knuckles into Ryan’s sternum dropping his eyes. “Um… d’you still feel like you’re waiting for me?”  
  
He regrets it as soon as he says it. As soon as it’s out of his mouth he wants to take it back. It’s stupid. It’s so stupid.  
  
Or maybe he’s scared to know the answer.  
  
~  
  
It's a weird question. It throws him off so hard, so much. Shane's clearly having his own crisis, something he's worried about. Something Ryan needs to fix.  
  
"No," he says, finally. "No, I don't think... I think you're here now."

Maybe Shane isn't here. But it feels like he is. It feels like he's giving Ryan everything he has, and Ryan is keeping this away from him. Because he wants to keep Shane, keep whatever's between them good. He wants them to be able to be happy. He wants Shane to be.

"You've done everything right, Shane." He's careful on his name. He needs to do this. Now. Or he doesn't know if he'll be able to get it out. It'll get sucked down, caged by his ribs, by his own goddamn cowardice like it has been for months.

He reaches to touch Shane's face, traces it, and he's right. He's not warm anymore. He's okay. He really is.

"I want you, this, so much. Nothing is gonna change that." But. He doesn't want to say _but_ because it'll make Shane think it's about him. Then, he almost says I love you, but he hasn't earned that.

"I'm gonna... I need pants." It's such a weird thing to say, but he can't get to the other side of this. With Shane furious, or horrified, or both, and not have on pants. He can't. If Shane is going to punch him in the face, he's going to be wearing pants.

_It's Shane. He's not gonna punch you._

_He could._

"Just, okay, one second..." He pretends his voice doesn't waver as he eases Shane's hand away.

He has to look, find them, before he can even start to put them on. It's fortunately not super cold. Unfortunately, that means he can't blame the way his hands shake as he grabs his pants on it. It's so hard to pull them on, but he gets them up over his waist.

Fuck the fucking button. And his hands. He never fully stood to get them on, but he sits, fully again, next to Shane as he tries and fails four more times to get them done. Finally, he does, and he wishes he hadn't because there's nothing left but this.  
  
He takes a breath, it's painful, they're all painful, and looks at Shane.

~  
  
Something’s happening. Shane feels like he’s losing all the pieces of this that’s he’s tried to pull together and keep it that way, so carefully, and he doesn’t know what to do. He just watches Ryan, the tension in his shoulders tightening and tightening until he feels frozen in place.  
  
Jesus, he’s missed something. Oh God, Ryan is sick again, or Shane is, or Ryan is going to leave him. What’s he missed? What happened between last night and now?  
  
Shane’s struggling with his breath, and his eyes are all dark as he watches Ryan’s shaking hands trying and trying with the fucking button of his jeans. He grits his fingers into the blanket beneath him, squeezes until the wool squeaks beneath his fingernails and meets Ryan’s eyes.  
  
“What?” Shane whispers, too tightly, all trepidation. Is he going to have to pretend that everything’s fine. The dream floods back to him, Ryan walking away and leaving Shane behind and he can see it now, suddenly, so clearly. Ryan just standing and getting dressed and getting his pack and getting out, and if he really wants to go, Shane can’t stop him.  
  
Because he wants Ryan to be happy, but he also wants him to be safe, and if he can’t have both, he doesn’t know what to do. What does he do if he can’t keep Ryan safe?  
  
~  
  
Shane looks horrified. Fair. Ryan's not exactly acting normal. He wants to say something to ease it, so Shane isn't sitting through this waiting for Ryan to blame something on him. But he already tried that. Shane's going to panic until he gets this out.

So he tries.

"Uh, sorry I'm not trying to be dramatic. It's just..." He ducks his head. "The other day, after I woke up, when I was sick. You said you thought I was good, and..." His mouth hangs open. How is he ever gonna get there? He should just say it. But he doesn't. "That I'm punishing myself, or... whatever, that I need to stop."

"I can't. I can't because it's... this is gonna sound stupid, but it feels like it isn't me. With Jake, and Zack... I feel like it's my fault. Or like..." All of this sounds stupid. God, he can't breathe. He can't decide if he feels like an idiot or a monster. Can he be both?

"You told me you left your dad, after... after he was sick. I didn't." Ryan looks straight into Shane's face for a second. His chin quivers. He feels like there's no blood left in him. Just these rattling, achy breaths. "I killed them. Both of my parents. I was staying with them because of all the, because of everything. My dad woke me up, and it was... I was fighting him and he fell through the window and this... glass went through his, his head."

He needs to stop seeing it. He clenches his hands, digs one set of nails into his forearm until it leaves marks.

"And then, my mom..." His vision blurs. Stings. "I found her in the kitchen. Her face was, she was hurt, I don't know if my dad had... but... she wasn't... she wasn't, not all the way." He shakes his head. He doesn't want to keep going.

_Why are you giving so much detail? Shut the fuck up, Ryan._

"She was... pissed. I tried to—I tried to, talk to her. Get her to a hospital. She screamed at me, told me to shut the fuck up—I don't think I'd heard her curse before then--and then, she... she changed, and, I grabbed a knife and ran into their bedroom. I shut the door, I... the door was shut. I shut it." 

He's pretty sure he's crying, hears it in his voice, but his face is too numb with heat to register tears.

"There were windows. I could've gone out them, I could've left, but I didn't. I opened the door, and I stabbed her. I stabbed my mom." He hasn't been looking at Shane, and can't really now because everything is blurry. "I stabbed her until she fell down, but she kept moving." He gasps into a kind of sob. "She wouldn't stop, so I pushed... they had a dresser and I pushed it... I pushed it onto... it crushed her head. Her head. It sounded like watermelon. I crushed my mama's head. And she bled. She bled normal blood. So much..."

He's can't catch his breath. Can't stop crying. He needs to be cognizant at the end of this. Figure out what to do. 

"So that's why I'm not like you, or Zack, or Jake... you ran because you couldn't kill your dad, you wouldn't kill me. I killed my own parents. Good people don't crush their mom's head."

He looks where Shane is, where his colors are, because that's all there is. Because all he can really see is his mom's body. Whether his eyes are open or closed, it's all he can see.

"It seemed pointless to tell you at first, and then I was afraid of what it would mean. So I didn't. I'm sorry." He tastes salt where tears have tracked his cheeks into his mouth, and his mouth is too wet and too dry all at once.

He thought it might feel good, like the right thing, but it's like he just did it all over again. Just guilt and fear.  
  
~  
  
It’s worse, it’s so much worse than anything Shane could have imagined and he doesn’t know when he starts crying, too, but he does, and it feels so pointless because it’s not going to help. For the longest time he’s frozen, just watching Ryan cry, and it guts him, but he can’t unclench his fingers from the blanket, he can’t go back and fix this. He can’t protect him from this.  
  
Shane opens his mouth to speak and his breath just cracks and scatters. He can’t fall apart even though watching Ryan like this makes him feel like he’s been stabbed.  
  
“Oh, Ryan,” Shane says, but he doesn’t think Ryan hears him. Shane’s shuddering, and half of it is anger because it’s not fair, it’s _not_ fucking fair, and he would have given fucking anything to have been there with Ryan then, protect him from it the way Ryan protected him from having to kill Finn.  
  
And then Ryan calls her ‘mama’ and Shane’s heart just fucking breaks for him. It breaks but it shakes something loose, and he can move again, and so he does, he pushes himself up to sitting and Ryan’s saying he’s not good, and he’s apologizing. He’s apologizing to _Shane_ because Jesus, he is good, and he has no idea does he? Shane always knew it, deep down, that Ryan had no idea.  
  
_Why didn’t you do more?_ he asks himself, _before it fucking came to this?_  
  
“Ryan,” Shane says again, and then reaches for him, takes hold of his bare shoulder which feels so cold under his palm. It’s not enough, it’s nowhere near enough. “Oh, shh— Ryan, hey hey hey,” Shane’s saying, and it’s just nonsense, mostly, but he pulls on him, tries to get him against his chest.  
  
_She told me to shut the fuck up._  
  
Shane hears Ryan say it, overlapping with his own voice, the other day, in the car. _Just shut the fuck up, Ryan, let me think!_  
  
“I’m sorry,” Shane says, for saying that, for his parents, for what kind of _fucked up_ world would make someone like Ryan have to do that. “Come here, come on.”  
  
~  
  
It's weird. He doesn't exactly know how he thought this would go. A conversation, maybe. Questions. At best. Why? Why'd you feel like you had to? He's asked himself a lot. He couldn't answered. Was ready to, on some level. 

He didn't expect this. Not comfort. It's bizarre. Shane really does have no sense of self preservation. And Ryan is so tempted to collapse into it, to squeeze Shane until he stops reliving.

Then Shane apologizes and Ryan stares at him. Shakes his head like he's hearing the wrong language.

"What?" He puts a hand on Shane's chest, won't let him pull him closer. "You're--why? No. Are you hearing me? How does that not freak you out? I opened the door. I chose it! Why are you apologizing? I killed my mom! I..." He can't say it again, but he sees it. Over and over. 

He needs to stop crying. Make Shane understand what he did without the sympathy attached. He can't. Instead he scrambles back, tries to get up and can't quite do it. "Why are you not scared of me? What if I hurt you?! You said you almost shot Zack. I remember. You should've shot me. I lied to you. I dragged you into the rain when Jake was sick. He could've bitten you. I let Zack get infected! Why aren't you angry?" 

He doesn't like the distance he's put between them. He doesn't like that he's put it all together, in front of Shane, every reason he should hate Ryan. Because he doesn't want him to. He was there. Shane was going to be okay with it. He doesn't deserve it, but he wants it. And now there's space between them and Shane might take it. Should take it. 

And Ryan feels like it's the heart in the center of him that he's flung across the room. He will splinter without Shane. He already is breaking. He watches him with these wide, trembling eyes.

It's so much softer when he says, "How can you trust me?"

~  
  
When Ryan pulls away, Shane lets him go, even though he doesn’t want to. He doesn’t know how to react to this. Usually he just throws up a wall and plays devil’s advocate but that’s not going to work with Ryan.  
  
Because Shane doesn’t want the walls with him. He doesn’t _need_ to protect himself from Ryan.  
  
Why isn’t he angry? Shane doesn’t know. Why should he be? Is he not being objective enough? He really thinks about it. He holds Ryan’s eyes which are wide and dark and filled with tears and exhaustion and so much hurt and Shane wonders if he should be angry. He goes over it, turns each thing Ryan says over, piece by piece, until he’s too quiet for too long.  
  
Finally, he says, voice soft and a little hoarse, “I don’t know. I just trust you.” Shane could think of a million things _he’s_ done wrong too, but what’s the point? What’s the point of rehashing everything they’ve been trying to get over? Unless Ryan doesn’t want to get over it.  
  
“I would’ve done the same thing for Finn,” Shane says, finally. “Risk a stranger getting bit? Whatever. And I _wish_ I’d killed my dad.” It hurts to say it. Shane swipes his fingers over his cheeks quick, perfunctory. He says it because Ryan needs to hear it from his mouth, all those words. It can’t just be ‘I should have finished it,’ or ‘I shouldn’t have left him like that.’ Shane needs to make it clear, so he does. “You didn’t lie— this isn’t a lie. You’re not— Jesus, Ryan, don’t you think I know you by now?”  
  
This isn’t how he wants to sound. He shifts like he might reach for him again but he’s flying through thoughts. It was a weird thing to say, Shane thinks. A strange little detail inside all of the horror, _she told me to shut the fuck up._  
  
“So… okay… so, she hurt you. Hm?” he inches closer, pushing forward, unfolding his legs from beneath him, slow slow. “She told you to shut up and it hurt.” It’s coming together, the way Ryan’s mind works. Shane’s gathering the pieces, and it feels so so dangerous, like they’re drenched in kerosene and he could accidentally kick up a spark and kill them both.  
  
~  
  
  
He wants to relax. He's trying to get the tension out of his shoulders. Shane isn't angry. It's good. He's said this giant thing, and Shane is still standing here. Ryan is so scared it's going to click, that Shane is going to throw up his hands and walk out. He watches Shane’s eyes so closely, waiting for something to snap.

He is. Because he's pushing. He's pushing exactly how Ryan has pushed himself. It did hurt, what his mom said. But she was already in so much pain. It shouldn't matter. His lip is still quivering when he says, "I was mad. I'm afraid... I'm scared I did it because I was mad at her." His voice shatters again. "What if I did it because I was mad at her?"  
  
~  
  
“You didn’t, Ryan,” Shane says. “Maybe you were mad, that’s not why you did it… it’s— it was better than—”  
  
Than what? Than leaving her to continue on as that thing? Like Shane was going to do to Ryan? Shane doesn’t know which one is better or worse, all he knows is what he could and couldn’t do.  
  
He should have killed his father, he should have gone back for his mother instead of leaving her to die, attacked by those things. Because of course, that’s what happened. And honestly, Shane doesn’t know if he would have been able to do it.  
  
“I don’t know, Ry, fuck, there’s no easy answers here,” he says, and he’s still moving closer, little by little. He could touch him now, if he wanted to, but he doesn’t yet. “It doesn’t make you a bad person. It’s—” there’s no words to describe how truly awful it must have been. He can’t even try.  
  
He wants to touch Ryan’s face, get the tears away, hold onto him. His knee brushes Ryan’s leg on the floor. “You’re not— you’re okay, Ryan. You’re not _dangerous_.” His fingers very very softly brush the edge of Ryan’s hand.  
  
~  
  
Ryan doesn't realize Shane's even moved until he brushes Ryan's hand. He was so wrapped up in waiting to see disgust or something like it on his face. But it's not there, it's just Shane, and now he's close. He's close again. 

Shane is so sure he isn't dangerous  He's still here. Ryan has told him everything, and whether he's an idiot or far, far smarter than Ryan. He is here.  Ryan doesn't pull his hand away. He doesn't push back. There's a part of him that says he should, maintains he doesn't deserve this. But Shane thinks he does.

He's taking the gasping, subdued breaths that come after sobbing. Trying to get a grip on himself. 

And then the small, uncertain question. "You still wanna be with me?"  
  
~  
  
The question is so simple. Is that what this is about? Somehow, in spite of all his assessing, all his logic, all his pieces of the puzzle, Shane didn’t realize he was missing one.  
  
This one crucial thing. It crashes into him so hard that for a moment all Shane can do is make a couple of almost-words and then he says Ryan’s name again, somewhere between laughing and exasperation and this tight, restrictive thing in his throat, stinging his nose and the corners of his eyes. Shane gets it all at once. He takes hold of Ryan’s hand, he gets his free hand on the back of his neck and pulls him in. Shane moves forward too, they come together a little too hard and Shane presses his lips into Ryan’s hair at his temple and whispers fiercely “Yeah I still want to be with you,” like he doesn’t understand how that’s even a question.  
  
He gets both arms around his back and holds on fucking tight.  
  
~  
  
Ryan collapses into the embrace like he wanted to the first time. There's so much noise in his head. He can still see his mom so fucking clearly. He can still see the dream. But he did it. He told Shane, and Shane didn't hit him, or walk out, or anything. He's still here.

Ryan presses his face into Shane's shoulder and tries to stop a fresh flood of tears. He wraps his arms around Shane's chest and clings. He's still here. He's been here this whole time.

"Thank you." He doesn't pull his face back so it's muffled against Shane's shoulder. It's the best he can do. It's too little. Not nearly the scale of what he needs to say. Should say. But it's something.  
  
~  
  
_Thank you_ , Ryan says, and it’s so ridiculous that he feels like he needs to say it at all that Shane feels like he has to make up for it. And he’s still crying, and Shane’s being tugged towards this edge, too, and he doesn’t want to. He’s so tired of crying, and maybe Ryan needs it, but it makes Shane ache.  
  
He pushes him back a little by the shoulders, holds tight in case it’s read wrong and then cups Ryan’s face in his hands. Shane wipes at his cheeks with his thumbs, passes the side of his hand gently between Ryan’s nose and his lips where he’s just a mess, which is maybe gross, but Shane doesn’t care. “I told you I’m not going anywhere, baby,” he says. He’s aiming for playful, because he wants Ryan to smile, but he doesn’t quite get there and the whole thing comes out much too soft. Shane glances up a little startled to meet Ryan’s eyes, and then pushes forward with the bit that isn’t a bit because it’s a lot, and he’s caught between flushing and wanting to make Ryan feel okay. “I’m like uh… like dry rot. You can’t get rid of me.”  
  
~  
  
Ryan panics, or starts to, when Shane pulls him back. He's eventually got to stop waiting on this, on Shane to realize how not worth it Ryan is. But he's not there.

Then Shane is talking, teasing maybe, and he calls him baby. Ryan doesn't think it's meant seriously, but it's soft. It could, maybe. And Ryan likes it. Likes that Shane would say that now, after what Ryan told him. Even if it is a bit. He chokes out this tear stained laugh.

"You're not like dry rot." Ryan's slowly getting his tears under control. For Shane's sake, mainly. Crying people are a nightmare. And Shane keeps touching his face and it's a disgusting mess. He wipes at his face, wishes he had a sleeve to use. "I don't want to get rid of you. You're the best thing I've ever had."

He reaches and gets his hand on Shane's chest, over his heart. It's all he's got the energy for. "Sorry I made you think about your dad." Shane said he wished he'd killed him. For Ryan's benefit. "Maybe there aren't right answers, but you always seem to make the better choice."

~  
  
“I, no,” Shane says. “Stop that, fuck, stop it. Look at me. Stop doing that. Your choices are good. _You’re_ good. You’re doing your fucking best, that’s all any of us can do— it’s not…”  
  
Shane takes a deep breath and it shakes a little. “I haven’t made a lot of good choices, Ryan. A lot of the time, my choices are pretty… questionable, at best, but since this fucking apocalypse started, the only one I’ve never regretted, even for a second, is this one, this— being your…” where does he go with this? He wants to say friend, but it’s not enough. Boyfriend isn’t enough. “I…”  
  
He has made mistakes within it though… this choice... “I’m not doing great at it,” Shane says, “I know, but…"  
  
~  
  
  
Ryan sighs. There's no winner in this argument. But he's glad Shane didn't have to do it. He's glad he walked away. 

He's talking about Ryan. Ryan being a good choice. Ryan almost makes a joke, about how he didn't have a choice. But he's pretty sure it's not a good time for it. Since he did have a breakdown of epic proportions just now.

"You are doing great at it," Ryan says. "I meant what I said. You have done everything right. Everything that matters." He's finally getting his normal voice back. He smiles. "Except throwing the goldfish. That was extremely rude and I'm not over it."  
  
~  
  
“I, no, wait—“ Shane says, but it’s too quiet, and Ryan’s already talking about the Goldfish. “Listen, I wasn’t _done_!” Shane says, in this half-exasperated tone, but he’s playing. Mostly.  
  
He also sort of can’t breathe.  
  
_Say it,_ he thinks. _Just say it, he deserves it._  
  
He meets Ryan’s eyes. “I know I’m… okay, well there’s room for improvement. In me. I could improve. I’m sorry— I _already apologized_ about the Goldfish.”  
  
~  
  
  
Ryan tilts his head. Damn, he's tired. He's always tired and now his eyes are going to be stiff and swollen all day.

"I can't tell if you're serious because I'm definitely not holding onto the goldfish as any kind of relationship hurdle. You're good." Shane said he wasn't finished, and Ryan needs to let him finish. He's anxious, a little. Even after this. Like Shane is going to sucker punch him and somehow duck out. He wants to kiss him so he can't.

But that's not fair.

"Shit, sorry. Okay. What is it? I'm not interrupting. I'm being quiet."  
  
~  
  
Shane’s breathing fast and shallow. He doesn’t know why this is so hard. It’s a hell of a lot harder now that Ryan is quiet and waiting and expectant.  
  
It’s not fair because Shane already said it, but Ryan didn’t hear him, and it’s not something Shane’s ever told to anyone, not like this. Nothing like this. Something tells him to wait because it’s not the right moment. That’s always his excuse. They’re sitting on the floor of a public cabin somewhere in the woods, Shane thinks, half-undressed and wild-haired from sleeping on it damp, and it’s not the moment he was waiting for.  
  
But Ryan is looking at him, expectant, his face still a mess of tear streaks, eyes red-rimmed, mouth wet even though his lips are cracked. He’s a mess and Shane can’t really fix him. He’s gorgeous, he’s waiting. He is still waiting.  
  
And Shane’s going to change that.  
  
This is the only moment, after all. It’s the only moment.  
  
It feels like stepping off a ledge without looking to see if Ryan’s really going to break the fall. Shane shuts his eyes for a second, takes this shallow breath and then opens them again — finds Ryan’s right away. “Okay,” he whispers, “I love you.” It feels so right, but he is so scared. “I love you,” he says again, like he needs to make sure Ryan hears him, but it’s even shakier.  
  
~  
  
Ryan can't think. It's like Shane set off a firecracker a breath from his face. Inside his ribcage. His eyelids flutter, blink. And for a second all he does is take these uncertain breaths.

Maybe Shane did say it, when Ryan thought he'd heard it... while he was sick. Jesus, Ryan had convinced himself so absolutely he hadn't. He wouldn't. But he did. He did and he's been hanging onto it ever since. God damn it, Ryan made him say it twice. Because he couldn't make himself believe it. And it looks like it's about to shake Shane's bones apart.

"Oh..."

It's so obvious. Shane tied himself to Ryan. Shane couldn't kill him, couldn't even let Ryan go. He's said it a thousand times but now he's saying it, and Ryan is going everything to hold himself together. He just got back here. Together. So it's hard.

Shane's saying this, after Ryan fell apart in front of him. Told him this thing he thought no one could forgive him for. This thing Ryan thought would tear him away from Shane forever. And Shane follows with this. With these things that Ryan has never heard someone say first. That Ryan has never believed like he believes it now.

He leans across the distance and kisses him, this abrupt, fierce kind of kiss. It burns because his mouth is swollen and sore and dry. _You didn't say it, you idiot._ He stops, yanks back before he can lose himself in it. 

"I love you too." He says in this ragged, awed voice. It tears this smile onto his face that he can't quite fathom. "Obviously. _Obviously_ I love you. I've loved you for so long." And he kisses him again, halfway through another sentence, something redundant and too obvious. There's so much energy in him, like someone's opened the shutters in his chest and there's just so much light.  
  
~  
  
Shane’s pushed back a little, beneath Ryan’s kiss. He opens his mouth to him, breathing him in like air, and he’s so not ready for Ryan to pull away when he does, so he reaches for him, catches one of Ryan’s hands in his own, _I’ve loved you for so long._  
  
Shane makes a little sound when Ryan kisses him again, he get his free hand up to Ryan’s face and kisses him and kisses him, and his breath shakes through his chest until he’s gasping.  
  
Finally he has to pull away a little, panting against Ryan’s mouth, forehead resting against his. He gets both hands up to his face and cradles it so gently, opens his eyes so he can see him. He feels like he could look at him forever. He smiles suddenly, breathes this overwhelmed laugh and pushes closer to press his face into Ryan’s bare shoulder, one arm around his back. “Dunno how you did it,” he says quietly.  
  
~  
   
Ryan kisses him until Shane stops him, and even then, he resists, for just a second. Then Shane’s breathing against his mouth and Ryan’s head won’t stop spinning. Shane’s consuming his whole consciousness—and it’s different now, not scary, not like if he stops looking at Shane he’ll see something black and ugly. It’s just Shane—it’s Shane and this moment of honest happiness he’s given Ryan. It reminds him of the hat—only bigger, so much bigger.  
   
Shane pushes against his shoulder and Ryan wraps his arms around Shane, holds him as tight as he can. Tighter now, because he’s not afraid of it. Even his nightmares can’t make him afraid of it right now. Shane’s asking how Ryan did it—and it’s so funny, because Ryan can’t imagine a world where he didn’t. He laughs, shakes his head. “I don’t know how I wouldn’t.”  
   
He rests his cheek against Shane’s head and closes his eyes. This feels surreal, this feels like the kind of thing he might think was a dream if he had good dreams anymore. Maybe he will, after this.  
  
~  
  
Shane lets himself stay. He always wants to, but there's usually something that needs to be done — they usually need to keep moving, find food, keep driving, keep watch while the other sleeps — or tries to. He lets himself lean into Ryan, now, and this embrace which is tighter, somehow. Closer than usual. Like they're both just letting themselves.

It reminds him of the time he found Ryan that stupid basketball hat. How Ryan had hugged him then. Just pure happiness, genuine. Shane never forgot it because he’s never seen someone light up the way Ryan does. He feels like maybe he's been searching for that reaction from Ryan since then, and he's finally found it again, here.

"I tried to tell you about fifty times," he laughs, drawing away finally, because he's still-- he's still bad at this, bad at feeling so safe. Bad at feeling so much, so he pulls back and the overwhelm fades a little, but he is still so ridiculously happy. "I just never— I thought maybe..."

He isn’t quite looking at him, because it's still a little hard to believe that this whole thing is reciprocated. Shane touches Ryan's shoulders, slides his hands up to cup his jaw, he lets himself look at him, wants to fucking memorize it, wants to do better than memorize it -- he wants Ryan to look like this all the time. Happy. Shane follows the trail of his hands, then finally meets his eyes.

"Look at you. You're—" He laughs again, a little harder than he normally lets himself, and lets him go, but doesn't move away. "I can't wait to tell this story… I told him I loved him, and he said ‘oh.’”  
  
He says ‘oh’ a lot more hollowly than Ryan actually did.  
  
~  
  
Ryan doesn't want Shane to pull away, but he lets him. Because Shane isn't unhappy. He just doesn't know how to be still in these moments. Ryan doesn't either usually. But he's so tired, so unbelieving that this is real and after all of this. They're here. And it's good.

Shane's grabbing his face. He does it a lot. He's done it more since Ryan was sick, maybe. Some kind of fear, Ryan doesn't know. But he wants him to keep doing it. Keep touching him, holding him in these tiny, significant ways.

He doesn't know what Shane was going to call him. But he doesn't need to. He doesn't stop smiling, isn't sure he knows how. "I... didn't realize you were--I thought maybe when... hey, that's not how, I didn't say oh, that's..." Ryan laughs, half indignant, half exultant. He shoves Shane's shoulder, but there's no force behind it. "Definitely not how I said it--I was… It's been a long few days, I got there eventually!"  
  
~  
  
“You did great,” Shane says, grabbing Ryan’s forearm where he shoves him, pulls him in a little.

“And hey,” he says. “You’re— you get to be a first, for once. My first, uh… person that I’ve...” His eyes are soft, but he holds Ryan’s eyes because he _wants_ him to know. Because Ryan doesn’t, and Shane wants him to. To know how fucking special he is. And how much he means to Shane.  
  
~  
   
Now he’s the one who doesn’t know how to stay still. Shane tugs him forward and stares at him the way he stares at Ryan. A thousand miles too deep, a thousand miles deeper than Ryan thought he went. But he does, because Shane keeps finding things. He keeps uncovering things about Ryan that no one else has, that Ryan hasn’t looked at because he’s not sure what they mean, or if he wants to. But Shane does. Shane always does.  
   
He scoffs, doesn’t pull back, looks away. Because there is something in Shane’s look that is so genuine, so much—like a compliment Ryan doesn’t know how to process. It feels wrong to accept it. But that’s part of the problem, that’s probably why Shane’s doing what he’s doing. Because Ryan has so much trouble with this. He had issues with it before, but after everything—it’s bad. Shane’s looking at him now for the same reason he bit him all those weeks ago.  
   
It bothers Shane, scares him, maybe, the way Ryan sees himself.  
   
It scares him too sometimes. But, for the first time, he thinks maybe he can manage it. Maybe he can figure it out and get his hands around it.  
   
“Okay, Gandalf, well,” he says, still not looking at Shane—smiling, but more shyly now. “You said the bath was a first for you too. I’m not that—I have experiences.” He doesn’t even know what he’s defending. He’s mostly trying to make Shane stop staring at him.  
  
~  
  
“Experiences,” Shane scoffs. And he doesn’t stop staring, only now maybe it’s worse because he’s started to grin, wolfishly. “If you say so. Tell me about your _experiences_ , Ryan,” he teases.

He touches his shoulder like he’s contemplating shoving Ryan the way Ryan shoves him, but he doesn’t. He just touches, gentle. It keeps hitting him, again and again, that Ryan loves him. Loves him, Shane, who’s always just... made emotion awkward for everyone. His mind keeps getting caught, hitching on the word. He feels like he’s waiting to wake up from a dream, and he’s half scared he might, in his cabin, alone. 

He closes his fingers tighter on his shoulder, like he’s testing his own existence through the reality of Ryan.  
  
~  
  
Experiences. Jesus. Ryan wants to die. He doesn’t. Shane loves him. He definitely doesn’t want to die—but he kinda wants to die. Mostly because he is absolutely not about to go into his experiences with Shane. “I just meant—I’m not a…” It’s strange, because Shane does have this experience on him. The _guys_ experience. But, he sees it in Shane’s eyes, the way Shane’s holding onto him—feeling like this is new for him. He doesn’t know if he’s thrilled or terrified.  
   
He changes tactics, mostly because he’s going to combust if he doesn’t. “You’ve never—you’ve never said that? That you loved someone?” Ryan’s said it, plenty of times. He’s never felt it like this, but he’s said it. He’s said it and gotten nothing back. He’s said it and gotten _I love you too_ back. But it’s never been like this. Maybe that’s what Shane means. God, he hopes it is. He hopes this isn’t just… a reaction.  
   
Shane doesn’t have a lot of options anymore. Ryan tries to ground himself, to remind himself that it’s not forced. He can see it, in Shane’s eyes, this isn’t just because of the apocalypse. He looks a little too hard into his eyes, trying to make himself see it. He told Shane everything—every awful thing he’s been hating himself for, and he still said it. And it’s not about Ryan needing it.  
   
“You said it before, didn’t you? When I was sick?”  
  
~  
  
He’s kind of trying to figure out how to answer this without messing up, but then Ryan asks the second question and Shane pauses, really holds Ryan’s eyes, then takes a deep breath. He doesn’t like remembering that. He didn’t want it to be like that. It feels like a nightmare. He lets his fingers slide down Ryan’s arm, but he shifts a little closer, dropping his eyes.  
  
“Yeah, I did,” he says, then meets his eyes again. “But it wasn’t…” He makes a bit of a face, wincing at himself, trails his fingers down Ryan’s arm to his hand and gently turns it over, examining the marks from the rope. “It… I didn’t say it because I felt like I was gonna lose…” Shane thinks: _everything_. “…you. I felt it before that… I don’t know when I…”  
  
He gets this flash of Ryan— Ryan’s face, his dark cabin. They were both streaked with mud and soaked with rain… burying Jake, then. And he remembers the way Ryan had looked up at him. Pushed Shane back into a wall of his cabin because— why? He didn’t want to get the bed dirty or something… something to do with the rope.  
  
And he’d smiled at him then, for the first time, and Shane had never forgotten it. Never stopped searching for that smile, since the first time, even as broken as it had been.  
  
“No,” he says, voice a little steadier, eyes a little clearer. “I remember.”  
  
~  
   
It’s good and bad. That Shane said it, then, on one hand—it could have been something desperate, a way to keep Ryan with him. But he’s said it again, without the life or death. And, if Ryan was dying anyway, Shane definitely didn’t say it just because he thought Ryan wanted to hear it. Needed to hear it. He did, god, he did, but he can’t imagine that’s why Shane said it. It couldn’t erase what was happening, what would have happened in a thousand other scenarios.  
   
But it didn’t, and he’s standing here, looking at Shane looking at his arm and talking about the first time he realized he loved Ryan. “I believe you.” It shutters out of him, because he has to reach for it, hold onto it—but it’s easier with Shane holding onto him. He wants to know when, what he could’ve done to make someone like Shane love him. Jesus, it’s still weird to even think.  
   
Because that’s the thing—he had so many reasons to fall for Shane. Shane saved his life. Shane has given to Ryan again, and again, and again. Ryan hasn’t. The best he’s done for Shane is not die—well, and help him out of a bear trap. Fuck, that feels like decades ago. But he doesn’t know if he could answer Shane back, because some wild part of him thinks he was already falling in love when Shane opened his door, holding that damn pipe. Well before Ryan had a reason to.  
   
Or when Shane had told him, that first night, you can take a second. It was such a lie. Such a goddamn lie—but he’d said it anyway.  
   
Too soon. Way, way too soon for Shane to continue to believe he’s a normal person.  
   
“It’s probably because I had popcorn with me. You’re just following me around in some insane bet that I’ll come up with more.”  
  
~  
  
“Aw. Shucks,” Shane says. “You got me. Has any appeared?” He lets him go, reluctant, gentle somehow, and makes to go to the bags. He ends up sort of just tumbling onto the bed, fingers around the strap of Ryan’s pack. He tugs it a little, just for show, but sort of gives up.  
  
“ _Ugh_ , Ryan,” Shane complains at the ceiling. “There’s no popcorn. It wasn’t popcorn. I mean… I’m sure the popcorn _helped_. It didn’t hurt.” He feels weird, too warm -- but it’s not a fever this time, it’s… there’s more to be said. He knows that. He needs to say something else, because Ryan needs it, needs a lot. “Get over here. You’re too far away.”  
  
~  
   
Shane leaves. Like an idiot. And then pretends to look for popcorn. Like an idiot. Ryan immediately misses the touch. Then Shane tells Ryan that he’s too far away, as if he was the one who got up and walked across the room, back to the bags for a completely pointless reason. He rubs at his eyes. They’re stiff, like they’re chipping away to nothing. He’s been crying way too much lately. They don’t really need to continue the conversation—a small part of him wants to, but if it finding out Shane’s secrets means Ryan’s have to reveal what a weirdo he is, it’s probably best if Shane just leaves it at I love you.  
   
Ryan hasn’t moved to follow Shane. They probably need to get up, eat, maybe. Not that Ryan wants to—his body is nearly as stiff as the rest of him, and it has no one to blame but itself, because it’s the one who refuses to sleep. Ryan would fucking love to just… sleep.  
   
He throws out his hands. “I’m too far away because you went over there.” Still, he mostly crawls back over to the bed and sits beside Shane. He shoves his bag away like he’s defensive. “I’m not sharing anymore popcorn I have with you. I’ve done enough.” His eyes keep snagging on Shane, too bright and hopeful, because Shane said he loved Ryan, and Shane’s not sick—he’s not going anywhere. And it doesn’t feel real. So much bad has happened for so long, it doesn’t feel real—or maybe it does, and Ryan is just waiting for Shane to drop dead or walk out or any number of horrible things.  
   
But Shane’s been constant when nothing else was. Maybe he’ll stay that way.  
   
“Are you still tired?” He means for it to taunt, some, but it’s mostly just soft. Because Shane was sick—he definitely had a fever.  
  
~  
  
Shane looks up at him and he can already see all of it — a whole mess of things in Ryan’s eyes. He pushes himself enough to grab him pull him down in, a tangle of limbs, on top of him. It’s easy because they’re both weaker, more tired, worn out, and Shane’s shoulder hits the floor again too hard beneath the thin layer of blankets.  
  
He wants to build them back up. Build Ryan back up.  
  
He gets his mouth right next to Ryan’s ear, breathes so their chests come together and whispers on the exhale, “Got you.”  
  
_I’ve got you._ These substitute words he’s used for so long.  
  
Shane closes his eyes and tries to get the words together, but it’s like catching lightning bugs. He can see them so clearly, but collecting them is this whole other thing. “Ry…”  
  
~  
  
Ryan makes this surprised sound when Shane grabs him, pulls him down. But his body sinks into it, into Shane's pull, the bed, like it can peel the exhaustion from his bones. 

Shane's whisper sends a spark of chills down his spine, so it prickles along the surface of his skin and reduces everything else to nothing. Almost nothing. 

Ryan bites his lip. Shane's calling him Ry again, like he's trying to say something. It's hard for him. It's always been hard for him, and he tries, for Ryan, he always does. Ryan turns his head so he's looking at Shane. They're so close.

"I hope you're committed to this because I don't think my body is gonna get back up now."  
  
_You don't have to say anything else._  
  
~  
  
He meets his eyes. Looks at him for a moment too long. “Okay,” he says, saving the stare from becoming a bit. “I’m committed. You don’t have to.” He runs his fingers over Ryan’s cheek, over his temple, traces one of his dark eyebrows with the edge of his thumb.  
  
“We could just stay here…” he ventures. “For a while.” Even he doesn’t know if he means the cabin or just the bed. He just knows he wants to hold onto this safety, Ryan’s warmth, this thing between them.  
  
Suddenly, Shane laughs a little, catches his breath a little sharply, after. “I can’t believe you do,” he says, softer, without context. Jesus, he doesn’t think Ryan would just say it to be nice. Or because he thinks he should. Ryan isn’t like that.  
  
~  
  
Ryan watches Shane even as he traces the lines of Ryan's face. He's staring, but he's tired enough that he doesn't care. He eventually closes his eyes. He wants to stay here, in bed, at this place that seems to be made of miracles. 

He feels sleep hovering, distantly, but he tries not to think about it. "You're stupid." He catches Shane's hand and holds it so Ryan can focus. There is no context. To what Shane means. But Ryan knows. Because Shane's still hung up on Ryan loving him, as if there's a way in the world Ryan wouldn't. "Of _course_ I do. I don't know what horrible life experiences made you feel so inadequate but you're... Jesus, I love everything about you. Your love affair with your pipe, and your hands, and your terrible jokes. Even your dumb height and how you need a nap after you say anything emotional. I love you and whatever planet you go to in your weird head sometimes. It's amazing. Everything about you is... incredible."

He sighs. He didn't really mean for that all to happen but he's really tired and Shane's stupid.

"But very stupid."  
  
~  
  
“ _Stop_ ,” Shane says. “It’s not fair. You have a lot of feelings all the time, so you can just say shit. All the words are already in your head, and all I’ve been able to do is think about how much I… how… fucking much I’ve… felt for you since the day I met you, over and over. At increasing volume… which is just… not very useful in conversation, you know? Not a good… not a good conversation starter.  
  
He goes quiet for a moment, eyes on Ryan’s face, then adds. “I do love that pipe,” like he’s talking about a Rembrandt or something.  
  
~  
  
"It must be devastating to know I'm better at something." He smiles. He gets it. He does need help, finding the things about himself he likes. Remembering them. Shane has helped in a lot of ways, but Ryan can't depend on him for the words. He doesn't want Shane to think he has to say them.

"You do fine..." He lets go of Shane's hand and stares at the ceiling. "And yeah, I know. I'm pretty sure between me and the pipe you'd pick the pipe."  
  
~  
  
“I should name it,” Shane says, but Ryan’s smiling and fuck, that’s what he wanted. Freed, he wraps his arm around Ryan’s back, gets close enough that he can lie his forearm along Ryan’s spine. “Don’t be jealous, we’ve been through a lot, me and the pipe,” he says against Ryan’s forehead, and in the back of his mind he’s playing Ryan’s words over and over _I love everything about you. I love you._  
  
“We have a bond that can’t be broken.” He’s just whispering now, holding Ryan’s head against his chest, hoping he’ll sleep. He looks so tired, Shane thinks. Beautiful, always, but tired, and Shane would give anything to fix it.  
  
~  
  
Ryan presses into Shane. He feels his emotions unraveling. It's dangerous. This kind of tired. He talks and thinks. He's not afraid. So he's just sinking into these stupid thoughts that keep him up all the time.

"I'm not jealous of your dumb pipe," he says like he might actually be jealous. "I have no interest in coming between something like that."

He scoffs, curls a hand against Shane's bare chest. He doesn't want to say anything else. He wants to shut up. But he doesn't. "Do you... You'd be mad if someone killed you, even if you were... This virus makes people so mad, so you'd think after someone killed you, it would be worse. How can you love someone after they kill you?"

It's awful. The way Ryan clings to Shane, to the idea of Shane loving him. Because everyone he used to cling to, the people he knew wouldn't stop loving him, are just these freeze frames of anger. He doesn't know if they did anymore or not.

But he would have, if Shane had killed him, he would have still loved him. But Shane didn't, couldn't—and Ryan isn't sure what that means.  
  
~  
  
At first he has no idea where this is coming from, but then he gets it. Cold, like iron squeezing around his insides.  
  
Shane doesn’t think anything really happens after you die. He doesn’t think you feel mad or happy or anything. What is You just stops. But Ryan doesn’t believe that, maybe.  
  
Shane takes a breath. “Anger’s not… real,” he finally says. “It always comes from something else. Fear or… hurt. Or the virus…” But Shane doesn’t know anything about the virus either. Just that it was going to take Ryan from him, and Shane was going to hold onto him in any way he could. He doesn’t know if the virus kills the person inside before Shane takes it pipe to their skulls. He doesn’t know if the person looks out through the zombie’s dead eyes and sees the world, its loved ones, but can’t control anything. No one fucking knows.  
  
“I don’t think they stopped loving you, Ry,” Shane says. “I really don’t. I wouldn’t have. The virus never— it doesn’t represent how someone really is. I mean, Jesus… then everyone just hated everyone and never admitted it. My dad didn’t hate me… Zack wasn’t… you know Zack wasn’t like that. It’s not real… what it does to people has nothing to do with the people themselves."  
  
~  
  
"Yeah..."

Ryan doesn't know what he thinks. And Shane doesn't have anymore answers than Ryan does. Of course everyone doesn't hate everyone. That would be awful. But maybe there is something in the anger that's real. That's the part that scares him.

When he was sick, he didn't hate Shane, but he was angry. Really angry, in a way that makes sense, even now. It was just amplified. Less controlled.

Maybe Jake resented Ryan and didn't express it because he knew he shouldn't. This fucking virus has taken so damn much and left him with too many questions. He doesn't want to think about them anymore.

He wants to fucking sleep.  
  
~  
  
It doesn’t feel like enough. That settles over Shane, but he’s used to it, that feeling. At least it’s not _him_ this time. It’s just his inability to have any real answers. He runs some of Ryan’s hair through his fingers, eyes on the railings he tied him to just the other night. He listens to Ryan’s breathing, trying to will him into sleep.  
  
The sun from the upper window creeps across the floor, slowly covers them, and Shane thinks that if they stay here, they need to board the downstairs windows up, and he doesn’t know where they’re going to get the wood to do that, or if there’s even going to be an axe around here.  
  
He thinks about how he said he was going to wash the clothes in their packs, but how much he doesn’t want to leave this makeshift bed, and Ryan pressed against him.  
  
Maybe, he thinks, they can do it tomorrow. Maybe there will still be tomorrows. Maybe they’ll be okay for a few more of them.


	22. Part 22 & Epilogue

Part 22

Ryan does sleep. It’s easier than it ought to be, with the four thousand directions his mind’s taking. But it’s still fitful. There’s no nightmare, just the beginning of one. The kind of promise that keeps people awake. Shane’s there. It helps. Shane has always helps, but it seems bigger now. Like Shane’s broken some rule Ryan was so sure of—this certainty about what the world thought of Ryan.  
   
It lets him sleep for a few hours. Not enough, but it’s never going to be enough—not in the apocalypse. Not with Ryan’s mind being the piece of shit that it is. He isn’t sure if Shane sleep again. Ryan’s not awake enough to really know. He just knows Shane doesn’t go anywhere. And that’s all he’d been checking for, reaching for.  
   
He pulls awake, fully, a few hours later, staring at the changed light off the ceiling. He keeps wasting their days by not sleeping at night. It’s clearly a strategy Shane’s taken when he knows Ryan doesn’t sleep. Because, for some reason, it works, Ryan sleeps better during the day, when he knows Shane’s already slept. He doesn’t know why.  
   
He pulls away from Shane’s chest to look up at him, to see if he’s asleep. “Shane?”  
  
~  
  
“Hm?” Shane says, opening his eyes. He wasn’t sleeping, but he was drifting a little, almost peaceful. Warm. He wasn’t thinking about horrible things. 

His eyes find Ryan’s, takes in the changed light. He looks a little bit better, Shane thinks, so he smiles a little. “Hi.” He says it a little too gently, so he clears his throat, lets his fingers slide over the side of Ryan’s neck as he pulls his arm back, but the touch doesn’t disappear. His fingers linger at Ryan’s collarbone, like he’s testing its depths, the sharpness of it, eyes following the trail of his touch.  
  
~

He shivers at Shane’s touch. He’s not sure if he’s doing it on purpose, but it’s enough either way. To make Ryan’s heartbeat jam too fast into his throat. He smiles back at Shane, and then pushes himself up, over enough to kiss him. Soft, not quick, but he doesn’t push into it. He draws back before he lets his body go too far. 

He pulls himself up into a sitting position and looks around, to the bag he discarded before they fell asleep. “You have got to stop letting me sleep during the day. It’s a waste. You’re enabling me and my stupid insomnia.” He reaches and drags his bag over. He’s not sure what he plans to do, but he’s not ready to get up and the bag feels more productive. He glances back down at Shane. He needs to not, because if there’s one thing that makes him not want to be productive it’s Shane half-drenched in sleep, especially after he’s had his hands on Ryan’s neck and chest like that. “Are you hungry?”

He digs through the bag, but he’s not even sure if food’s in this one. He’s just trying to coax himself into motion.

~  
  
Shane thinks _I’m always hungry_ , but that’s just a shitty thing to remember. He watches Ryan, waiting for this weird, soft peace to fade but it doesn’t, really.

It doesn’t.

“Yeah, sure,” he says, slowly pushing himself up to sitting, rubbing his eyes. He reaches for the pants he took off last night and threw on the floor and finds them mostly dry. Miracle. Without standing, he sets about getting them on. His eyes flicker to Ryan as he does up the button.

“I like sleeping with you,” he says. “I don’t care _when_ it happens. Wow, I hope there’s granola, I haven’t had that in forever,” he adds dryly.  
  
~  
   
Ryan laughs, but he keeps going through the bag. He pulls out a lot of clothes, the map, before he finally does find some food. His eyebrows raise and he tosses it in front of Shane. “You’re in luck. That’s exactly what it is.” It seems to be all there is in his bag. Eventually, he unearths some beefy jerky too and he slides that to Shane. Because he hates it way more than granola.  
   
Shane gets his pants on, which is a relief and a tragedy, Ryan thinks. He sighs and stares at the food. “Yeah, well, I’d like it a lot more if I could do it at the appropriate times.” He gives Shane a once-over. “Are your pants dry?”  
  
~  
  
Shane unwraps the beef jerky which he also hates by at least it’s something different and pulls a face at it before he looks up at Ryan. “That’s a... that’s the worst question, it sounds like— but yes, they’re mostly... it’s fine. Better than yesterday... I’d kill for a Vienna sausage right now,” he adds around a mouthful of jerky. Who fucking thought this would be a good idea ever?

“Think we could hunt?” He asks, suddenly. “I guess there’s no fire to cook on. I could definitely hunt.”  
  
~  
   
Ryan eats the granola. He doesn’t say anything for a long minute. Mostly because he isn’t sure why Shane’s so offended that Ryan asked about his pants. It isn’t like he pissed them. Ryan’s pretty sure he didn’t. Well, he doesn’t want to know if he did, so he isn’t going to bring it up.  
   
He raises his eyebrows when he thinks about hunting. He doesn’t speak until he’s swallowed his food. And then he half-scoffs, half-laughs. “Uh, you could one hundred percent not hunt.” He glances back over to the map. “You gonna hit the zombie with your beloved pipe? I’ve seen you miss a zombie two feet in front of you. While it was on the ground.” He thinks about Shane back at the cabin, the first one—when he first met him, Ryan would’ve been sure Shane could hunt. But now… well, he’d need a lot of practice.  
   
“We still need to get to the coast.” He slides the map in front of him, but doesn’t open it. He takes another bite of the granola bar and sighs once he finishes. “Fishing might be more your speed.”  
  
~  
  
Shane makes his way through a few facial expressions, pretending to be insulted and also trying not to laugh. A little disappointed that he’s not capable enough to hunt.

“I could hunt,” he tells no one in particular. “Fishing, though. Fuck, yeah, I could go for a lazy river. Lazy river, that’s the _life_. I could have a boat. And a hat.” He makes the shape of said hat around his head like he can make it materialize there. “Straw hat. Lazy river. I could have a boat. What are you going to do? While I’m fishing in my boat? I bet you get seasick.”  
  
~  
   
Ryan rolls his eyes. “I would be fine on your stupid boat.” It’s adorable, really, how excited Shane is at the concept of boats. At this kind of simplistic life. Like he’s been waiting his whole life for a reason for it to be okay. Ryan’s half-surprised he wasn’t already some kind of vagrant, before all of this. “A straw hat. Why does that sound exactly like you? Is any part of you actually civilized? I’m starting to think you’re a time traveler from the 1800s or some shit.”  
   
Everything is different now. The things Ryan liked, most of them were grounded in what was. He doesn’t know if he has something that would make him light up like Shane does about stupid shit. It’s not like he doesn’t like nature. He hiked and stuff, before, but… hiking by necessity takes the joy out of it a bit.  
   
“I’d probably fish better than you do.”  
  
~  
  
“You would most certainly not,” Shane says. “You could uh... weed the garden or something. Harvest the crops? Whatever they do.” He shifts so he can see Ryan’s face a little better. “Real talk, though, if you want to do something today I think we should do something about the windows downstairs...” he bites his lip, trying to gauge Ryan’s reaction. “Or we could go if you want. Get to the coast…”  
  
Shane doesn’t know what’s at the coast. A dead end, maybe. But also, the ocean. He wants to see it.  
  
Weirdly, he wonders about TJ, how he’s doing, if he’s still alive… he wonders if TJ ever regrets giving them the car and thinks probably not.  
  
~  
   
“Okay, I’ll harvest the crops,” he says dryly. He’s pretty sure Shane wants to stay. He can see it in his expression. Ryan doesn’t want to push him to go. Hell, Ryan isn’t sure he wants to go. But this place—if they were going to stay anywhere, it’s a weird choice. But maybe not for Shane. He chews on his lip until he tears some of the dead skin away. It doesn’t bleed, but it stings like it might.  
   
“We don’t have to do anything if you’d rather chill, or whatever.” It sounds weird to say that. He’s pretty sure they never just chill anymore. But he’s said it now. “I don’t know what to do about the windows—I didn’t bring any duct tape.”  
   
He opens the map and stares down at it. Shane was the one who even had a map. At first, Ryan hadn’t even thought to use them because he was so clueless. He’s gotten a bit better at it. He looks up at Shane. “We definitely don’t need to leave today. I’m still really fucking sore and probably mostly useless in a zombie situation. And maybe wash clothes since you scattered yours on the winds.” He isn’t sure he’s allowed to joke about that yet, so he looks back at the map. “I’m not even sure where we are.”  
  
~  
  
Shane watches him quietly, almost smiles because at least now when Ryan looks at maps he doesn’t look quite so much like he’s attempting to read Ancient Greek.

Shane doesn’t know what he wants to do. He misses the cabin. He misses, bizarrely, the place his family stayed when they went to the lake the summer he was nine or ten. He hasn’t even thought about that place in years. He thinks _It’s whatever you want_ , because he’d follow Ryan straight into the fucking ocean if he wanted it, or all the way back to Illinois. It doesn’t matter, as long as he’s with him.

He pulls himself closer to Ryan to look at the map over his shoulder, trying to suss out their location. He finds the road they were on. It looks lonely and strange once he picks it out from the rest. “Found the road,” he tells him. Resting his chin on Ryan’s shoulder, eyes on the map. He doesn’t think the actual cabin will be on it, but maybe he can make a good guess. “See it?”  
  
~  
   
He absolutely does not. He has no freaking idea where Shane is even looking. So, naturally, he says, “Yeah. Right, I know.” Quite honestly, how does Shane have any idea that’s the road they’re on? Is there a hidden message written in the trees? His eyes flicker back to Shane where he’s propped his head on Ryan’s shoulder. He smiles and looks back at the map. He furrows his brow and follows three different roads westward. None of them look like the road they were on. He barely remembers the road they were on.  He’s pretty sure they weren’t that far from the coast.  
   
He wishes he knew exactly what Shane wanted, but he doubts Shane knows either. It’s hard to know. All Ryan wants is his mother to crash through the roof and hug him and tell him she doesn’t hate him.  
   
He’s pretty sure that’s not on the map.    
   
Finally, his eyes find the road—the one he’s pretty sure they’re on—and follow it up to the coast. He tries to find a course that makes sense. “It’s close, kinda? I think… wait, okay, is that—is that a road, or…?” He squints. God, I miss GPS.”  
  
~  
  
Shane smiles. “GPS is not as reliable as this anyway. So what’s our path, Ry, hm?” he asks, fingers sliding over Ryan’s hip as he turns his head to press his lips against Ryan’s neck. He’s still not wearing a shirt. Shane feels like he could take advantage of this. 

He smells familiar, safe, and Shane’s definitely not in a rush, even as he lets his lips drag softly, a little lower, to the place Ryan’s shoulder slides into his neck.  
  
~  
  
Ryan's fingers twitch over the map where he was starting to trace it. It's this all-over chill that drips into warmth in rivulets down his back. Too much for what Shane's doing, for the soft half-touch of lips on his neck. He just freezes like he's hit a goddamn glitch. 

He works movement back into his fingers, focuses on the map. He's completely lost his place. He follows a road but it's not the right one, he doesn't think. Shane's mouth presses harder into him, slides down. His eyelids flutter, out of focus.

"Uh..." Ryan swallows, shifts beneath it and it squeezes his pulse too tight. He's not quite sure what Shane asked him. Right, path. Roads. "We're... West, it's... There aren't that many options.

"He sucks in a breath. Tracking a thousand wrong lines on the map. Shane's doing it intentionally and Ryan really doesn't want to lose. "I'm sure there's a highway or... something."  
  
~  
  
He hums a sound of agreement, and now that he’s vaguely worked his way down Ryan’s neck, he starts back up, with more purpose.

Speaking right up against the column of his neck, he says, “How do we get to that highway?” Another kiss, open-mouthed, followed by a soft scrape of teeth. 

He touches his lips to the upper edge of his ear, barely touching, and although Shane’s eyes are not even on the map, he whispers, half smiling (and all mischief), “Show me.”  
  
~  
  
Yeah, it's on purpose. 

Ryan's vision blurs, or maybe it's in his head. He gasps, this half-breath. He can tries and can't quite cut it off. His neck arches under Shane's mouth, his teeth, like he's exposing it. It's not intentional. Nothing he's doing ever is like this. Goosebumps spread fast down his body, chasing the thrill Shane's mouth traces along his neck.

"Mm..." He's trying to answer, but he's managed to crumple the map between his fingers. He knows how it feels. He doesn't have to show Shane anything. But Shane's got a mouth against Ryan's neck, then his ear, and a hand on his hip, and all Ryan's instinct are screaming: _please him_.

The rest of him is screaming: _jackass_.

"I ca--uh..." His hand stays, like he's going to move it, over the map. But he doesn't. He just stares at it, breathing like he's going to speak. Breathing like he can't speak.

~  
  
Shane shifts behind him, this soft slide of movement over the floor so he’s closer, and the hand on Ryan’s hip slides over his stomach, and with his free hand he touches the other side of Ryan’s neck very, very softly, fingers along his jaw.

He loves this, he loves how Ryan comes apart. Shane wants it forever, he wants to fold it into himself, feel it, recall it. His own breath comes a little faster, soft and quick against Ryan’s skin, against the goosebumps. 

He bites his ear and says, “Doing great, Ry.” He’s evil, probably. He tips Ryan’s face slightly to the side and drags his tongue over his hummingbird pulse. “Which way’s West again?”  
  
~  
   
He takes these ragged, broken breaths. Shane’s got a thousand hands on a thousand pressure points. Ryan can’t see straight. Shane knows he can’t see straight and, distantly, Ryan hates him for it. He hates the power Shane gets over him, so fucking fast. But he likes it. That’s the worst part. He can’t hate it because he likes it—loves it like he loves Shane.  
   
Shane’s breathing hard against him. All this heat and want. It’s digging into Ryan and twisting him around it like a wire. He can’t feel or see or sense anything but Shane’s teeth on his ear, his hand on Ryan’s stomach. It’s warm, pooling like a liquid in Ryan’s center. It awakens this thousand-year ache in him, this ache that he doesn’t think he’s felt—not quite so completely—before he met Shane.  
   
Shane wants Ryan as much as Ryan wants him. That’s what undoes him so completely. The touches paralyze him, but that fucking shatters him.  
   
Shane asks him a question and Ryan can’t quite piece the words together in his mind. Because Shane’s tongue is sliding over the slots in Ryan’s neck, the ones too close to his pulse. Ryan reaches down to get a hard, biting grip on Shane’s thigh. He tries to say something—maybe answer this question he never heard, but he moans this quick, breathy thing. He bites his lip, eyelids fluttering, to try and get a foothold. On himself. On Shane. On anything.  
   
But all he’s got are his fingers burning into Shane’s thigh like matches.  
  
~  
  
Shane hisses at that hot, grinding touch, almost as an afterthought. And part of him likes it, wants it, wants to be disassembled as desperately as Ryan does, and maybe put back together better. 

But it’s the disassembling he wants, it’s the fact that he can feel the edge now, in the unknown darkness of which where he might feel _everything_ , and he wants to let go. He wants to follow Ryan down. 

And he loves the sounds Ryan makes. He loves them a lot, too much. He wants to break through whatever makes Ryan hold them back, he wants to fucking _hear_ him, memorize everything, map out the deepest parts of what makes up _Ryan_ and learn it by heart.

He tips Ryan’s head back, until his throat is stretched long, wide open and vulnerable like he knows Ryan is, to him, like Shane wants to be for Ryan. But he doesn’t know if he could ever get there. He’s always been guarded, but against what? It’s been so long that Shane doesn’t even know anymore.He drags these lazy kisses, soft but lingering in their intensity, all the way up, feeling goosebumps beneath his tongue until it makes Shane shiver. He presses into the warmth of him, as much as he can, but he’s not cold anymore.  
  
~  
  
Ryan needs to breathe. He pants too hard, too shallow, too deep. Shane's got him in this binding and he's barely touching Ryan. Shane knows it too. He knows what to do with it. Ryan's neck burns under the tug and strain of muscles and Shane pushes. Pushes like he pushes Ryan.

Ryan wants to push too. But he can't get a grip. He's just stuck on the way Shane's tongue lays all this damp heat too close to his jugular with every single kiss. The way his hand controls Ryan's neck like he's got a leash on it. Ryan can feel himself inches from letting go, from succumbing to this ache in his waist.

Because Shane doesn't stop. He never stops. 

Ryan finds this gasping, aching voice. "Starting to think... you don't give a shit... about the path." His hand drags the length of Shane's thigh to his knee. He can't remember where the map is.  
  
~  
  
He breathes a soft laugh into the place his throat meets his jaw, turns Ryan’s head to kiss his mouth at the corner, but he doesn’t make it a real kiss, not quite. Not yet. “I asked you a question and you never answered me,” he says, draws his fingers up over Ryan’s ribs to his collarbone, hooks his fingertips there, like he’s reminding him of what he said, reminding him of how beautiful Shane thinks he is, even if all he could get out of his mouth was _you have good collarbones_. Not his best, to be sure.  
  
He’s all around him, fingers on his jaw, on his collarbone. Ryan’s shoulder presses against Shane’s chest and he draws back enough to kiss him there, where the bone makes it look sharp, his knee sliding out from under Ryan’s fingers. Shane’s eyes flick up to the map, but his lips are still ghosting over his shoulder. “Answer me,” he says, soft, then pulls back a little, pulling himself further behind Ryan, lining his sternum with Ryan’s spine. He gets his fingers into that dark hair, and closes them there at the back of his head, but doesn’t do anything, doesn’t pull or push, just trails the line of his vertebrae with his eyes.  
  
~  
   
Somehow, Ryan’s heartbeat gets faster. Shane hooks a kiss just at the edge of his mouth, and Ryan leans into it—tries to kiss him, but Shane doesn’t bend enough, doesn’t let him. It drags the current inside him higher. He’s barely got his head above it. His eyes go dark. Shane’s taunting him, and he should bite back, but he’s watching him as best he can—with Shane behind him and all wrapped around him. Lip barely parted, because he keeps thinking about it—about kissing him. His eyes cling to glances of Shane’s mouth where they can, but Shane doesn’t kiss his mouth. He kisses Ryan’s chest.  
   
His fingers track Ryan’s body like he’s finding all these fingerprints he’s already left. Like a keypad he can unlock. Ryan feels like something inside him is coming undone, opening too far. He isn’t sure how to stop it, isn’t sure if he should. This thrill of fear kicks up the notches of his spine, inches from where Shane’s chest presses against him.  
   
_Answer me_ , Shane says, and Ryan’s eyelids flutter. He’s trying to find himself in this chaos Shane’s injected into his bloodstream, but all he finds is Shane’s hand fisted in the back of his hair. He’s not pulling, but Ryan’s blood rises like it’ll seep into the lines of Shane’s palms. His eyes flicker across the map.  
   
_Answer him_ , is what he thinks. It’s instinctual. Doing what Shane says. Shane pulls his grip off the world one finger at a time until he’s got Ryan suspended on a single thread—and he’s holding it. He turns his head as far as he can without jostling Shane’s hand too far, mouth still not quite closed. He doesn’t even remember the _question_.  
   
There’s a responding taunt somewhere on his tongue. Something goading, something that might push back, but he can’t work it out. Instead, his voice is drenched in want, like he’s desperate. He is. Because he says, “Ask it again.” but he means, _please, kiss me_.  
  
~  
  
Shane takes this rough breath against him because he didn’t expect it, somehow. Somehow Ryan always surprises him. It’s sparked this liquid heat in him though, and it rushes through every part of him, and he doesn’t mean to be quite so rough when he tugs Ryan’s head back by the hair and kisses him, _hard_. It’s an awkward angle, it’s a bit of a mess, but the way Ryan’s voice sounded keeps crashing through his head like waves in a storm, circling down his spine, soaking into his blood, thinning it until his heartbeat is just aftershocks — flickering chaotically through him, stealing his breath so he makes a sound against Ryan’s warm mouth that’s mostly a gasp.  
  
Threads are snapping, this carefully constructed web Shane has, keeping himself safe, suspended, so he doesn’t touch anything, ever. Doesn’t feel anything. Christ, God, he wants to keep _feeling this_. This overwhelming thing that is Ryan. Because he’s all this warmth, like flames — and sometimes the flicker of them through Shane hurts, it makes this ache, this persistent dull edge that scrapes the same places over and over, and Shane understands Too Much. He understands it and he keeps his fingers too close to the flame anyway, lets it lick over his skin, because there is just so much light around Ryan, and it’s dazzling. What he doesn’t understand is how anyone ever could have fucking looked away. Because he can’t.  
  
Sometimes Shane questions this, between them. This dynamic or whatever it is. Is it control? He thinks it might be, but he doesn’t know if Ryan knows — doesn’t think he does — how at his fucking mercy Shane is. Because all Shane thinks as he laps at the soft yield of Ryan’s mouth, is _anything, anything, anything_. He’s wanted Ryan to just reach in and get his fingers around Shane’s beating heart. Tear it out for safekeeping, Shane doesn’t care. Ryan would take better care of it than he could.  
  
But, Shane thinks, it’s a lot to ask.  
  
~  
   
The kiss startles him. He breathes this almost-moan. Whether it’s from the way Shane yanked his hair or if it’s the kiss itself. It’s both, probably, but Ryan’s so caught in the beat of his heart he doesn’t know. He doesn’t care. He wants Shane to pull harder, kiss harder, until it’s just Shane’s hands around him. Because it’s the one time he’s not asking, not floundering—doubting everything. He’s never fully trusted himself, maybe, but he trusts Shane. He trusts Shane with anything. It’s not fair of him to push so much onto him, to expect so much of him. But it’s been like that since the first night. Shane takes care of Ryan.  
   
No one takes care of Ryan.  
   
He’s spent his life cultivating a careful control. Something that doesn’t allow for other people to take care of him. He takes care of other people. And he never even realized how much he wanted to let go until Shane forced him. Sometimes, he still hangs on, out of habit. Shane kisses him, and Ryan bites back with his mouth—no teeth, no tongue. Shane kisses harder this time, not quite the frenzy when Ryan does. But there’s a question in there, maybe, another question Ryan can’t understand. Can’t answer.  
   
Ryan lifts a hand, behind him, to settle against Shane’s neck, at the very base of his hairline. He pulls, barely, with it. His neck is groaning with the strain, but he leans into it. The pain, the position. Shane.  
   
His mouth quirks, just a little, the very start of a smile, and he never stops kissing him, not completely, even as he says, “Good question.”  
  
~  
  
“I’m highly skilled in—“ Shane’s speaking between the meetings of their mouths, too soft, determined to get the last word in. “— questioning.”  
  
He almost laughs, but it comes out like a moan instead. His hand slides down Ryan’s torso and wraps around the inside of his thigh, hitches him back against him and the kiss breaks. Shane presses his face into Ryan’s neck and just breathes for a second, fingers skating slowly back and forth over the soft skin of the hollow of his throat  
  
He closes his fingers there, softly, feels his pulse against his palm, against his fingertips. “Has everyone ever told you—“ He trails his free hand from his thigh to the inside of Ryan’s hip, hesitating, as he thinks about his words. “Let go of the stupid map, Ryan,” he says instead, lowly, against his shoulder.  
  
~  
  
Ryan laughs, then. Still against Shane's mouth. Even as he shudders beneath the soft, lazy way Shane touches him.  His fingers twitch to release. He has to focus to keep his hold on the map. He does, though. He folds his hands around it. He kisses Shane harder for a second.

"What if I like the stupid map?"  
  
~  
  
Shane shifts and pulls Ryan back by the throat, map and all. Somehow he gets him on his back on the wooden floorboards and has to clamber over him, straddling his legs, and it’s a mess of legs and rustling paper, and this wild grin, but he manages it, one hand pinning him down by the chest, the other hovering uncertainly between them, like he doesn’t know where to put it.  
  
He settles on trying to get the map away. It crumples, maybe rips a little. Shane has decided not to care. He gets it away from him, sort of balled up, almost loses his balance in the process. He makes like he’s going to throw it over the railings to the floor below.  
  
~  
   
“Oh!” Ryan makes this sound, half surprised, half caught in his laugh. He peers up at him, brows slightly furrowed as Shane climbs on top of him. He’s so torn between this intense, pounding need inside him, and how childlike Shane is. He shouldn’t want to ruffle the hair of the same person he just kissed passionately, but he definitely does. Shane’s this mix of a thousand different things and Ryan is desperately in love with everyone one of them.  
   
Shane takes the map—it’s crumpled. Half ruined, at this point. Ryan’ doesn’t know whether that’s his or Shane’s fault. He decides it’s both. Hopefully they’ll still be able to read it. Shane makes like he’s going to throw it.  
   
“Hey!” Ryan bends up as much as he can beneath Shane. He takes ahold of his wrist. He tugs Shane back down so he falls, pretty heavily, back onto Ryan. Their face to face. Ryan has to work to keep his composure. But he creeps his fingers along Shane’s arm, this slow, edging motion with far, far too much contact, to get a hand on the map.  
   
“I was reading that.”  
  
~  
  
“Oof,” He feels himself relax under Ryan’s touch. It’s just his fucking _arm_ , but he gets goosebumps anyway. _I was reading that_ , Ryan says, and Shane barks out a laugh. “You weren’t.”  
  
His eyes flicker over Ryan’s face, lingering everywhere — the bridge of his nose, his cheekbones, the curve of his mouth — Jesus, his mouth. His eyes. “You were looking at it and going:” he pitches his voice higher, more nasal — a parody of Ryan’s. “Oh, I’m not even sure where we are, help me Shane, I need GPS!”  
  
They’re close. The map’s caught between them and Shane’s bracing his weight with one hand on the floor. He can feel each of Ryan’s exhales against his lips, and they’re tingling with the sensation. He drags his teeth unconsciously over his own lower lip, just to feel something sharply against that sensitivity. “You’ve got a freckle,” he tells him. “It’s a freckle or something. Have I said that? In your eye.”  
  
~  
   
Ryan’s eyes track Shane’s teeth over his lip too close, so close. He could kiss him again. It’s something he could do. But he’s still smiling and shaking his head, because now Shane’s mocking him. “Just because I miss GPS doesn’t mean I wasn’t trying to read it. I definitely don’t recall asking for your help, and why would I? You’ve been the exact opposite of that.”  
   
Their breath bounces between one another. Ryan tastes Shane’s in his throat. It spills through him like water on a windshield. He’s so aware of it, of everything Shane’s doing as they sit here. “That’s _fascinating_.” Because obviously he _knew_. He leans up as far as he can without touching Shane’s lips. Touch slips between them, brief, not a kiss, barely a bristle—but it bursts through Ryan like a firework. It’s hard to see straight with all this contact, but compared to the hold Shane had a minute ago—this is complete fucking freedom. It’s a relief, but Ryan misses it too.  
   
“You’ve got one on your cheek.” He brushes a thumb over it, mouth kind of twisted in a mischievous smile. “Is that what we’re doing now, making groundbreaking observations about each other?”  
  
~  
  
“I have lots,” Shane says, “those aren’t special,” but for a second, he’d lowered his eyes at that touch, just feeling it. He twitches slightly, like he isn’t sure what to do with this proximity, and Ryan’s lips so close to his own. They’re so close that he doesn’t know if there was really a touch or if he’s just imagining it.  
  
He’s watching that smile spread over Ryan’s face, and he knows that he’s probably about to be murked or something, by someone as tiny as Ryan. He can’t even really be mad about it. He mirrors it, almost — it’s edging the corners of his mouth for a moment, then it’s gone, but it stays in his eyes, bright, hopeful.  
  
Ryan makes him feel fucking hopeful. He always has.  
  
“I have an observation,” Shane tells him. “But I’m not going to tell you.”  
  
~  
   
“That’s rude.” He’s trying to pretend like the curiosity that statement conjured isn’t about to explode and kill them both. He’s inches away from kissing Shane. He wants to know, but he wants to kiss him more. He wants to kiss him more than he’s ever wanted anything. And he’s already kissed him, so it’s crazy.  
   
He pushes himself back. Poor Shane is always the one on top of him lately. Keeping himself upright. He moves his eyes down his body, raking, considering, and then he shoves Shane’s shoulder. Hard and fast, until he’s shifted so he’s the one hovering over Shane. His own arm keeping them apart. Still not kissing, for some fucking reason.  
   
“Tell me.”  
  
~  
  
He has to catch his breath, his shoulders going tight at the suddenness of the movement, but then he’s looking up at Ryan. The feeling comes to him, but the words don’t. He understands exactly what it means, but how does he get it between them? He starts to speak, and for a second, the connection between them breaks a little, even while Shane holds his eyes — he’s too deep into his own head, and that’s not where he wants to be.  
  
Shane blinks and he’s back, beneath Ryan, pinned beneath his body, beneath his eyes, and Shane’s own darken as his pupils dilate. “Rude, yeah, that’s what they tell me,” he says, blatantly ignoring Ryan’s orders. “Why are you still not kissing me?” he asks, gaze dropping to Ryan’s mouth as he pushes himself a little closer, up onto his elbows.  
  
~  
   
Ryan’s mouth twitches as he watches Shane. He’s struggling with something, but Ryan couldn’t begin to fathom what it is. It tugs at Ryan, this fear that he isn’t doing what he needs to do. Shane’s so good at working Ryan out—at doing what he needs to, but Ryan’s still fumbling over what Shane needs, what he wants. How to get him out of his head and into… the world. Stop window shopping.  
   
He doesn’t mind it. The way Shane disappears sometimes. But he does, because Shane does, or he seems to. Every now and then. He asks why they aren’t kissing and Ryan laughs. “Do we need to be kissing all the time?” He doesn’t pull away from Shane, even as he eases up. Even as static bounces between their skin.  
   
The answer, of course, is yes they fucking do. But Shane ignored him, and he’s not in the mood to be ignored. “Fine, I’ll kiss you.” Ryan pushes himself further down Shane, away from his mouth—he bends down and kisses the center of Shane’s breastbone. It’s hard, biting, because the skin is harder there. He feels the bone beneath it with his teeth, scraping, just enough, because he’s using it to work out the need to kiss somewhere else. He works his way back up to Shane’s jaw, kissing faster, lighter, as he shakes the electricity burning in him out.    
   
~  
  
Shane’s breath catches in his chest, somewhere beneath Ryan’s mouth, and tangles up his throat. His fingers curl up, nails digging into the floorboards, and then Ryan’s working his way back up and Shane tilts his head just slightly up and to the side, giving him access, trying, fucking _trying_ to open himself up — just give himself over completely.  
  
Christ, how do people do it?  
  
He takes another breath, shallower, clearer, and says “Ryan,” like reverence, half imploring. He can feel him shaking and it undoes something in Shane. One hand comes up but, instead of touching Ryan, his fingers cover his own closed eyes, like he can shut the world out and just have this.  
  
Fuck, Ryan deserves it. Deserves everything Shane can give. He’s trying to tear down the thing that keeps him back from everything, cut through all the pieces that hold him, but there are so many.  
  
And here’s the thing. As much as Shane wants to block out the world, he can’t. Because that’s opening the door to death. And he doesn’t know why, but he’s got a bad feeling. Not like when Ryan disappeared — nothing could compare to that, but it’s heavy and pressing, like fog on a rainy day. He hates himself, he really does, but it would be so, so easy to get lost in this moment and he can’t. The window’s broken downstairs, the nights are long.  
  
“Hey,” he says as Ryan’s mouth brushes his ribs, somewhere ( _ohchrist_ , Shane thinks) “Ry… Ryan.” He sits up, breaks this contact, but his hands are still on Ryan’s face, on his throat, on his shoulders. He shuts his eyes, bracing himself to say it. “I think… west.” It’s not a cohesive sentence. “We should go, uh, in that direction now.”  
  
He can feel the tension, the sweetness of this moment draining out of him, and god, but he wishes he could explain this sudden urgency to get the fuck out of here, only knows that he feels it, and that it would be stupid not to listen.  
  
~  
  
Ryan doesn't understand, but he listens. He listens and they pack their things and they go. Shane would have liked to bring one of those jugs of water, but it's just too heavy to carry through the woods to the car. The car seats are damp from the rain, from leaving the doors open. The woods are still wet and slick, and they slide beneath the weight of their packs, boots skidding over leaves and mud. Ryan is tired -- more than before -- and Shane doesn't blame him, not after everything they've been through.  
   
The car starts up just fine, though. Shane's been thinking that, christ, maybe it wouldn't. Maybe they'd turn the key and the engine would just idle and idle and finally die, and then they would also be dead. Stuck in an unmoving car, the sound drawing _them_ out from the trees. Sound to zombies is like a flame to moths. It's horrible. He's so goddamn sick and tired of the sounds they make. He thinks he'd gladly go deaf than listen to them moaning and wailing for five more seconds.  
  
The car starts and they’re quiet. Shane doesn’t pull out back onto the road and Ryan fidgets and fidgets and then looks over at the same time Shane— fuck, Shane can't look at him because he's thinking about when Ryan was sick again, and it’s just too hard. He pulls out onto the road very slowly, and something loosens in his chest, because nothing’s coming for them yet.  
  
“Hey, man,” Shane finally says, before Ryan bursts with anticipation or anxiousness in the seat next to him, “You told me, um… when you were sick, you told me I should go to Disneyland. And I thought, you know, we’re going west anyway…  
  
~  
  
Ryan gapes at him. For all his subliminal messaging, he didn’t think Shane would ever actually _go_ for it. Wait, does subliminal messaging actually work? Maybe he’s got, like, psychic powers or something. Or no, wait, he told him probably moments from turning into a soulless, starving creature. He probably sounded totally insane.  
  
“Oh, did I?” he asks. It kind of comes out wrecked, like a squeak -- all rust and metal in his throat.  
  
Shane laughs, and it startles him. “Yeah, man. You’re a terrible fucking liar. Shane still isn’t looking at him and, god, Ryan wants him to. He wants him to look at him just for one second, or take his hand or something. So— so Ryan does it. Ryan reaches out and tugs at the tattered sleeve of Shane’s sweater until Shane switches hands on the wheel and wraps his fingers around Ryan’s palm like a kid, like children do, but he holds on tight and Ryan feels tears spring to his eyes and he does’t know why. And then Shane starts talking again.  
  
“You know, I…” Shane says “I wouldn’t be fine, or safe, without you. I… I don’t even think I was, before.”  
  
“You fucking idiot,” Ryan says. “I'm the only one that ever gets us into any danger. It’s always my fault, I—”  
  
“It’s not. Jesus, Ryan, stop _blaming_ yourself. Look, that's not the point, the point is if you want to go to fucking Disneyland…” he laughs a little, and the tension breaks. “If you want to go to Disneyland, then I think we should go. Maybe your stupid radio was right. It’s like…”  
  
“You think our luck’s going to turn around?” Ryan asks, incredulous. “ _Now?_ ”  
  
And _then_ Shane looks at him and Ryan feels like it’s the sun that reaches down from storm-clouds, after the rain and the thunder has faded.  
  
“It already has,” Shane says and looks back at the road. “We walked out of those woods, together. You’re here, now.”  
  
He says it like it’s simple, and Ryan fights tears for a while and holds Shane's hand back as hard as Shane is holding his, but after a while their grip loosens, and things ease between them. Ryan tries the car radio, but it's all static, so he turns it off.  
  
~  
  
For a long time, it's just silence, the wet road rolling beneath the wheels of TJ's car, and Shane wonders if it’s the kind of silence people have when they know they're going somewhere that’s just going to be the same as everywhere else, or if it’s going to be different, this time. They both wonder where TJ is, now. If he's still alive, or if he's one of them... he wonders if it's better to wonder or to know. He wishes he didn't know about Zack.  
   
He wishes... he wishes he'd been in time for Finn.  
   
The sign the says they've reached California has been half-torn from its posts, the metal warped and twisted so viciously that Shane genuinely can't tell if it was the weather, or something else.  
   
"Well," Ryan says, in a falsely bright voice that doesn’t sound convincing _at all_. "That's promising," and Shane exhales a sound through his nose that might have been a laugh if his stomach wasn't in ten thousand knots. What if they're fucked? What if California is uninhabitable now?  
  
They stop to take a break. To eat some of the food that’s salvageable from their packs, most of it growing more and more stale by the minute. Shane misses _meat_. And vegetables. Real fucking vegetables that don't come in a can, soft and slightly tinny. He's so tired of having the taste of metal always lingering on his tongue. (And yet, kissing Ryan, Ryan's cut-up-mouth, _that_ he would do again.) Ryan insists that he drive, but Shane doesn’t let him. He still looks weak and so tired.  
   
Shane hasn't seen the bombed out cities up close yet, but California has certainly been bombed, back when the government and the military had finally given up and half lost their minds. Buildings are only half there — jagged corners stark against the skyline — it's not a skyline he recognizes but then, it wouldn't have been anyway. This is going to be easier for him than Ryan, he knows. Ryan grew up here, he knew this place. Shane’s afraid for him, but Ryan wants to see Disneyland so to Disneyland they go, but Shane’s scared anyway. But he knows, now: They will get through this just like they’ve gotten through everything else.  
  
~  
  
They don't go through Los Angeles. Ryan knows that there is a quarantine zone there, but he doesn't want to see it, and he definitely doesn't want that enormous horde still surrounding it, forever maybe, to see them and come after them either. He doesn’t want to see the bombed out remains, the skeleton of his old neighbourhood, his old haunts. Once was enough, Ryan thinks. He can't go back anymore, it’s done. The past is dead; everything he’s known is gone — a bombed-out shell. He's sure there's parts of his heart that look like that, too, but...  
   
They're almost to Anaheim when he remembers something. “Wait,” Ryan says. “Turn here, yeah yeah right here.” Shane turns, takes the off-ramp even as he says “But there’s— the sign says the other way.”  
  
“Just trust me.”  
  
~  
  
The air hits him as soon as they get out of the car. There's something to it, a sharpness he hasn't known before.  
   
"Smell that?" Ryan asks. "That's the fucking ocean, Big Guy.”  
  
It’s a cloudy day, but Shane registers it, slowly — the rhythmic crashing, the impossible, endless sound of the sea. He follows Ryan down a boardwalk that slowly gets sandier and sandier and then it’s all sand. The air is so saturated with moisture that it seems to dampen his skin like rain, but it’s not raining. And finally, they've come to it: the end of the world. In front of them, the ocean stretches on forever. Until the horizon swallows it up in soft, soft grey.  
  
“I wish it were sunnier.” Ryan says. “You can see so much—”  
  
“Shh, shut up,” Shane says, softly. He touches the back of Ryan’s neck with his fingers and doesn’t quite pull him into his chest. He can’t look away from the sea. “It’s perfect,” Shane says.  
   
It used to be, he thinks, that the ocean symbolized how wide the world was — how many places you could go, how many things you hadn't seen yet, how many things you would never see. And maybe that's still true. There are so many things Shane will never see, now — so many people he will never see again, at least not in this life, but to him, now, the ocean means something different. It means protection. It means an impenetrable expanse of water that says _You made it, you're here, you're safe._

Still, Shane thinks, he hasn't been safe for so long that it's hard to believe completely.

They go back to the car with salt-air still clinging to their skin, and Shane thinks he recognizes something in that he’s always noticed in the smell of Ryan's hair, and couldn't place. But he can’t be sure.  
  
~  
  
Ryan almost can't believe they made it here. At first, there’s just the towering structure that he would recognize anywhere, looming on the horizon. The flags are tattered, and there’s definitely damage, but there it is. Disneyland. And Shane was right, the metal structures seem to have survived, for the most part. Ryan feels like he’s in a dream. He clings to the seat below him, to the seatbelt across his chest. How is this even possible?  
  
He wishes Jake were here. Maybe Jake would think it was stupid, but he _wants_ him with him. Ryan’s tearing up, and he knows that Jake would laugh at him, but he doesn’t care. He laughs a little — a little wet, a little strangled, because they’re here. He can’t fucking believe they’re _here_.  
  
Shane glances over and Ryan almost breaks down completely, either into sobbing or into laughing, because maybe it’s stupid to get so overwhelmed but he thinks Shane would get it but then something shifts ahead of them, it changes, and Ryan’s heart stops and thinks no, no, no, they can’t be here. Zombies, infecting this place from the inside out, like a cancer. They _can't_ be here, it’s not _fair_. He gasps sharply and Shane looks back and the car slams to a halt.  
  
~  
  
Fear rises in Shane’s throat like bile and he almost backs the fuck up and peels out of there until he realizes that the thing that stumbled out from behind a barricade — all broken metal and wood — is a person. A normal person. And it seems, Shane thinks, like they’ve tripped, rather than lurched out of hiding. The next thing he notices is that they’re armed with a knife, a big one, but it's still hanging at their hip and they’ve got their hands up  
  
Shane stops the car. This person… is really very interesting looking. He has a mass of dark, curly hair, tattoos creeping up his arms and from the neck of his shirt, but his clothes, Shane notes, look clean, if worn. He doesn’t come too close. Not within biting distance, Shane thinks, stabbing distance, or grabbing distance. It’s instinct now.  
  
“Hi!” The guy says. It’s the least threatening thing Shane’s heard in forever.  
  
“Hi,” Ryan says. Shane wants to whack him gently in the chest, but he doesn’t. Ryan still trusts people, even after everything, after Zack. Shane exhales. “Hi,” he echoes, softer.  
   
"Where're you coming from?” the stranger asks.  
   
Shane and Ryan look at each other. How do they explain it? From here? From Illinois? "You mean besides from the bowels of hell?" Shane asks.  
   
The guy laughs. He's got a good vibe — all wild dark hair and warm eyes. His glasses, like Ryan's, are cracked, but only in the upper left corner. "I hear you, man. My name’s Curly. You looking for refuge? You look half-starved.”  
   
_We are_ , Shane thinks, but there's no malice in it. He's pretty sure everyone's hungry. Mostly, he's tired. Ryan slept a little in the car next to him, but not since they entered California.  
  
“Um, right on both counts, I think.”  
  
“Are you bitten, scratched, or injured?” There’s movement in his peripheral and Shane looks. There’s more people, but they, like Curly, aren’t armed. Still, they’re watching them closely.  
  
“No,” Shane says, mouth very dry. “Injured, but not bitten.” He realizes, suddenly, it’s because he wants so badly for this to work. For Ryan, for him. He just needs them to be somewhere safe. He needs to stop, just for a little while.  
  
“If you come inside the gate, we can check you out. If you’re clear, then you can come in.”  
  
“What happens if people aren’t clear?” Ryan asks.  
  
Curly shrugs, eyes darkening. Shane thinks he might be gentle like Ryan is, but he looks harder, too. Somehow, it makes him trust him. “We let them go.”  
  
~  
  
So they go in. Past the barricade — the gate, Curly called it, is just another barrier. Beyond that is Disneyland and, maybe, refuge. They undress enough to be searched. It’s perfunctory. When they’re instructed to turn or they have to be touched, it’s carefully. There’s no authority here, no sense of command. It’s just people making sure they aren’t bitten. People keeping _their_ loved ones safe. Shane’s heart is slamming into his chest. He doesn't even have to explain the bear trap scar, which is old enough, now, to be healed. They’re cleared.  
   
"Welcome to Disneyland, motherfuckers,” Curly says, and smiles big.  
   
Ryan laughs, actually laughs out loud, and Shane feels washed with relief. He takes his hand, just for a second and squeezes tight.

 

Epilogue

So, Disneyland. Not what he expected.  
  
But there is a community here, there are survivors. It’s so strange, and Shane thinks that it would freak him out if they were all one large close-knit group. Culty. But it isn’t that. It’s more like a community, the kind that almost didn’t really exist anymore, before the world ended. Most people here are split off into little families. Odd little collectives that Shane can’t really quite grasp the workings of as an outsider — the epitome, it seems, of families who have found one another and are tied by more than just blood. But maybe he and Ryan look like that, too.  
  
They stay. The world’s ended, and they’ve reached the edge of everything that they know, and so they stay, for now. Days turn into weeks turn into months, and Shane is struck by the weather here. Mostly its warmth.  
  
~  
  
“There’s _seasons_ ,” Ryan argues with him. “Just because we don’t get terrible snow storms like people in your freaky state—” and Shane laughs. But truthfully, Ryan doesn’t know if weather like this _suits_ Shane, and he's never really thought that, before. Sometimes he thinks that parts of him are still in that cabin that they lived in in Illinois, the one he'll always think of as Shane’s. Sometimes he accidentally catches himself thinking of that place as home: Post-apocalypse.  
  
None of these people they’ve found here in Disneyland live in the hotels even though that initially seemed like the best option. Curly has been here since the beginning. Back when it was more a corner to back themselves into against the hordes than it was a place to live. He tells them about the patrols they sent into the buildings to clear out the zombies and bring out the dead for proper burials, back when all this began. “It's better to be closer to outside, closer to the neighbours, you know? And besides, it’s super haunted in there.”  
  
Instead, there are shelters built beneath and into what used to be rides and attractions. There are little makeshift houses and cabins built in strange spaces — no real rhyme or reason to it. Ryan kind of likes it — he likes being able to hear other people, sometimes. It pulls the vastness out of the space, it makes things feel safe. Someone’s always watching the gates. Sometimes a gun will fire, and it rattles everyone, unsettles the people inside, because it’s a reminder — things will _never_ go back to the way they were.  
  
But for the kids growing up here — Ryan sees them — this is how it’s always been for them. They won’t be so shaken by the shots firing, keeping the dead away. It’ll be just another part of life, and he doesn't know if he’s happy for them or deeply, achingly fucking sad.  
  
There is a collective garden in what remains of the green space. Shane, for all his talk of captaining boats while Ryan tends the weeds or whatever, seems to spend a lot of time there. He slips into a routine again, a ritual, and Ryan is almost relieved for him. It starts to feel more like living and less like surviving, and they have vegetables again, real ones, and every once in a while eggs from a neighbour’s hens. There’s talk amongst some of the people here of venturing out to find goats for milk and butter, but it's mostly talk. Shane offers use of the car anyway. Sometimes he and Ryan talk about going to tell Adam and Steven and Andrew, to tell TJ about this place, but maybe they're happier where they are… maybe…  
  
~  
  
Shane knows Ryan is happier here, with people to talk to, with sunlight and warmth. It’s a place that suits Ryan — it's a place that finally pulls the shadows from under his eyes and from his cheeks and makes him look healthy again. He's stopped being all ribs when Shane touches him. His mouth stops tasting like blood, and starts tasting like Ryan. Shane knows that this place is part of the reason they’ve lived so long, even if it means losing something that still pulls at his bones — the wild country, the cold winters. He sleeps better, but not always. They've claimed a docked house-boat for their own, and the soft rocking of it on the water, like the movement of the car, is maybe different enough from that room, that closet, on that particular night, that Ryan feels like he can sleep here.  
  
Sometimes it still makes Shane breathless with how unfair all of it was. That the end of the world came with gaping mouths and endless hunger — desperate to consume and consume and doomed to never be satisfied — and because of that, Shane knows that things will never be the same. But also, now they'll get to see nature reclaim these buildings. Plants will grow through the cracks in the pavement and vines will wrap around and around the hotels, the rides — they will break through all the little cracks and holes until inside is outside and birds and insects and sunlight and rain will filter through what they had all thought was impenetrable. Rooms that have only ever seen fluorescent lighting and felt recycled air are open to the natural world now. He thinks that that’s beautiful, somehow. A new beginning. Maybe a better one. In almost all the broken places, there’s something softer, something green.  
  
And Shane knows that, if it weren't for the world ending, he never would have seen Ryan. Never would have met him, never would have heard his voice or looked into his eyes or kissed his mouth. He never would have learned the feeling of Ryan's fingers between his. Maybe tomorrow all of this will change, but for now Shane has Ryan. They have each other. They have a space that's theirs, that lets them sleep. They have a community here. They have a garden. They don't live on fucking crackers anymore. Shane thinks that if they live like this for ten or twelve more years, he might even miss Goldfish again.  
   
The sound the water makes against the boat at night, tugged and pulled by a somewhere tide, reminds Shane that he's breathing. That they're both still here, pulled by some crazy impulse, by a barely-there voice through the static on Ryan's little radio, or maybe the pull of the freaking moon, he doesn't know.  
   
But he understands one thing:  
   
They're here. They made it out alive, and they’re together.  
  
And then, from the wreckage, they made something better.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Guys, thank you. I know it's been a long, rough haul, but thanks for sticking with this story to the very end. We're all fighting our own battles, sometimes the world seems hopeless, but keep looking for soft, green things. Get your arms around your found families and hold on tight, and if you haven't found them yet, keep on stretching your hands out into the darkness, because they're waiting for you, too.
> 
> If the apocalypse is coming, let's make it a good one. Let's grow hope from the wreckage.


End file.
